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Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast is Friday, December 23, 2022.

This is the last podcast before the final night of Hanukkah and the last and the not the last the only day of Christmas and and so let me ask you once again to put commentary on your list.

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So please go to www.commentary.org slash donate to give and give generously with me as always executive editor a greenwald hi a hi John media commentary columnist and American enterprise Institute fellow Christine Rosen high Christine.

And associate editor and author of the rise of the new puritans Noah Rothman high Noah hi John.

The January 6 committee has issued its I guess 800 page report it came out last night none of us has has read it we read news stories about it.

So we are therefore going to do what all good and proper pundits do and talk about it with authority even though we have no idea what's in it.

So who wants.

I'll start I'll start with absolute rank punditry.

I thought it was there are signals there in the report and and obviously that occurred as well during the hearings that about overreach and I think Noah is laid out Noah laid out the other day really well how some of the charges they'd like to see brought are that they recommended to the department just as are also overreach.

I was struck by the recommendation that Congress do something to prevent Donald Trump from ever running for any public office again so.

But it's that would require impeachment you can't just target a single American citizen and say this person can never run for office again that's not how our law works.

It just struck me that there's a lot in this report as we read it will probably find out more but from what we've seen so far and heard about so far that is a implicit criticism of Congress not doing its job before in terms of impeachment right that delays the unwillingness to act quickly right after January 6 some of the stuff that we were all.

And I think that being being pundits about but I think has proven to have been correct namely that that they should have moved quickly they should have brought the charges right away they should have had a speedy trial.

And I think there would have been a shift in public opinion if even a tiny bit of this was revealed at the time during a trial so there was a real missed opportunity to usher Donald Trump and his big lie off the public stage early and now we're going to be having will be pulling at these threads for a long time is my prediction.

And I think that's something that I think that's going to happen with the charges because I haven't read the report is 850 pages it's a book it's an eight chapter book and you know that's holiday reading enjoy but I did read most of the 150 page executive summary of this 850 page report so I have at least some apprehension of what they're going for and the charges that they're going that they're asking for I don't think all of them are overreach.

And I think that's really you can make a pretty plain case for some of the first two charges at least the first two charges that they were looking for which were conspiracy to defraud the government and and obstruction of Congress and obstruction of Congress is both the committee's process and the certification of the votes on January 6.

I think that's not a difficult case to make and also the president the people around him wrote down fall statements provided them to officials.

It's pretty open and shut what's overreaches trying to prosecute him on incitement incitement to violence incitement or giving aid and comfort to insurrection.

So I was researching a lot of that so there was a fair amount of legal I won't call it scholarship in my it might verge on scholarship but it's mostly commentary but from attorneys who think that this is a prosecutable charge that it meets the standards in Brandenburg and indeed the committee says it meets the standards in Brandenburg 1969 Supreme Court case brand Brandenburg V Ohio that establishes basically the threshold at which point you can prosecute somebody for speech and they cite a civil judge of the

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