WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 27: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) questions U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland as he testifies at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about oversight of the Department of Justice on October 27, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis-Pool/Getty Images)
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UPDATED 2:50 PM PT – Monday, July 25, 2022
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) lamented the January 6 show trial is not fair or competitive. In an interview on Monday, Cotton said the Democrat-run panel has “no adversarial process” and it’s essentially denying due process to its targets.
He stressed that there’s no one on the January 6 committee whose view of the Capitol protest would be different than Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.). Cotton voiced that the two Republicans on that committee are no different than Democrats in their assessments of those events.
“There is no one on that committee who takes a view different from Nancy Pelosi or even a view that’s like we should examine the full context of all of these statements, of all of these recordings, of all of this video,” Cotton said. “We have no idea of the videos and the audio recordings and the testimony is being presented in its full context.”
Hugh Hewitt, the host of the Hugh Hewitt Show asked him “What is the principal defect of this committee?”
“That it has no adversarial process whatsoever,” he replied. “Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), the two Republicans, clearly share the views of the Democrats on the subject of the committee’s inquiry. If you had someone like Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) or Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on there, not only would they be privy to all the information, but they would be probing that information and probing witnesses to try to get at truth. Which is again what the Anglo-American legal system has done for centuries.”
MAGA Republicans claim that the J6 committee hearings amount to a “show trial”. It’s a prosecutors brief with no one to speak for the other side, etc. Even some supporters of the committee say that in a way it is if not a show trial then a brief, a prosecutors argument.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 23, 2022
The Arkansas Senator emphasized that January 6 evidence presented by Democrats is mostly lacking context, while Pelosi has yet to release all video footage from the protest.