 Aloha, and welcome to this Think Tech Hawaii show on July 22, 2021. This show is titled Find America, America Finding Its Way. And today I'm your host, Stephanie Stoll Dalton. Our topic is focusing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where the January 6 Select Committee to examine the facts of the attack and death squad assault on the Capitol is under construction. Right now, Speaker Pelosi is casting the members of the Select Committee, which will review and analyze for the historical record of the U.S. how and who assaulted the Capitol. This work has been fraught and adversarial and political every step. And this is what suggested the show title about finding facts and truth and whether there can be accountability known or applied for the one-sixth assault. So we have assembled an informed Think Tech set of guests today to discuss these challenges and to the construction of this committee. And what are the considerations for leadership like Pelosi and the decision that she had to make what yesterday and is now today defending it against the onslaughts of the leader McCarthy. And she is managing to work her way through that and keep the integrity of the committee intact so that the public can understand that this is a search for truth and facts and unbiased and will be informative forever. So I want to welcome these members of the of this committee, the Think Tech show. And we have Jay Fidel and we have also Cynthia Lee Sinclair on board. And also we have Tim Apicello. So welcome to the three of you to this discussion. Thank you Stephanie. Yeah. So given the title of the show, which is is the January 6th committee cast a key to truth and is accountability for one-sixth likely at all. So we know now that Speaker Pelosi named the members of the one-sixth committee recently and she included, and of course they were Republicans. And then one, excuse me, there were Democrats. She appointed Democrats and one Republican, Liz Cheney. Speaker Pelosi invited more Republicans and then dismissed two of them. So Jay, can you talk to us about why this is so messy and uneven? What has happened to start this off in such disarray? First of all, I really don't think the quote construction of the committee is all that important. The important thing is to get going. This happened six months ago and we still don't really know. And the Republicans always seem to take advantage of the passage of time. The more time you give them to attack something, the more they will attack it. It's a kind of a plurial reaction. Before the show, Tim and I were talking about life in school when we were kids, and I can't help but thinking of life in junior high school when this kind of McCarthy move would be de rigueur. It's remarkable how plurial the whole thing is from the GOP. They're obviously playing games and Nancy should not have let them get in her way at all. That's my opinion. And this should have started when we first started having discussions about a commission, which was in January. So here we are in just almost August and we're still playing around with this. So as far as I'm concerned, you don't need any Republican members. They're obviously not in good faith. They're not going to help. They're going to play junior high school games. And she shouldn't waste any time at all. Now, as opposed to start the proceedings on Tuesday, I'm happy to hear that. I really hope that they understand the Republicans will try to derail this from afar. They will go to the press. They will make accusations against Nancy and all of the Democrats on this committee. They will try to derail it every single day. But Nancy has got to be stronger than that. And so the members of the committee have to be stronger than that. The idea is to get the show on the road. Why is it important? It's important because we can't rely on the media and the videos to tell us what happened. As you said, Stephanie, we have to know why and who was organizing this and what they intended to do and how far they got. We have to know how they affected the country. We have to know how they affected the politics and the people and public opinion in the country. But the biggest thing of all is what were the factors, what were the vectors that made this happen that allowed it to happen in the first place? And if I were on that committee, and I'm telling them all now that I'm volunteering to be on that committee, I'm telling them now. I hope they listen to me. I would be looking at what in the world happened to our country that we should have had an insurrection here. And I suppose the other issue, if I were on that committee, I want to know just how close we came. I was standing outside looking at the video and reading the reports then and now. People keep saying, we came damn close to losing our democracy that day. How close? I want to know. And I want to know also whether this can happen again and what would happen if it happened again. I want to know all that. And I don't know it yet. And I can't imagine why I would not want to know that. Every right-thinking person in the country, including, believe it or not, including Republicans, should want to know these things. Yeah, I think that knowing that it won't happen again is one of the outcomes we seek from the work of this committee, correct? Tim, what do you think are the major goals? What do you think we can realistically expect the select committee to produce? Okay. Thank you, Stephanie. Thanks for having me on. Hey, before I give you my answer, I just want to address one point Jay made. And that is, I would think that everyone wants to find out the truth. Jay, you're right. 73%, I forget the name of the poll, but 73% want to know what happened, both Democrats and Republicans. So that's a high number. You don't get in the 70s when it comes to national polling. That's really a remarkable number. So now to address your question, Stephanie, what can we reasonably expect? I think we can reasonably expect to get at the matter, to get to the truth, to get the subpoenas of people that need to testify, hear their stories, start putting the pieces of the puzzle together so that we can find out who, what, when, and where. And then most importantly at the end of the day, when the committee has amassed all their information and have put the piece of the puzzle together, then we say, what steps should we take to avoid this from happening again? Just like we did with the 9-11 commission, but this is obviously not a commission, but it is a select committee with or without the Republicans. And by the way, Kevin McCarthy didn't do himself any favors. I'm sure he was acting on the orders of Trump, but he didn't do the GOP any favors by pulling all five Republicans out of that select committee. What a blunder move that was. Because now they have to sit from afar, I hope that Fox News, I use that term loosely, News, Fox station to do the battle for themselves. And they're not, you know, that's good luck with that. Well, what about the quality of that decision on his part? I mean, after Nancy made our decision to not accept those two of them, who we're going to be just. Nancy was correct to say that you have prejudiced yourself after the appointment. You prejudiced yourself before the committee, before the media, before the public. And by that, by your statements, yeah, you should not serve on the committee. So the two of you, Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, goodbye. See ya. But Kevin McCarthy would have said, okay, I want to replace them with two more people. And the three that I've already assigned, I want them to stay. That would have been the prudent thing for Kevin McCarthy, McCarthy to do versus as Jay has accurately described as a junior high game of taking your ball home and pouting all the way home. That's exactly the right description of that. It is so not even high school. Yeah, really truly. Well, yeah, let me go on to Cynthia and say Cynthia with or without Republicans, other than the one that is already on and accepting the charge of the committee that the Pelosi has set with or without them on, will the influence of them or disruption of it be the same or different? Well, does that solve them getting in the way of the progress of the committee's work? Well, it doesn't exactly completely get them out of the way because they're still going to do everything they can to try to get in the way. But I think it goes a long way. So I agree with Tim and Jay that McCarthy did himself no favors by taking everybody and leaving. And I really, really admire, oh gosh, I've got a mental block against your name all of a sudden. Sorry, Cheney. This Cheney. And here I admire her so much that I can't remember her name. She's unforgettable. To stand up for what is right and to really stand by her beliefs. And she said that she thinks that Pelosi, what she did was right in barring Jordan and banks from the panel. You know, they completely and totally disqualify themselves by the things that they said. Jordan, obviously we already know he has been nothing but a Trump sycophant from the beginning and will gladly lie for him. We already know that. So now banks has been pretty vocal about it too. But Jim Jordan, he's really the ringleader there. I can't help but wonder if McCarthy didn't put them on the committee on purpose knowing that they would be disqualified by what they've done in order for him to then take his people and leave. Because he had to at least look like he was doing the right thing, right? But he did it in such a way that it was almost a setup. You know, it seems like everything they do when they go like, I smell a setup. And that was when I first heard the people that were on it. I thought it was a setup. It's because he wants all of them to get kicked off. And sure enough, that's what happened. But Liz Cheney did come out and support what Pelosi did in not allowing them on there. And then, you know, I came across another quote from Liz Cheney that I thought was appropriate for today. And this is what she says. And it was right after the insurrection happened. She said, that effing guy, Jim Jordan, that son of a bitch, while these maniacs are going through the place, I'm standing in the aisle. And he said, we need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you. I smacked his hand away and told him, get away from me. You effing did this. And I thought, oh, wow. Now, I hope they don't use that to say she is, you know, prejudiced on the other side. But they're already saying that, you know, go ahead and let her be on the committee. She'll just shoot herself in the foot because now she won't ever get reelected. I think that every Republican that feels that way should just leave the country, go back to the house, stay there, don't come out again, stuff like that. Because my God, the level of corruption that has gone rampant in this country has got to somehow be held accountable. And hopefully, hopefully, a couple more Republicans will say, you know, I'd like to be on that committee, too, and see if she will. I think that Pelosi is considering a couple of others. And Zalinger, the other one that has been stood up for the principles. King Zinger. So what you're saying, Cynthia, is interesting because you believe, or you sense that McCarthy's strategic in his removal of all of these guys, so that it just puts in the way you set it up to begin with. And that's just my opinion. I didn't hear it from someone else. It's just my analysis. Yeah, that's your analysis. And I think that's a really interesting one because it gives him another platform to do all the things that he's going to do, which is why I want to know if you thought with or without the Republicans on the committee, was it going to be easy? And of course, the answer is no. But Jay, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think that there are going to be some big fines? What is it down deep that you really think are the big fines that are going to come out of the work of this committee in so far as they're allowed to do it while being skeet-shooted all the way through? First, on the composition, even if Pelosi appoints another Republican, McCarthy won't let that happen. And if she appoints Mr. X, McCarthy will tell him you can't do that because then you'll be another Cheney and you'll be leaving the fold and we will hate you and we will primary you and you're out of the tent. Goodbye. He will be able to control that. So there's no point really for Nancy to appoint another Republican. I don't think that's going to work. So what we will have is a Democrat committee and hopefully they will start on Tuesday. And the Republicans will use the press to the max to attack them and everything they do. I recall in the first impeachment, the Republicans went in, they crashed the House committee room. Do you remember that? They crashed it and said, we have a right to be here. And that was a completely bogus kind of argument. But they made a lot of press over it. Well, I think they might try that here too. They physically crashed the meeting and in any event from a third party point of view, from outside, they will be attacking it. Now, the important thing for Nancy and the chair of that committee is to respond, not to just be a victim here. They should respond, tit for tat in kind every day because there'll be big public argument in the media about it. In terms of the way it's going to go, a lot of people think that these things last too long. The 9-11 commission lasted a long time. And you can see in all of the commissions and committees and impeachment process that Trump was involved in it lasted, if it happened at all, it lasted too long. And so the public thinks that Congress is too slow. They can't their minds up about anything. And they take too long to do things and so forth. So if I were on the committee, I would be urging the chair to move along. In terms of getting the data, Stephanie, you mentioned that you just call the witnesses down and they come down and they tell you what happened. Well, it's going to be the same thing as it was in the impeachment proceeding. These people are soft on the Republicans. They're either not going to come down and blow off the process of subpoena or the request, whatever it may be. And they're going to give everybody a hard time and they will not be helpful. So the chair of the committee has to be very careful about not calling people who are stooches. On the other hand, there's a lot of paper involved here and the staff of this committee could be, should be in all prospects, would be very perspicacious about finding the data in the documents that would be helpful. And here's one. There are multiple sources that have already looked at this, but are not public. So for one, you have the FBI. And for others, I suppose there are prosecutors around the country, maybe the Department of Justice that has accumulated information on this. And that should be, I don't know if it will be, but it should be a slam dunk with the chair of the committee rights to the FBI, the Department of Justice. And he says, let me have your file. I want it all. I want to fold it into our report. And I want your suggestions on who I can call for legitimate information. So this is an investigation that could be slow and disgusting, or it could be an investigation that gets to the heart of things quickly. And of course, it behooves everybody in the world to get to it quickly. Yeah, that would be the smart move. I think that's really interesting, Jack. All right. Now, you know what, Tim, what about the scope of the committee? Because I heard the Jim Jordan going on and on about, well, the investigation should actually probe everything from last summer's Black Lives Matter movement and all of the rioting and attacks and there and come all the way up to something that's happened, I guess, on Palm Sunday or something recently. So what do you think the committee chair is going to have to manage there in terms of scope of the investigation? Well, what you heard Jim Jordan do was he was channeling Donald Trump. And all those suggestions that he was making was nothing more than the shiny object, the distraction that Donald Trump is so famous for. And how Jim Jordan would love to distract the energy and the synergy and the focus of the steering committee to go off another tangents, to muddy the waters and not get to the matter and the truth of the matter. So Jim, you know, Jim Jordan is, again, he's prejudiced himself. He's well known for his antics and nothing should be taken from him as credible and summarily ignored, should be ignored. But as far as their scope, it should be laser focused, stay within the cause of the one six erection, cause about who's the participants, who are the enablers, who are the ones who to try to cover it up and poo poo it as a walk in the park, get to all those answers, but keep it laser focused. And I think that that select committee will have done its job. Oh, yeah. And then at the end, what steps can we take as a government, be it Democrat or Republican in the future to avoid such antics, if you will, from happening again? Oh, by the way, I'd like to say one thing that Cynthia said. She said she respected and liked Liz Cheney's beliefs. And I agree with that. But I'd like to add it further. It wasn't so much her beliefs that I admire. It's her commitment to the oath of office she took, what she has cited more than once of why she's standing apart from the GOP party. It's not about politics. It's about her oath to office. And God bless her. Certainly, certainly appreciate it. Yeah. So Cynthia, do you think that the consequences can be brought up during this committee? In other words, I hear what Tim's saying as he also would like them to get to how we can assure not just accountability. All right. So once we know the facts, the truth, and then there's accountability, well, what would that be that would keep it ever happening again? What do you think? Just the truth of it all coming out to the public or maybe not the crazy Trump people to ever believe, but regular Republicans certainly will. You know, one thing I can point out about some of the things that Jim Jordan has been saying about, and well, not just Jim Jordan, but all the Republicans, that it was the Democrats' fault that they didn't secure the building. They keep saying, why didn't Nancy Pelosi go further to secure the building and support the Capitol police? Well, I just want to make a statement here. Congressional leaders, they don't oversee the security in the Capitol. They do hire the people who do. It's controlled by the Capitol Police Board, right? And so we know who they are even. Paul D. Irving is the house sergeant of arms and has been doing it since 2012. And John Boehner had appointed a guy named Michael Stenger, who was hired in 2018. And so these are the guys that are overseeing this. And they're the ones we need to go to and talk to and bring them in and figure out why there was no support for the Capitol Police. And the Capitol Police guys are going to be the ones that are the first to testify next week. And I think that's going to be powerful for people to hear that it's going to completely dispel all of these crazy theories that they were just there. You know, it was a walk in the park. It was a regular visitor's day. And all these other crazy things that the Republicans are trying to say, this will completely pull the legs out from underneath those lies. At least I hope they will. Well, do you see this as and everybody should answer this? Do you see this as a pivotal moment in our history that how how it is that this committee sets up and goes and concludes? Do you see it as important? And if you do, compared to what? Cynthia, what do you think? Absolutely. If you're talking to me again, yes, absolutely. It's important. It is paramount even. And it is a very pivotal moment in history. There is either going to be consequences or at least accountability, whether there's consequences or not. But we need to have that. And it's either going to be there or it's not. And if it's not, then just like Hitler back in those days when he failed the first time, he came back and was successful the second time. And I think it is absolutely more important than anything we have ever done in this country to make sure that doesn't happen. And the way of the autocrat seems to be the way of this century, so to speak. The faster things go, the harder it is for slow moving governments to keep up, whereas an autocrat can just go bam, bam. And so I think that's an important factor. We have to do absolutely everything we possibly can to protect our republic, because right now it is under serious threat. So Jay, do you agree that this is at the top of the list of important functions of our government, our Congress? No. We've been saying we're at a tipping point for four years. And every time somebody asks that question, the answer is yes. But right now, again, the answer is yes. But I'll tell you why this is so profoundly important. It's the notion of sacred cow. The thing about truth commissions is usually you start a truth commission like in Africa in a transitional time, call it transitional justice. We have a show that covers this. And the idea is to tell people what they don't know, because those who create, those who do the crimes go to great lengths, including distraction, as Tim says, to avoid the people knowing. And we don't know what really happened here. And I'll tell you what the sacred cow is. I'll tell you what the hot button is beyond anything else. And I firmly believe this. There were sitting legislators involved. One of the reasons that Trump and his friends want to derail this whole commission is not to keep that away from us. I think we will find that a number of Republicans sitting in Congress today either knew or had information to allow them to know what was going to happen. And furthermore, that they either supported it or they had friends there supporting it. It's really scary. And people are a little reluctant to go to that, because it's so provocative to even think that thought that I think that's what happened. And this commission has got to find out. I'm not going to be satisfied with the work of this commission unless it does find out about sitting legislators, sitting public officials, not only from Congress, but other other legislatures and governments around the country who were involved up to their neck, their eyeballs in this thing. I want to know about that. And of course, the select committee cannot take action by itself. I want to hear their recommendations. And their recommendations should be very stern for anybody caught with his hand in that cookie jar. Well, yes. And, Tim, let's see if we can shift over to those recommendations. What would those recommendations maybe be? Of course, they can't take action, as Jay says to that committee can't. But what could they recommend? Yeah. I'm sorry. I have this tendency to want to react to the previous guests and what they say. So just quickly react to Jay's thing is, yeah, I agree. We're going to find out who in Congress was involved in this. Yeah, Jay, I'm not sure we should be surprised because they're founding fathers. You know, they're concerned about this. And when we take a note of office, if you're a politician or a law enforcement officer, your oath of office is to defend the constitution and the powers to be from all forces foreign and domestic. Well, the domestic is exactly as what has happened. The forces within Congress that have aided and abetted, if you will, to this insurrection. And so although we haven't seen something like this in 200 years, 240 years, it finally happened. And so the founding fathers knew that forces within our government would be wanting to drag it down and making it an autocrat, put them in office. And we've just been lucky. We haven't had that problem for almost 240 years. I mean, we've had some bad presidents, but certainly not to the point where they were going to be convert our democracy to an autocracy. As far as recommendations they can make, I really think that depends on the fact finding. It's premature to say what recommendations will they make until they really find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And that's going to be a challenge because the Jim Jordans of the world, the Kevin McCarthy's of the world, the even Mitch McConnell's, even though he's in the Senate, they're all going to try to distract and detract from the facts of finding. I'll tell you what they could do, Tim, Stephanie, Cynthia, they could say, look, we have enough information here to suggest that the Department of Justice ought to convene a grand jury or to take on its own investigation. I'm not sure what the status of that is because you can do that without congressional action, right? If there's a crime involved, and we all know there were many crimes involved, crimes perhaps that go beyond the crimes that have been charged so far, then we could have a grand jury, and I want to go on record about the grand jury too. I'm volunteering to sit on that grand jury. We have a grand jury to determine who should be prosecuted. And that would include Donald Trump, it would include Mitch McConnell, it would include all the Republican possibilities in the Senate and the House, and they could actually start criminal proceedings. Now, this would be very disruptive for the government, but this is something that could recommend and could happen, and the executive side of things would be the branch of government that handles that. You wouldn't need a vote in Congress. Very good. And Cynthia, why don't you wrap up for us? We're pretty close to out of time. So why don't you wrap up this as to your thoughts about it, or its effect on our country if it just peters out into a nothing burger, kind of like the second impeachment? Well, I've sort of said how I feel about how dangerous it is and how important this thing is. And I want to point out that there have been nine senators that have been impeached during the history of our country. And so that is one of the things that could happen if it's dealing with senators or representatives, they could lose their place in Congress. And I think they should lose their place in Congress. And the fact that Liz Cheney said to Jim Jordan, you effing did this, she knows. So if we can find proof of all of that, I agree with Jay that if we can get more subpoena power behind some of this stuff, we can look at their phone logs, we can look at their emails, we can look at the stuff that was going on with their communications way back in the day. We can listen to their phone calls, I believe, even with some subpoenas. So I think that getting those subpoenas and getting those records and getting our hands on some of that hard data is going to be really important to moving forward from here. Now, whether it'll happen, who knows? This is my thought in 2022. All of the people that turned out for the election in 2020, I want 10 times that many to get to that. You know, something I really feel ought to be added to this conversation. And that is, right now, it's not clear, it's not clear in the public record, which one of those senators, for example, the Republican senators were involved. This commission could develop evidence to point to them. Now, if the Department of Justice wants a mount of prosecution or not fine, but remember the 14th Amendment, section three, it says, if you hold public office and took an oath for the Constitution, and you were then involved in insurrection against the government, you cannot continue to hold office. Now, some of these guys are running in 2022, 2024. That is absolutely critical. And Cynthia, you and me and Tim and Stephanie, we could file a lawsuit. That's what I think, to have a court find that they're not qualified to run. And we would have the evidence if this commission found it. Well, it's a low hot time, and we'll have to wrap it up. So thanks to all our guests, Cynthia, Lisa and Claire, Jay Fiedel, and Tim Apachello for this critical conversation, really, and pivotal for our country. So I'm Stephanie Stoll Dalton, hosting for the America, finding its way, and we'll see you next week, same time and day. So mahalo for your viewership. Thank you, everyone.