The House Select Committee on Jan. 6 hired another television producer last month to elevate the drama of its summer show trials which concluded Thursday. Season two will debut in September.
In June, the committee hired Dan Przygoda, an Emmy-nominated news producer whose résumé includes stints at Bloomberg, ABC News Nightline, and Good Morning America, to help stage the theatrics for the panel’s series of televised hearings.
“Can now announce that I’m working with the [Jan. 6 Committee] on their upcoming hearings,” Przygoda tweeted in an announcement on June 20.
Przygoda joined former ABC News President James Goldston to assist in the televised production, after Goldston’s hiring was reported in early June. The committee had already held three out of eight of its summer hearings by the time Przygoda announced his role.
The committee’s employment of television news producers to dramatize its proceedings showcases how the partisan probe has approached its work of persecuting political opponents in a public forum absent a legitimate defense. The panel’s series of summer hearings possesses all the hallmarks of the Soviet-era show trials in the 1930s where regime dissidents were dragged before the public courts and declared guilty without fair representation.
In March, Democrats on the committee conceded the panel’s work was all about smearing the political opposition ahead of the November midterms.
“Jan. 6 committee faces a thorny challenge: Persuading the public to care,” headlined The Washington Post in a story that chronicled staffers’ anxieties over making a three-hour riot which happened more than 18 months ago interesting to the broader public.
“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, 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.
Staging the hearings as must-see televised events became a central pillar of the committee’s strategy to gin up interest. Przygoda spent Thursday night’s show trial previewing what was to come in the proceedings on Twitter.
After seven two-hour-plus hearings failed to offer panel members their knock-out blow, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney opened the committee’s eighth hearing with the announcement of a second season in September, just before the election.
“We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather,” Cheney said.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
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