Former ABC News President James Goldston was recruited by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 to produce the show hearing planned for Thursday as a “blockbuster investigative special,” Axios reported Monday.
“He plans to make it raw enough so that skeptical journalists will find the material fresh, and chew over the disclosures in future coverage,” the outlet reported. “And he wants it to draw eyeballs of Americans who haven’t followed the ins and outs of the Capitol riot probe.”
The hire comes as Democrats on the committee drawing out its work to coincide with the midterms have fretted about how to make Americans care about a three-hour riot more than 18 months ago amid a year filled with nationwide rioting.
In March, the Washington Post published a post headlined, “Jan. 6 committee faces a thorny challenge: Persuading the public to care,” chronicling Democrats’ anxiety over public passiveness about an event speciously branded as the worst attack on American democracy since 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Never mind the routine riots of left-wing anarchists preceding Jan. 6 that Democrats excused and celebrated.
“Their challenge: Making the public care deeply — and read hundreds of pages more — about an event that happened more than a year ago, and that many Americans feel they already understand,” the Post reported in March, followed by the passage below (emphasis added):
They’ll attempt to do so this spring through public hearings, along with a potential interim report and a final report that will be published ahead of the November midterms — with the findings likely a key part of the Democrats midterm strategy. They hope their recommendations to prevent another insurrection will be adopted, but also that their work will repel voters from Republicans who they say helped propel the attack.
On Twitter, House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy highlighted Goldston’s tenure as president of ABC News from 2014 to 2021 as one where the network suppressed blockbuster revelations about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The Democrats have turned to the former ABC News exec, under whose leadership ABC spiked a story on Jeffrey Epstein, to choreograph their Jan. 6 political theatre,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter.
Thursday’s hearing will likely be a regurgitation of the Democrats’ snap impeachment proceedings initiated days after the riot at the Capitol. The committee established to investigate the security failures at the complex, however, has already sworn off any genuine investigation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s own negligence, and Republican appointments have been barred from serving on the panel.
