America's Talking - Jan. 6 panel cost twice previous estimates, hiring TV producers to dramatize attack

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

(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.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_e6512782-9ecf-4b83-ad61-2fd26f4464f3.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking. My name is Art Kane. I'm Investigations editor at the Center Square. And I'm here with Mark Strickers, our investigative reporter who's been digging into January 6th committee. The January 6th committee, of course, was investigating the riots on January 6th, 2021 and was planned for about as much as $8 to $9 million. But Mark found it was a lot more, and he also looked into some of the spending, which raises questions. Mark, talk a little bit first about what the committee was supposed to accomplish and how it compared to other similar type of investigative committees that Congress did. Two things. The January 6th committee was formed to investigate the cause, to investigate and report on the causes, consequences, and results of

the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the committee spent, the Select Committee, spent $17 million in its 18 months from roughly June, 2021 through December, 2022, and a departure from previous select committees, such as the Watergate Committee, or even a commission like 9-11 in 2001, the January 6th committee hired documentary filmmakers and TV news producers to dramatize its case against President Trump. So initially, what was it set up to do, and how did you find that it went off course?

Well, I didn't necessarily find that it went off course. I think the committee did a generous interpretation of the word report by report it meant using videos at all 10 of its public hearings there in 2022 to show that Donald Trump was the main cause in the words of its report for the January 6th attack. And other people, everyone from even House Speaker Nancy Colossi to a D.C. official oversaw. The D.C.'s efforts to protect its homeland in 2021 raise questions about the failures of law enforcement to deter the attackers. And the report. The report, I'm sorry. And the community report didn't? Well, the report put out about 44 of its 845 pages were devoted to the failures of law enforcement to stop the attackers.

And that's just a far cry from the previous effort, the examination into President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. So, I mean, one thing that you found was these producers and contractors. I think there's a couple of contractors that got close to $3 million each. Do we know what those contractors did for it? And was that part of the reason for basically doubling the budget? It's hard to say. The two companies listed were Polar Solutions, which is a Gatorsburg, Maryland-based firm that looks into financial crime, especially money laundering,

while the other company in the Dave Driven, which is an Alexandria or Northern Virginia-based company, it had a larger portfolio to look at just project management as well as other investigative activities. And the polar solutions president declined comment. he got me on the phone, but innovative driven did not return my repeated phone calls and emails about their work. So it's hard to say how much, we know how much they got, but what exactly they did is a mystery, is not a disclosure. I mean, you look at the 30, there are about 34 contractors and consultants listed in the January 6th report, but if you look at, say, a person who worked for, who's listed as a contractor, you don't know how much he or she received.

for his or her work. And then it wasn't actually in the report or in the data that we got on the spending for the January 6th committee, but you found a bunch of former ABC Nightline TV producers who were hired. How did you find that if their names weren't directly listed in the data? They're listed in one page of the report. I believe it's page seven of the 845 page report. It could be page six. And you just go through the names and just finding on LinkedIn who these people are.

Some of them acknowledge, they even, you know, they promote the fact that they work for the committee. So it was fairly easy to find. But we don't know how much they got for this work if they were paid and what exactly they did other than, other than we know that some videos were produced and they were video producers, right? Exactly. Yes, there was a heavy emphasis on video

and that's the departure. I mean, like the Santa Gate Watergate committees for older folks here, including me, there was the TV networks who were airing the committee hearings live and the January 6th committee just had a huge projector screen in the

committee room. But that was all based on what the committee had done. So that's how they wanted to publicize its findings, what they call a report on its findings. And the other thing with the committee is that they only had people who were concerned about what happened on January 6th and no one really on the other side. It seems like it was mostly Democrats. And then the two Republicans, Cheney and Kinsinger, were vocally opposed.

to what happened on January 6th, was it really a fair report and was it a really fair investigation or was it just assigned as kind of a show investigation that would be used for political purposes? Well, I'll say a couple things on that. One is that there were nine members of the January 6th Select Committee, seven of whom were Democrats, two were Republicans, both were outspoken critics of President Trump. Republicans had nominated five candidates for the committee, and Speaker Pelosi rejected two of those because she believed that they were two in-hawk with President Trump.

And once Speaker Pelosi rejected those nominees, House Denai's Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, said, forget it, I'm not going to put any of my committee members, my candidates for this commission. Also, what you're alluding to is during this January 6th committee, unlike the Senate Watergate Committee and others like Iran-Contra in the mid-1980s, it was not an adversarial proceeding in which the other side could go ahead and ask questions. It was just the questioning was done behind closed doors.

Now, many of those interviews were taped. and there may have been counsel present for each person. But Republicans who may have disagreed with his conclusions, who were maybe on the fence about President Trump or supportive of him even after January 6th, they could not get in any questions. The Democrats' rationale was that the committee would descend into chaos or if that happened.

And I think Republicans disagree with that idea. Speaking, I'm not answering any questions. Anybody that you tried to talk to for the committee wasn't available or didn't want to talk about it, even people who were critical of it. What do you attribute that kind of lack of transparency and accountability to? Well, I'll say that I've been a reporter since the mid-1990s, and I can't recall ever having a story where I contacted more than 50. 10, 15, 20 people, and zero people wanted to talk, even off the record, about my story, about the story. I can sort of speculate as to what people have said that if people who were on, were hired by the committee, went public, then they would be somehow intimidated by the people who rioted, but that's just speculation we don't know.

So it's hard to say. The most likely answer is that a few people right now really have much to gain from the committee's work. President Trump wants to put it in the rearview mirror, and House Republicans or House Democrats have beat President Trump for his conduct on January 6th, and they can't get any more political mileage of it. But that's just my observation on that. all right oh great mark thanks a lot for all your work and thanks if you want to read the story it's on the center square dot com and this has been america's talking thank you