Jan. 6 panel cost twice previous estimates, hiring TV producers to dramatize attack

By Mark Stricherz
The Center Square

The U.S. House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol cost almost twice as much as previously reported, including spending taxpayer funds for TV news producers and documentary filmmakers to create videos dramatizing its case against President Donald Trump, an investigation by The Center Square found. The Washington Post reported that the panel had a projected budget of $9.3 million in September 2022. According to a review of U.S. House disbursements, the select committee spent $17.4 million.U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican who is on a new committee appointed by House Speaker Mike Johnson to investigate security failures on Jan. 6, said the original committee didn’t spend taxpayer money properly after The Center Square told him about the final costs of the panel’s investigation. “They wasted it, wasted it,” he said walking into his House office Wednesday before referring to two former GOP members of the panel. “That was a sham committee. (Liz) Cheney. (Adam) Kinzinger. It was a joke.” Dan Savickas, president of policy and government affairs at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a non-partisan nonprofit, said more than doubling of the budget was not appropriate.”The median budget for a House committee is $6 million a year, so for the Jan. 6 committee to spend $17.4 million is excessive,” he told The Center Square in an interview. “And anytime a committee is grandstanding, specifically Jan. 6, to fit a narrative instead of holding people accountable and getting the story is bad. That’s why they hired documentary filmmakers.”Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chair of the committee, declined an interview request.“The work of the committee speaks for itself, and the chairman continues to stand by it,” Yasmine Brown, a press secretary and communications director, wrote in an email to The Center Square.

An undetermined amount was spent on three dozen contractors and consultants. Many worked for a few months or less than a year, rather than all 18 months like full-time staff. They are listed in the committee’s report but do not show up in a list of expenditures the U.S. House posted online disclosing its spending.Among them were the former president of ABC News, a longtime producer for ABC’s Nightline, an Emmy-award winning daily TV news producer, and a former documentarian for the Oprah Winfrey Network.

“I was part of the first ever team of former television journalists brought in by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol to produce the historic live hearings laying out the committee’s evidence to the country,” Melinda Arons, a former Nightline senior producer, wrote on her LinkedIn page.

Brian Sasser, an Emmy-award winning daily TV news producer, noted on his LinkedIn page that his job was to “(m)anage constantly evolving rundown and scripts for live hearings” of the select committee and to “(c)oordinate with various U.S. House staffers and Committee investigators to ensure accuracy of all scripting.”

James Goldston worked for ABC News for 17 years, including more than one year as the senior executive producer for Good Morning America and seven years as its president, according to his LinkedIn page. Ryan Mayers said on his LinkedIn page that he has been a freelance filmmaker for seven years and edited the documentary and interview series Oprah’s Next Chapter for the Oprah Winfrey Network. Hyatt Mamoun described herself on LinkedIn as an award-winning filmmaker with a focus on environmental design. “With a passion for conservation through education, I believe that through educating as many people as possible through the entertainment of film, we can change our future,” she wrote.Jan. 6 different from other committees

Previous committees and commissions examined the Watergate scandal in the early-to-mid 1970s, the Jonestown massacre of 1978, and the Islamic terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. They hired or used only congressional staff, lawyers, and investigators. By contrast, the Jan. 6 committee hired more than congressional staff, lawyers, and investigators. They also hired freelancers with backgrounds in producing and editing graphics as well as video and audio footage – prominent features of the committee’s 10 nationally televised hearings from June to December 2022.

The committee’s records do not disclose the amount the panel paid for each freelancer.

Among the contracting companies was Innovative Driven Inc., an Arlington, Virginia-based firm that specializes in forensics, electronic data discovery and project management. The privately held company received $2.4 million. A company spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Another recipient was Polar Solutions Inc., a Gaithersburg, Maryland-based investigative firm of money laundering and cryptocurrency crimes. The company received $2.7 million. Polar Solutions’ president, Arthur Ahrens, declined to comment when called by The Center Square.

Full-time committee staffers received more money in personal and other compensation than regular members of Congress, a tradition in line with recent history. While rank-and-file members earn $174,000 a year, Timothy J. Heaphy, the committee’s chief investigative counsel, was paid almost $190,00 in personal and other compensation in 12 months.

Election results challenged

The committee was formed after former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, defeated President Donald Trump, a Republican, in the 2020 election. With 44,000 votes separating the candidates in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, Trump contested the results.

He claimed voting fraud and irregularities were responsible for his margin, but 62 of his 63 legal challenges failed in court. On Jan. 2, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to help him “find 11,780 votes” so he could be declared the winner in the Peach State.

On January 6, 2021, the day Congress gathered at the Capitol to certify Biden the winner, Trump led a “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse in Washington at which more than 28,000 people passed through security. More than 2,000 broke into the Capitol, including Ashli Babbitt, who was shot to death by a Capitol Police officer while attempting to break into the House floor. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died one day after the attack, while four other police officers at the Capitol that day died of suicide half a year later.

The violence represented a break with tradition in which presidents transfer power to their successor peacefully. On Jan. 7, 2021, Trump conceded he would not serve a consecutive second term.

That June, the House of Representatives voted to create a select committee, to be composed of 11 members “to investigate and report on the causes, circumstances, and causes” of the violent attack.”The panel was controversial from the start.

Previous select committees had members selected by leaders from both parties. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, nominated five House Republicans. In a break with tradition, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, rejected two of the members.

Instead of suggesting alternatives, McCarthy declined to cooperate. Pelosi, then, chose two Republicans as replacements, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Both were outspoken critics of Trump for his conduct on Jan. 6.

The other seven members of the nine-member panel were Democrats. The committee hired more than 60 full-time staff members, many with backgrounds in intelligence and investigations, and conducted more than 1,000 interviews in 18 months. Among the committee’s findings was that White House lawyers and senior Department of Justice officials told Trump early on that his claims of election fraud were baseless.”From the beginning, Donald Trump’s fraud allegations were concocted nonsense, designed to prey upon the patriotism of millions of men and women who love our country,” the report concluded.In addition, the committee found that Trump’s effort to overturn the election was multi-layered. He worked with a “handful of others” to prepare Trump slates of Trump electors in seven states that Biden won. He raised roughly $250 million between the election and Jan. 6 to support his claims. And as the attack on the Capitol unfolded, Trump watched the violence on television and did not tell his supporters to desist for 187 minutes.Police without “sufficient assets”At the same time, the Jan. 6 select committee was different from the Senate Watergate Committee of 1973 and 1974 and the 9-11 Commission, and not just because the panel hired contractors and consultants with backgrounds in television.

The panel also examined only one part of that day and the events leading up to it – the role of Trump, his administration, and supporters. In its report, the panel concluded Trump was “the central cause” of an attempted insurrection.

In addition, the committee referred four criminal charges against Trump to the Department of Justice. While the Justice Department convicted more than 900 people for their actions on Jan. 6, special counsel Jack Smith was unable to prosecute Trump after Trump won the presidential election last year, bowing to longstanding department custom to not prosecute a sitting president.

Further, the Jan. 6 committee devoted less attention to the role of federal, state, and local law enforcement in failing to deter or stop the attack. “Capitol police leadership did not have sufficient assets in place to address the violent and lawless crowd,” the report concluded.

The committee’s conclusion has come into question.

In an op-ed for Politico in January 2023, Georgetown Professor Donell Harvin, who oversaw the District of Columbia’s assessment of threat intelligence, wrote that “(t)he events of Jan. 6 represented the most telegraphed and predictable attack on the homeland in history.” Further, Harvin noted that the committee devoted only 44 pages in the annexes to the security and intelligence issues, roughly 5% of the 845-page report.

In 2022, Denver L. Riggleman, a former GOP U.S. representative with a background in military intelligence, wrote in Esquire magazine that the committee group in charge of investigating law enforcement’s response, known as the “Blue team,” occupied a lower place in the panel’s pecking order.

“The sensitivity of their investigation and the multiple moving parts – House leadership, the National Guard, DC and Capitol police, and the Pentagon – created a politically explosive finger-pointing extravaganza,” Riggleman wrote. “Several witnesses they tried to interview remained elusive, and the committee gave Blue no means to compel testimony.”

Riggleman received at least $97,047 in personal and other compensation as a senior technical advisor to the committee for 10 months, House spending data shows.

A February 2023 study from the General Accountability Office concluded that the attack on the Capitol cost taxpayers $2.7 billion. Most of the costs were for Capitol police and other law enforcement.

In September, House Speaker Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, named eight members – five Republicans, three Democrats – to a select subcommittee under the authority of the House Judiciary Committee to “conduct a thorough review of the security failures that occurred on Jan. 6.”The subcommittee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican, declined comment. Kinzinger, Cheney and other members of the committee did not respond to The Center Square’s requests for comment.