The Jan. 6 committee has a plan to avoid Mueller’s mistakes and bring Trump’s crimes to light

The House select committee hopes to avoid mistakes made by special counsel Robert Mueller that allowed Donald Trump to avoid charges for obstruction of justice, and congressional investigators have a plan to bring the former president's crimes to light.

Mueller's team issued a heavily redacted 400-page report that lacked an explicit recommendation for criminal charges, and its dense, lawyerly tone lacked punch, but select committee members have tried to recruit high-profile journalists to build a narrative thriller about Trump's actions leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, reported the Washington Post.

“We do not want a bureaucrat to write this report but rather a historian or a journalist — or someone who writes and can tell a story in a compelling way so that people can actually understand what happened,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), who sits on the committee.

Lawmakers have met with investigators who served on the 9/11 commission for advice on building a coherent and compelling case from a vast trove of evidence, and they intend to hold Watergate-style televised hearings starting in May that could provide dramatic, viral moments.

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“Investigators need a certain sense of showmanship — they really need to demonstrate and dramatize what’s happening because the public is distracted,” said Don Ritchie, historian emeritus of the Senate. “After getting the publicity, then it’s figuring out what you’re actually going to do about the problem.”

Polls show a majority of Americans view the insurrectionists as "mostly violent," although only about a third of Republicans agree, and other surveys show that voters believe the event was significant and that efforts should be made to ensure nothing similar happens again.

“This is a story that fundamentally the American people don’t understand and it’s one where there are a lot of players,” said Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian who has written books on both Sept. 11 and Watergate. “So I think that one of the things that the committee should be trying to think through is not just going for the splashiest headline that they can but instead trying to tell a coherent story.”