The January 6 Committee’s Final Act: Pointless Criminal Referrals of Trump

There is a danger in repeating the same script ad nauseam, as the House January 6 committee has done in its not one but two final performances.

Recall that the last one, in October, featured the dramatic proclamation that the committee was issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump’s testimony . . . under circumstances where it knew it would never get such testimony. Monday’s theater — apparently the finale, with Republicans poised to take control of the House and shutter the production — featured the dramatic proclamation that the committee is referring the former president to the Justice Department for prosecution . . . under circumstances where it knows such referrals are nonbinding and generally ignored by the Justice Department, except to the extent that they may be counterproductive to the building of a successful prosecution.

The danger of repetition is that one begins to notice flaws that previously slipped by, undetected. I finally caught a basic one during Monday’s performance.