January 6th Committee Hearings: 5 Things You Need to Know

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol begins public hearings on Thursday, June 9 at 8 pm EDT. Every American deserves to know the truth of what happened that day. Today, we’re here to catch you up on what the committee has done so far and why these hearings are important to every American.

  1. The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol is Unconventional, but Bipartisan

  2. These Hearings Represent Months of Investigations and Interviews

  3. These Committee Hearings Will be Different From the Impeachment and Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

  4. January 6th didn't begin or end on January 6th.

  5. We know it's hard, but this is important.

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JANUARY 6TH COMMITTEE AND HEARINGS

TRANSCRIPT

Beth [00:00:00] January 6th did not begin on January 6th, and it did not end on January 6th. 

Sarah [00:00:04] I hope these hearings really help people understand all the choices before January 6th by people in positions of great power that were motivated by one goal and one goal only, which was to subvert our democratic process and overturn an election.  

[00:00:34] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:37] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:37] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics, a special episode because we are recording together in person from my hometown of Paducah, Kentucky. Our children are in camp together this week, so we have full, uninterrupted workdays. We're in a recording studio. We're in an office that is like you see on TV.  

Beth [00:01:13] It feels so good. It's really nice to be here. Thank you for hosting us.  

Sarah [00:01:16] You're welcome.  

Beth [00:01:17] We were greeted with welcome signs, with chocolates on our pillows. The Hollands know how to host a party?  

Sarah [00:01:22] Yeah, we took it very seriously. And by we, I mean me and Felix. So today, we are talking about the five things you need to know about the January 6th hearings, which begin this Thursday, June 9th. The January 6th hearings are probably one of the most significant political events in our lifetimes. The first and last hearings will be held during primetime. We will obviously be watching every moment and talking about it on the show. We know this will both be hard and also that is important. So we wanted to prepare you with today's episode. We also want to offer up the opportunity to watch the first primetime hearing along with us. The link to join us on Hot Mic is in the show notes. We will be there mainly as your emotional support podcasters, right, Beth?  

Beth [00:02:08] We're not going to talk the whole time. We'll talk some.  

Sarah [00:02:11] We also have to watch.  

Beth [00:02:12] We also need to pay attention. I have been working really hard with my parent coach on this principle. My presence is enough. We're going to be trying to do some of that. Just we're here together and together, as we've been discussing lately, is what we have to get through difficult things. But we are going to pay attention. We will react. I imagine that many of our reactions will be not suitable for work.  

Sarah [00:02:33] Now mine won't be. I will definitely be cursing.  

Beth [00:02:36] So don't listen with little ears, if you're listening with us. And I will say I'm not going to have my little ears involved with these hearings. Sarah and I do not protect our kids from hard things. And we will talk about these hearings with our kids, I have no doubt. But we're not going to have them watch it. We're going to protect them from hard images and hard video. I think we're going to see a lot in these hearings that's very, very, disturbing. And that really is adults doing the business of taking care of our country. So we'll be together to do that. We really hope that you'll join us. We love the community that forms around these events. So check that link in the show notes and we hope to see you on June 9th together to take in the first primetime hearing.  

Sarah [00:03:14] Up next, let's talk about the five things you need to know in preparation for the hearings. Okay. First things first, let's talk about the committee itself. It is officially known as the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. And the formation of this committee was very, very, fraught. So after January 6th, I feel like there was unanimous or as close as you get in America, agreement that there needed to be some sort of investigation. Do you feel like that? Do you feel like we all agree, like, well, we need to ask some questions.  

Beth [00:04:01] I do.  

Sarah [00:04:02] I feel like that's where the agreement ended, unfortunately. So we had leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee originally propose an independent commission that was modeled on the panel that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So it would have been equally bipartisan. Members chosen by each party.  

Beth [00:04:26] Or it could have been people not currently in Congress.  

Sarah [00:04:29] Right. But they still would have like had their pick of the half of the committee members. I don't remember the arguments. Trump coming from House Republicans and Senate Republicans who blocked this proposal. They thought it would be just a political pursuit. But I don't know why they thought a select committee wouldn't. I think they thought if it's a select committee, we'll just reject it totally and completely as a political [Inaudible]. But I do not think that has worked out the way they thought it would.  

Beth [00:04:59] I don't think so either. I remember at some point Speaker Pelosi still wanted to have a Democratic majority on whatever body would investigate this, and Republicans thought that was unacceptable. I think we're doing a little bit with 9/11 what we do with World War Two. That is our framework for incredibly hard things. And so we lean on it all the time. January 6th was never going to be like 9/11 because members of Congress were not at the Twin Towers and they were not at the Pentagon. They were not in the field where Flight 93 landed. Members of Congress were always going to be witnesses to this. Members of Congress before January 6th were already troubled by each other's behavior leading up to this date. This event is about Congress. So Congress investigating itself plus the White House is just different than 9/11. Now, you could argue that that difference means that an independent commission is even more suitable. But that's not what has happened. And so because we could not get bipartisan agreement on that commission, the speaker moved ahead with a select committee, gave Republicans the opportunity to appoint membership to that committee. Vetoed two of the members that Kevin McCarthy had appointed. And because of that, he said, well, Republicans are out and so two Republicans are serving on this committee at the invitation of the speaker, Representative Liz Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger. And can I have a soapbox moment, please? This is still a bipartisan committee. I hate the idea that this committee is only really Democrats when you have these two extremely conservative members of Congress serving on it. This committee is made up of people who believe in investigating January 6th as important. But it is still a bipartisan committee.  

Sarah [00:06:57] I wonder if they thought it would be easier to do what they've done, which is just completely ignore subpoenas from a select committee versus an independent commission. Maybe that was  the theory because that's certainly the strategy. We're going to get into that in a minute. But as we're talking about the committee, let's talk about the members. So the chair is Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi. Now, he had worked on that original legislation, attempting to create an independent bipartisan commission to investigate January 6th. And so now he is the chair of this committee, the ranking majority member. And then the membership is Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia. Now she is the longest serving active duty member in the caucus. And I think that is really key. Really important. Clearly, Nancy Pelosi believed it to be so. And I just think having an active duty member who has an oath beyond their oath of Congress to really defend the country, I think that's really, really, important.  

Beth [00:07:58] And insight on tactical issues. Where was the National Guard? What happened when they arrived? I think her insight has probably been invaluable here. We also have Representative Stephanie Murphy from Florida, an interesting choice. She is not going to run again because she feels like the Democratic caucus has kind of hung her out to dry as a moderate in terms of fundraising, in terms of the votes that she's been forced to take.  

Sarah [00:08:23] Because she flipped a seat from red to blue.  

Beth [00:08:25] She did. And she's in a district where that was hard to do and getting reelected was going to be hard. And she feels like she has not gotten any support in that regard. So here you have another independent spirited person on the committee.  

Sarah [00:08:37] We also have Representative Pete Aguilar from California. And then then we have sort of the impeachment team, is kind of how I think about him. You have Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He really rose to national media attention because his son had sadly died by suicide a few days before January 6th. He was there with his daughter and son in law during the attacks and then led that second impeachment prosecution against former President Trump. And you have Representative Adam Schiff of California who led the first impeachment against former President Donald Trump. As well as Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, who participated in the Watergate hearings and also served on the first impeachment team. So those are names we all recognize. This all starts coming back for another trip through this insane moment in American history. And then, of course, the only Republicans who vote for the committee and the only minority members are Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.  

Beth [00:09:35] Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger have paid pretty big political prices for being involved in this. They've been censured by the Republican National Committee. Just think about that for a second. Participating in an investigation about January 6th has led to censure from the Republican National Committee. Representative Cheney is down big time in Wyoming in a primary to win back her seat. Kinzinger is not running again more because of partizan gerrymandering in Illinois than because of serving on this commission. But he also is launching a PAC to try to do some of that. Let's figure out who to be that doesn't have anything to do with Donald Trump. I can imagine that both of them received some pretty scary phone calls and messages and feel that their families are often in jeopardy. And so it's a big deal that these two are willing to do this. And that's why, again, I just get so mad with the notion that, like, they aren't real Republicans. They are not Trump loyalists. They are very conservative. They are certainly not Democrats. And we'll get into the fact that this committee is not in lockstep about what all this information should mean, because there is some serious ideological disagreement here, and I don't want that to get lost in the coverage about Kevin McCarthy opting out of appointing members to this committee.  

Sarah [00:10:50] The second thing we want you to know is that we're going to be watching the culmination of months of work. Often, when we watch hearings, it feels like we're sort of learning as they learn, although often there's still work behind the scenes on the committee's behalf. But that's really not true here. This has been a massive undertaking so big that they actually divided it up into teams. They have interviewed more than 300 witnesses. They have issued more than 50 subpoenas. They have gone through over 35,000 pages of records and receiving hundreds and hundreds of telephone tips.  

Beth [00:11:25] So you might be thinking, why do I need to watch hearings about this? I saw what happened with my eyes on television as it unfolded. And I think that describing the breakdown of these teams helps us understand that as Representative Cheney has been saying, it wasn't just an attack, it was a conspiracy.  

Sarah [00:11:43] Yes. As we were preparing for this episode, I said, what are we calling this? Where are we at? Is it an attack? Is it an insurrection? Is it a coup? And then we read an article where Liz Cheney described it as a conspiracy. And I said, I'm willing to follow her linguistic lead. She says it's a conspiracy. That is the word we will use.  

Robert Costa [00:12:03] [CBS Interview] "Do you believe it was a conspiracy?"  

Liz Cheney [00:12:04] "I do. It is extremely broad. It's extremely well-organized. It's really chilling." 

Beth [00:12:12] So five teams focused on different aspects of the conspiracy. One team is the inside defense team. They are talking about what did federal and local law enforcement know, when did they know it, and what did they do with that information?  

Sarah [00:12:26] The second team called the Follow the Money team and they are examining the funding for the demonstration against the election results, the Stop the Steal Rally that happened right before the attack on the Capitol.  

Beth [00:12:38] Another team is investigating online misinformation and extremist activity. And I just want to have a moment for the staffers of that team, because I cannot even imagine what they've been exposed to.  

Sarah [00:12:49] And fourth is looking at the campaign inside Washington and in state capitals to exert pressure on our election processes to try to overturn election results or delay the certification of electors.  

Beth [00:13:02] And then the fifth team is focused on who organized the demonstrations that day on the National Mall and at the Capitol.  

Sarah [00:13:10] As they move through all this information, as we've talked about, they've issued many subpoenas and for the most part, the Trump camp and in varying degrees have just said no. Don't want to. Not going to. And we're sort of seeing that process begin to play out. Peter Navarro, a former top adviser to former President Donald Trump, was arrested at the National Airport. Did you know that's where they arrested him?  

Beth [00:13:33] I did.  

Sarah [00:13:35] On friday with the contempt of Congress for completely refusing to cooperate with the select committee. Because the select committee issued these contempt of Congress, and then it's up to the DOJ to follow through with these charges. And so far they have charged Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, who both completely refused to participate. Steve Bannon is going to go to trial this summer. The two other former associates that have not been charged are Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino. And some of the reporting I read said, well, because they participated, like, we all saw those Mark Meadows call logs and text messages, looking at you, Ginni Thomas, that because they handed over some information, it would be hard to charge them and have the charges stick.  

Beth [00:14:14] So as you think about what we might see this week, understand that the most key witnesses are probably going to be names that you don't know because they worked under the names that you do know. And the names that you do know have mostly refused to cooperate. I think Peter Navarro gave us a very clean summary of why that is when he was arrested and he said, "How could this be? I was a distinguished public servant just months ago." Well, in America, you are not royalty. You are a distinguished public servant unless and until you've been voted out of office in the transition of power. And then if you violate the rule of law, you're going to be held accountable as an ordinary citizen would be. That's our goal anyway. That's our aspiration. And the fact that that came as a surprise to Peter Navarro, I think tells you a lot about the mindset of this administration and how they operate in.  

Sarah [00:15:07] And we won't even get into for Louie Gohmert and his you can't even lie to Congress anymore about people knocking on your door.  

Beth [00:15:16] What a world.  

Sarah [00:15:17] What a world.  

Beth [00:15:18] The committee has also asked to speak with members of Congress, and they have refused, including Kevin McCarthy. He will not talk to this committee. Many folks have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination to every question posed to them. But we do have people who've cooperated and you are going to hear from them and they have a lot to say. The people whose names you don't know, know a lot. They know all the things.  

Sarah [00:15:42] And some names you do know. I mean, Ivanka participated. Yes.  

Beth [00:15:46]  She did. And Jared Kushner participated.  

Sarah [00:15:48] They sure did. They answered some questions.  

Beth [00:15:49] William Barr, apparently the former attorney general, spent some time with the committee. So we'll see who we hear from. But just be prepared for some of the most compelling testimony to come from people you've never heard of. And those are the people who are in it every day doing the work. I thought this quote from Zoe Lofgren summed up the conspiracy angle. In an interview with The Guardian. She would not get into the details of the investigation, but the Guardian said, "Are you surprised by how broad and deep the plot to overturn the 2020 election was?" And she said, "The short answer is yes."  

Sarah [00:16:23] Oof! How do you suprise somebody like her, she been around a long time. There's a lot of surprising stuff that went down in Watergate. So if you're still managed to be surprised, oh, boy. All right. Next up, we'll talk about the third thing you need to know in preparation for the hearings. The third thing you need to know is that this is going to be different than anything we've seen before because we are so used to having hearings or the time is divided between the minority and the majority. There's ample opportunity for the narrative, the momentum to be derailed by minority members. I do not anticipate that happening this time.  

Beth [00:17:18] I don't think I fully appreciated to this point what the effect is going to be of not having that  tennis match vibe. Because even when you're trying to confirm a Supreme Court justice, it feels like you're into different hearings, right? With Ketanji Brown Jackson, when she was going through her confirmation process, you had Democrats asking questions to build her up. Here are her excellent credentials and the scholarships she's going to bring in, the historic nature of her nomination. And then here comes Tom Cotton to talk about issues that are deep in her past record of sentencing defendants. If I put it generously.  

Sarah [00:17:56] That was very generous.  

Beth [00:17:57] Back and forth, back and forth. Often in hearings, you'll have the majority party focused on the substance and the minority party arguing about the procedure back and forth, back and forth. Here, again, we have bipartisan membership of this committee and significant ideological diversity on the committee. And yet they have worked together as one team focused on a goal. And their goal is to tell the American people what happened on and around January 6th. And without that membership from the minority, who is there just to be at odds with that goal, which is what we see in most hearings. We're going to have a much more highly produced and coherent narrative coming through these hearings. It will not be a circus. And that's new.  

Sarah [00:18:46] I mean, I feel like you shouldn't have said that out loud. I still feel like it might not be a circus, but it is America. I hope you didn't curse it by just offering that up out loud.  

Beth [00:18:54] Well, what I will say is the media coverage of it will be a circus because Republicans are booking out cable news shows to argue against what's happening. Please understand and please tell your friends and family, republicans are choosing to combat this information in forums where no one's under oath. Republicans are choosing to combat this in forums that are friendly to them, where they cannot seriously be challenged on their facts and pressed on their arguments. And the committee, which includes both Democrats and Republicans, is doing this in a forum where the obligations that they owe to the institution of Congress itself and to the American people are on display in a very serious way. Nothing is on trial here. These are hearings, not a trial. This is not about accountability. This is about truth telling. And that's important. We are a democratic republic and it is the democracy piece of that that was uniquely threatened by January 6th. I don't know anyone who believes that we are first and foremost a Republican who doesn't want their vote to count.  We want the state legislature to be able to come in and change the will of the populace if they feel like it or if the populace voted for the wrong party.  

[00:20:09] I too believe we are a democratic republic. And let me be transparent, so I can get my shorts in my  mind when people say things like that to me. I can feel myself getting really reactive. Like, I went to law school, I studied Supreme Court decisions as part of my job, surely you don't think that you know more about our government than I do. And I want to reveal that because it helps me remember, you know, Beth, that's the more Republican side of this argument. The idea that you need elites with expertize to control things. And we are a democracy in that we want everybody to participate and we want the will of the people to be there expressing its support for the highest level positions that we have. And so I think just talking that through with our friends and loved ones is a good way to show them that you've thought deeply about this. And we're not just going to bicker over what we're calling ourselves.  

[00:21:11] And either way, imagine not wanting to know the truth of what happened here. Imagine not wanting to know how it came to be that people breached the Capitol, that the police became the enemy of people who spent the previous summer telling us to back the blue and talking about the thin blue line. Like, we need to understand what happened here robustly for both the healthy democracy to perpetuate and for our republic to continue in a stable way. And that really leads to the fourth thing we want you to know as we prepare for these hearings, that January six did not begin on January 6th and it did not end on January 6th.  

Sarah [00:21:50] A minute ago you said it's hard because we all watched it. Just go with me here. I promise this is relevant to January 6th. I just finished Chuck Klosterman book, The Nineties. It's incredible. He's a fantastic writer. In a point he makes over and over again, is in the nineties there were so many shared television experiences.  We watched O.J. Drive the Car. We watched The Trial. We watched Rodney King's Beating. We watched The Riots. There was a shared experience and it really messes with you. You think I saw it, I understand it. When that is not true. That is not true. And it really short circuits sometimes in a harmful way. Our understanding of what happened, because we think we saw it, we saw everything, but we didn't. And so I think the first thing that that's got me thinking about is, I hope these hearings really help people understand all the choices before January 6th by people in positions of great power that were motivated by one goal and one goal only, which was to subvert our democratic process and overturn an election. And that cannot be emphasized enough. It just can't be emphasized enough.  

[00:23:18] So like you said, the events began before January 6th and just because we watched many of them play out on our television screens, we do not have all the information. We do not understand completely in any way, shape or form, really. Look, this committee probably still doesn't understand completely because records were destroyed. People are refusing to answer questions and some people are lying. And the person at the top of this and at the center of this has not testified before the committee, and that is the former president. And so I just think the importance of that cannot be underestimated. That there was so much that happened leading up to that day. And the violent attack on the Capitol was the combination of illegal acts, treasonous acts, conspiratorial acts. And I think you're right. I think that we have to learn as best we can and understand as best we can what happened leading up to January 6th.  

Beth [00:24:19] I love that you started with the nineties because we're sitting here in 2022 when now there are tons of documentaries trying to help us understand what happened in the nineties.  

Sarah [00:24:29] Yeah. That we all missed. Because we thought we understood it because we watched. Right. Exactly.  

Beth [00:24:34] And I want to say this about Donald Trump. I got an email this morning with the subject line, Trump is on trial this week. He's decidedly not. This week is not a trial of Donald Trump. It is not a trial of anyone. And I think setting that expectation is really important. But also, even though he is the central character in all of this and I do think the reason for being, I do not think without Donald Trump this would have happened.  Also, I've read many of the indictments and criminal complaints against folks who've been tried following January 6th or charged following January 6tht. There is no way that Donald Trump had any sense of the full scope of what was being planned and how it would be executed. He doesn't have all the answers about January 6th either. January 6th was so big and so complex and a result of so many factors colliding at one time that no single person can tell this story alone. And that's why it needs to be investigated and aired out this way.  

[00:25:36] And this hearing won't be the definitive writing of it, because it will take years to piece all of this together. So just getting to the day is really hard, then understanding that the day is still ongoing. Because we have so many people openly running for Secretary of State in states across the country declaring that they would have changed the certification of these votes. We have so many people running for governor and for state legislative seats and for county election boards and seeking to be appointed to positions, saying, "I would have flipped this, I would have done it." And so whether Donald Trump ever runs for office again or not is kind of irrelevant to me in figuring out what happened here and telling that story and making sure that enough Americans are following that story as coherently and completely as we can to get what's on the line when we vote for those positions.  

Sarah [00:26:36] Okay. We're going to take another small break and then we're going to tackle the last thing we want you to know about the January 6th hearings. The last thing we want you to know is that we know it's hard, but this is so important. And it is important because of exactly what Beth just articulated. It's not over. It's not over. We don't know what happens next.  

Beth [00:27:14] We don't even know what the committee is going to do next. And they don't either. There's a lot of reporting this week that Representative Raskin is in this committee pounding the table about significant legal changes to how we vote. He wants to put on the table abolishing the Electoral College. He wants to talk again about the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, about HR-One, about all of these protections around voting. And then you have Liz Cheney saying, "I am happy to talk about the Electoral Count Act. I am not interested in abolishing the Electoral College." So there's disagreement within this body itself about what Congress's next steps ought to be, and that's just Congress.  

Sarah [00:27:54] Yeah.  

Beth [00:27:55] There are state legislative proposals out there to be discussed and had. There are procedures within local jurisdictions about how we vote that people are going to continue to think about on the other side of this. And then there is like midterm elections and the overall cultural impact of these hearings. It isn't predetermined. And so showing up matters a lot.  

Sarah [00:28:20] Yeah. And that being said, for myself, I need to give myself a little pep talk here that no matter how shocking the revelations during this hearing, there are some people whose minds will not change. They will not change about Donald Trump. They will not change about the 2020 election. They will not change about the events on January 6th. But that's not our marker for success or impact, is that everyone in America has the scales fall from their eyes and they can see the reality of what happened. That's not it. We cannot hold ourselves to that standard. I think it is important to remember that many, many, Americans will watch. Many, many, Americans might have their minds changed. Many, many, Americans might think differently about their representatives or the electoral process. And that will be enough. Like, shifting the debate, having an impact on independent voters or sort of voters on the margins, that will work. That will be enough. Changes to the Electoral Count Act would be phenomenal. I would take that. And so the only marker for success in determining how important these events are and how important truth telling about these events are cannot be earth changing, foundation shifting changes. Like, cannot hold ourselves to that standard because we will be disappointed, we will be more skeptical, we will be more disempowered. And that is not what our democracy needs right now.  

Beth [00:29:55] Similarly. I just want to gently say, because I know that a lot of you are feeling this way, criminal accountability is also not the only marker of success. I think we have people out there, I know we have people out there, who feel that Donald Trump ought to be in handcuffs at the end of all of this, along with a lot of other people. I have no idea what the Department of Justice is going to do with this information. And I think those are extremely fragile and complicated judgment calls to make. And I can make reasonable arguments on both sides of that question. This committee has said over and over, the Department of Justice is independent of us. We are Congress. We investigate to decide what needs to happen next legislatively and to tell the country the truth about this. But the Department of Justice has to make those decisions on their own.  

[00:30:45] And I want to say this as gently as I can, but I'm still going to say it in a provocative way, believing that criminal accountability is the only acceptable outcome here, is a little bit of an authoritarian mindset. Authoritarian governments use the power of the law in every scenario to get some kind of just outcome. We do it way too often in this country, I think already. And doing it politically takes us even further down a path that's scary. I'm not saying no one should be charged here. I'm not even saying Donald Trump shouldn't be charged here. I don't know if he should or he shouldn't sitting here today. But what I do know is that we don't have to bat a thousand on outcomes for this to have been meaningful. And we specifically don't have to bat a thousand on criminal outcomes.  

Sarah [00:31:38] Now, I got to tell you, as we sit here and we mark the 50th anniversary for Watergate, I would give anything to share a glass of wine with Zoe Lofgren and ask her what she thinks. Like, is that where we took a path, like we took a break in the path, we chose a fork in the road with Watergate and decided the people at the top should not be held criminally liable. Like, there's a sliding door in America, I think, where we chose a path and there is a part of me that wonders, is that how we got here? Is that why people think that members of Congress and members of the political elite are never really held responsible under the rule of law? Is this a moment where we can claw some of that back and say, no, it doesn't matter who you are. If you manipulate the instruments of power for your own corrupt desires or to maintain that power, you you will be held responsible. And not just by being kicked out of office. So I don't know. I don't know.  I think that's something we all just are going to have to think about and watch because there are other people that will be making very difficult calculus with regards to that.  

Beth [00:32:45] I also just don't want to go into these hearings with a defeatist mindset. As you said, lots of people are going to be exposed to information they haven't been exposed to before, and really positive things can come from that. I call these hearings on Instagram a stress test. And what I want to say is the heart's still beating here.We did transition in power successfully following January 6th. Congress went back into session and they did it. And the person that the popular vote and the Electoral College voted for is the president now. And we are having these hearings. We have a committee who is issuing subpoenas. There are people who are cooperating and complying, and these stories are going to be told. And all of that's really significant. I don't want to take that for granted. That doesn't happen in every or even most of the world's countries. That's a big deal. So we're getting through this.  

[00:33:37] At the same time, you have a stress test and you keep monitoring things when there is still something precarious happening in the body. And I think that's a useful way to think about this. We need to figure out we need more information so that we can really diagnose what happened here, all of the aspects of it, and then figure out what our versions of diet, exercise, medication are going to be to keep us healthy as a country. And so I view this as a really positive thing that's about to happen and a thing that's scary and a thing that's stressful and a thing that can uncover things that we don't want to uncover, and that could require things of us that we would rather not do. But we're doing it and good for us. And so let's do it together and not walk in with like, well, it's never going to matter. That mindset doesn't help us at all. And I think we'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy if too many of us assume it.  

Sarah [00:34:31] So we hope you'll join us. The first prime time hearing takes place on June 9th. There will be daytime hearings on June 13th. June 15th. June 16th. June 21st. And then the conclusion again during prime time on June 23rd.  

Beth [00:34:48] That primetime hearing will be broadcast live by ABC, CBS and C-SPAN. So you'll be able to see it. And then we'll be posting on Instagram and sharing in our newsletter and on Twitter where you can watch these hearings and our takeaways after the hearings in between podcast episodes.  

Sarah [00:35:07] After we posted on Instagram about watching the January 6th hearings, our listener Katie shared this caption that we just wanted to say Thank you for and share with all of you. She said, "Y'all have made me care more about politics than I ever thought I would. Your podcast is created in a way that is incredibly digestible for individuals like me who really struggle to understand politics. Thank you for the work that you do." I am very much looking forward to hearing lots about January 6th after reading this caption. And we hope that you will all bring that spirit and join us. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Friday, but the episode will probably come later in the day, as we will be recording on Friday morning after the primetime hearings on Thursday night. So thank you to everybody. Thank you, especially to our team for rolling with us with all these changes and schedules. And until Friday, keep it nuanced y'all.  

Beth [00:36:08] Pantsuit Politics is Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:36:13] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:36:19] Our show is listener-supported special thanks to our executive producers. .  

Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:36:25] Martha Bronitsky. Linda Daniel. Ashley Edwards. Janice Elliot. Sarah Greenup. Julie Hasler. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs.  

[00:36:41] The Kriebs. Lauri LaDow. Lily McClure. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Katherine Vollmer. Amy Whited.  

Beth [00:36:59] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Ashley Thompson. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McHugh. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.   





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