An investigation that has revealed grave threats to democracy, plotted and carried out mostly by men, has a heavily female cast of narrators who have paid a public price for speaking out.
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Matthew Pottinger, left, and Sarah Matthews at the Jan. 6 hearing on Thursday. Like other female witnesses, Ms. Matthews quickly came under attack for her appearance before the House committee.
WASHINGTON — Before Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary, even opened her mouth to testify on Thursday before the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, the House Republican Conference attacked her on Twitter as a “liar” and a “pawn” of Democrats.
The group did not mention the man seated beside her, Matthew Pottinger, the former deputy national security adviser, who was also there to issue a scathing indictment of President Donald J. Trump’s behavior on the day of the riot. Nor did Mr. Trump himself mention Mr. Pottinger when he lashed out hours later with a statement calling Ms. Matthews a fame-seeker who was “clearly lying.”
The contrast highlighted how, in a series of revelatory hearings that have focused on issues of democracy, the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, another, less-discussed theme has emerged: the gender dynamics that have been a potent undercurrent.
In the course of exposing Mr. Trump’s elaborate effort to overturn the 2020 election, the House panel has relied on the accounts of several women who came forward to publicly tell their stories. Their statements, and the attacks that ensued, laid bare how women often still pay a higher price than men for speaking up.
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee — a woman who herself has suffered heavy consequences for her insistence on publicly condemning Mr. Trump’s conduct — has been explicit about the role of gender in the proceedings. She has positioned herself as the champion of the women who have agreed to testify in person, comparing them favorably with the many men who have refused to do so.
At the committee’s prime-time hearing on Thursday, Ms. Cheney wore a white jacket, the color of the women’s suffrage movement. She invoked Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to serve as prime minister of Britain, and the fight by American women to secure the right to vote as she described the women who had publicly appeared during the panel’s investigation as “an inspiration to American women and American girls.”
ImageRepresentative Liz Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, has suffered heavy consequences for her insistence on publicly condemning former President Donald J. Trump’s conduct.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
She was referring to Ms. Matthews as well as Cassidy Hutchinson, another White House aide who appeared at one of the committee’s hearings; Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who testified about how she was assaulted by the rioters, sustained a concussion and continued to fight them off; and Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, election workers from Georgia who told the panel about how they endured harassment and death threats after Mr. Trump named them in a false conspiracy theory about voter fraud.
The result has been that as the committee unfurls the story of the Jan. 6 attack — playing footage of a mostly male crowd laying waste to the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name, with the president looking on supportively from the West Wing — many of the witnesses who have emerged most prominently have been women, with Ms. Cheney as their defender.
It is a notable strategy by Ms. Cheney, a tough and hawkish conservative who throughout her career has worked to avoid being viewed through the lens of gender.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
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Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out evidence that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:
An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.
The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.
Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.
A “complete dereliction” of duty. In the final public hearing of the summer, the panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty for failing to act to stop the Capitol assault. The committee documented how, over 187 minutes, Mr. Trump had ignored pleas to call off the mob and then refused to say the election was over even a day after the attack.
It comes as the Republican Party has labored to diversify and expand its appeal among female voters, a group that polls showed was a weak spot for Mr. Trump in 2020 and has only drifted from him since. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that six in 10 women believed Mr. Trump’s actions after the 2020 election threatened democracy, while men were almost evenly split, with 48 percent holding that view and 45 percent saying he was just exercising his rights.
Ms. Cheney was the highest-ranking Republican woman on Capitol Hill last year when she broke with her party after the riot and called out Mr. Trump and his election lies, voting to impeach him for incitement of insurrection. Within months, she had been ousted as the No. 3 Republican in the House, and she is now at risk of losing her seat in Wyoming as she faces a challenging primary election next month against a Trump-endorsed opponent.
ImageMs. Cheney embraced Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, after her testimony at a hearing last month.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
It was difficult not to hear some parallels when Ms. Cheney described how Ms. Hutchinson, the 26-year-old former White House aide who became a critical public witness, knowingly exposed herself to harsh criticism from former colleagues. Ms. Cheney said on Thursday that Ms. Hutchinson “knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege.”
“But like our witnesses today, she has courage and she did it anyway,” she added.
After Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, Mr. Trump dismissed her in an interview with Newsmax as “this girl” who was making up stories. “She’s got serious problems,” he said. “Mental problems.”
Amanda Carpenter, a former adviser to Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, both Republicans, said it was notable to see a conservative woman drawing attention to the gender dynamic.
“I know how hard it is for these women under these circumstances,” Ms. Carpenter said. “I imagine it means a lot to the women being targeted. It means a lot to me just watching it.”
The Twitter attack by the House Republican Conference on Ms. Matthews, who works as a House Republican aide, was quickly deleted. But Mr. Trump’s targeting of her and Ms. Hutchinson was in line with how the former president has often publicly treated women who challenge him, criticizing them in personal terms intended to call into question their credibility, sanity and self-worth.
Mr. Trump’s allies like to describe him as an equal-opportunity counterpuncher who would attack anyone who crossed him. But over the years, he has singled out female antagonists with particular viciousness, including the television personalities Mika Brzezinski and Megyn Kelly, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Mary T. Barra, the chief executive of General Motors. His allies, many of them seeking his approval, have mimicked his behavior.
In the case of Ms. Hutchinson, a person close to her said, stories have been shopped to Trump-friendly media outlets smearing her personally.
Garrett Ziegler, a junior aide in Mr. Trump’s White House, went on a misogynistic rant during a livestream this past week after sitting for an interview with the Jan. 6 committee in which he repeatedly refused to answer questions. In the rant, he used sexist slurs against his former female colleagues who have cooperated with the inquiry.
“Pat Cipollone, Bill Barr, Marc Short, they’re saying the same thing, yet you attack the young women,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia, a Republican whom Mr. Trump in the past branded as a “RINO loser,” for Republican in name only.
Ms. Comstock was referring to the former White House counsel, the former attorney general and the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence — all of whom gave closed-door testimony to the committee that painted Mr. Trump in an unflattering light.
“This is a pattern,” said Ms. Comstock, who is close to Ms. Cheney. “The president does this, and this is intentional.”
Some of the male witnesses have also suffered professional consequences and public rebukes for their candor. Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker and a Republican, was censured by his state’s Republican Party after his emotional testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. Mr. Bowers, who is running for re-election, told NBC News that it would take “a miracle” for him to survive politically.
And Mr. Barr, who directly told Mr. Trump while he was attorney general that the president’s claims of election fraud had no merit, echoed the sentiment about the realities of cooperation.
“I get a lot of vitriol from the right,” Mr. Barr said in a brief interview.
Yet while male witnesses have received some criticism from the right — in Mr. Cipollone’s case, Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted that he should “grow a spine & go on record” — the attacks have not been at the same volume or intensity, or of the same degree of personal nastiness, as those against Ms. Hutchinson in particular.
ImageMs. Hutchinson has emerged as a key witness for the Jan. 6 committee. Ms. Cheney has praised her for testifying publicly, while Mr. Trump has attacked her.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Trump’s allies insist they have substantive concerns about what Ms. Hutchinson has told the committee. They have raised specific challenges on matters of fact in her testimony, homing in on a discrepancy between her account and that of Eric Herschmann, a former White House lawyer. Both have told the panel that they were the author of a handwritten note displayed at one of the hearings that provided instructions for what the president should tell the rioters on Jan. 6.
There has also been an effort to undermine the veracity of some of the most explosive parts of Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony. Secret Service officials, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, disputed a scene that Ms. Hutchinson said she had been told about in which Mr. Trump was said to have grabbed a Secret Service agent and lunged for the steering wheel of the S.U.V. he was riding in as he demanded to be driven to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
But the swiftness of the Twitter attack on Ms. Matthews was notable given that it came from her own colleagues. The Twitter account for the House Republican Conference that singled her out is run by two former Trump campaign aides.
Under the stewardship of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who replaced Ms. Cheney as the No. 3 House Republican, the Twitter account has taken on an aggressive tone throughout the hearings — intended to please the proverbial “audience of one.”
Source: nytimes.com
