Constitutional Law Professor: Jan. 6 Hearings Becoming More Like a ‘Show Trial’

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley suggested the House Jan. 6 committee is doing itself a disservice by now allowing for cross-examination of witnesses and is becoming more and more like a “show trial” under authoritarian regimes.

“By yielding to the temptation to exclude any opposing voices or views, the Committee seems intent on fulfilling the stereotype of the hearings as a show trial. It could be so much more but that requires politicians to do something that they are almost genetically resistant to: yielding time to opponents. It is the difference between creating a case for the next election as opposed to creating a record for history,” he wrote on July 22.

Even though Republicans and Democrats “have blamed each other for the absence of any Republican-appointed members, that is not a license for the Committee to then dispense with any need to offer the public a full and fair account of the underlying evidence and claims,” Turley continued.

As some Democrats “have admitted that the hearings do not appear to be changing many minds of conservative or Republican voters,” Turley argued that Republicans “tuned out weeks ago when they saw the hearings as presenting a single narrative rather than pursue a comprehensive record on what occurred from a variety of perspectives.”

The result of the public hearings, which have gone on for several weeks, is the “left telling largely Democratically aligned voters not to vote for Trump.”

Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has testified during congressional hearings in the past. Previously, he served as an impeachment witness during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment in late 2019.

An alternative, the professor wrote in his blog, “was to secure a larger audience by allowing more balance” and “would not have altered the power” of public statements made by witnesses to


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