After This Impeachment Acquittal Farce, Here's How We Finally Hold Trump To Account [View all]

Democrats didn’t need to extend a trial where the verdict was never in doubt. But there is a way to get to the truth of what happened at the insurrection, and Trump’s role in it.

Michael Tomasky
Special Correspondent
Updated Feb. 13, 2021 4:36PM ET

I see that people are apoplectic on Twitter about the Democrats “caving” on impeachment trial witnesses after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and a handful of other Republicans abruptly called their bluff and voted to allow them.

But people shouldn’t be upset. That was the right move for Democrats for two reasons. First, witnesses or no witnesses, this is a foreordained reality show, so let’s just get on with it and get it ended.

And second, to the extent that there is a hunger to get to the bottom of everything that happened on Jan. 6—and I hope that extent is considerable across the nation—there is a far better venue for doing so than an impeachment trial.

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All of which brings us to the superior venue through which the nation can get to the bottom of this. It’s the 9/11-style commission that Pelosi has promoted. That would be a commission of experts, with a large and top-drawer staff and subpoena power, that would get to the bottom of everything. It could and should take months and do hundreds of interviews and subpoena resistant witnesses and tell the whole story.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-need-a-911-style-panel-for-jan-6-after-the-inevitable-disappointing-end-of-trumps-impeachment-trial