President Joe Biden has maintained relative silence regarding the testimony and evidence rolled out by the House Jan. 6 committee, and allies don’t expect that to change in the future.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) alerted reporters to the House inquiry’s expanding focus earlier this month after announcing hearings would continue into the fall rather than wrapping during the summer.
‘I DON’T WANT TO SAY IT’S OVER’: TRUMP REFUSED TO CONCEDE EVEN AFTER JANUARY 6 ATTACK
The most recent hearing specifically focused on the actions of former President Donald Trump himself during the roughly three hours after delivering his infamous speech at the Ellipse and when he finally publicly called on Capitol rioters to cease and desist. Reports indicate that future hearings will zero in on Trump’s actions after the Capitol attack, highlighting his obsession with election narratives even some of his own advisers believed to be false.
Since entering the White House, Biden has consistently called Jan. 6 an assault on democracy and frequently points to the riot and the former president’s role as disqualifying behavior for holding future office.
On June 10, one day after the first hearing was held, the president said in Los Angeles that it’s “important” for the public to know “what truly happened” at the Capitol that day and to “understand that the same forces that led Jan. 6 remain at work today.”
Still, Biden has shied away from publicly commenting on the new information presented in the subsequent hearings, and a number of senior Democratic officials spoke to the Washington Examiner about Biden’s lack of comments.
“The president spent four decades in the Senate, and he’s a firm believer in allowing Congress to operate without any interference,” one official stated. “The testimony put forth by the committee and former White House staffers like Cassidy Hutchinson and Matt Pottinger are painting a clear picture of how the former president doesn’t actually care about this country, only himself.”
Two other staffers suggested that Biden speaking too much about the hearings might politicize the proceedings.
“Polls show that, with each hearing, more Republicans are beginning to sour on Trump,” one official explained. “This is an important healing point for the country, and President Biden and the White House are playing it safe by avoiding a victory lap and letting the process unfold on its own.”
However, a fourth senior Democratic official speculated that the committee itself is keeping Biden at arm’s length.
“Let’s be honest for a second. President Biden’s approval ratings have plummeted this year. Much of that is not his fault, but the Jan. 6 committee’s best chance at changing minds on Trump involves keeping him as far away from these proceedings as possible,” that person concluded. “There’s a lot of time left before he will potentially square off against Trump again, and we need to focus on allowing Congress an opportunity to boost its own popularity and hold on to the House and Senate majorities to protect the future of President Biden’s legislative agenda.”
NBC reported in late June that Biden was planning to commemorate the end of the hearings with a nationally televised prime-time address, but White House officials did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s inquiries on the topic Friday.
White House officials had previously voiced concern that any interjection from Biden or other top administration officials would influence the Justice Department’s legal proceedings as recommended by the committee and, in turn, make it easier for Trump and allies to downplay the investigation’s findings.
However, veteran Democratic adviser John Podesta argues that commentary from Biden would not have any impact.
“Biden’s instincts will be to, as the campaign begins for November, help unpack the story for the American people but in a way that doesn’t indicate that they are trying to influence the law enforcement decisions that Garland and his team need to make,” he told Politico in a June interview. “Once the hearings are done, the story is told, the information’s unpacked, then there is a role as the president is framing a choice for the American people about what it means to empower the people who rooted on the insurrection versus keeping people in power who respect the Constitution.”
A poll taken from July 8-10 by Morning Consult found that 66% of voters believed Trump tried to overturn the results of the election, 66% believe he didn’t provide adequate evidence to back up his election fraud claims, and 59% believe he outright lied to the nation about the election results.
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Furthermore, 44% of Republicans now say Trump lied about the election results, a 7-point bump compared to late June. Sixty percent of Republicans do maintain that Trump is not responsible for the events of Jan. 6.
