I had scarcely begun composing a column about the movers and shakers of right wing activism, which seems to be establishing domestic policy at the whims of six people, when I got the alarm to turn on CSPAN immediately. The Jan. 6 panel, tasked with investigating and packaging the events surrounding the Capitol insurrection for a television audience, had thus far struggled to make the sorts of headlines that Democrats craved. (Fox News, in fact, had mostly declined to air much coverage of the hearings at all.) 

But the committee’s surprise witness on Tuesday was, for a change, both telegenic and truly revelatory. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified in chilling detail about how Donald Trump had brushed off warnings that protesters at the Stop the Steal rally were armed, and how he asked for security precautions to be lifted; how he had sought to lead the violent mob into the Capitol, himself; and how a White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, had told her that the president’s efforts could get them charged with “every crime imaginable.”