Benjamin Wittes: “It is rare for a government body to show its work to the extent that the committee has. Normally, footnotes in an investigative report point to interviews readers can’t access. They refer to grand jury transcripts, internal memorandums of interviews and other materials the reader cannot simply click on and search. The Jan. 6 report’s 4,286 endnotes, small print that people so often skip, by contrast, offer a guide to this vast and vital public record.”
“For nearly a month, I have studied the footnotes and the document they support. Legal scholars, historians and others will analyze this material for years to come, but already some takeaways are clear. Notably, the committee shared not just its interpretation of events and the raw material from which it drew but also used the notes to make thousands of connections between the two. It’s a powerful model for future investigative bodies, one that allows anyone to check the committee’s interpretation of its evidence. It also offers pointers to journalists as to where to find the good stuff in the pile of material just dropped in their laps.”
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