What Past Congressional Investigations Can Teach Us About The Jan 6 Hearings

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This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1418686
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Thanks. Always handy to look at these historical special committees. No mention of the Iran-Contra joint committee tho?

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The only thing that committee accomplished was to take congressional grants of immunity off the table for at least 50 years (one hopes).

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It certainly goes to show how bullshit the arguments are claiming that “these hearings are unprecedented” or “Congress lacks the constitutional authority to ‘investigate’ the President.”

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But those objections are raised under the IOKIYAR provision of the Constitution.

Trust me, its there. You just have to squint harder.

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Hmmmm…

While the upcoming hearings of the House Jan. 6 investigative committee will be dealing with unprecedented events in American history

Yes, an actual attempt to prevent certifying an election was unprecedented, but doesn’t it all feel somehow directly related to (from the same article)…

When President Harding assumed office, he placed loyal allies in government positions. While these allies helped reinforce Harding’s pledge to reorganize government and “return to normalcy,” they also perpetuated corruption.

Clearly, Harding was Trump’s role model President…

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One day we’re going to discover that the GOP has been using the Ron Paul Embellished Pocket Constitution (C) all these years. (And meanwhile Ron Paul has been making bank.)

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Actually, Congressional grants of immunity helped get rid of Nixon quicker IMO. What’s your opinion on the Congressional Watergate committee grants of immunity/partial-immunity to get to the bottom of Watergate conspiracies?

As for Iran-Contra investigative Congressional joint committee, they seemed to be singularly designed to not be very effective at all, independent of the grants of immunity/partial immunity handed out. Imma guess that, based on the recent back and forth between the J6 Committee and DOJ that the firewalling is perhaps a bit more stringent then during Iran-Contra investigations 30+ years ago.

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That’s nice. That also happened nearly 20 years before the Iran-Contra hearings. So what are actuallying here?

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15 years or so by my watch.

In any case, are you saying those grants of immunity/partial immunity were not warranted by the Congress during their Watergate investigation? Seriously, what is your point on immunity grants exactly? That they’re never an effective tool in investigating political scandals?

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The point being that congressional grants of immunity are now toxic to those doing the granting.

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That’s sort of clearer? But that doesn’t precisely explain why Iran-Contra didn’t come up in the list of five investigations that were in the original article, correct?

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The only thing that committee accomplished was to take congressional grants of immunity off the table for at least 50 years (one hopes).