Inside the New Yorker film humanizing the Jan. 6 defendants

Filmmaker Andrea Kalin set out to repair the nation after the Capitol attack. I had doubts.

(Illustration of lawyer Heather Shaner by Kristian Hammerstad)

Months after the Jan. 6 insurrection, filmmaker Andrea Kalin got in touch to say she was making a documentary about a progressive Washington, DC lawyer representing men and women who'd attacked the U.S. Capitol. She wanted to humanize the political divide and wondered if I'd help. As a journalist, I was in the middle of the violent mob that destabilized democracy and traumatized the nation. I was curious but concerned. I joined the project, “Public Defender,” as a producer with a warning: Don’t go too easy on the mob.

Kalin doesn’t look through rose-colored glasses, but she does use a multi-dimensional lens. Plenty of stories have been told about the extremist, racist, misogynist, right-wing White supremacists bent on tearing up the Constitution and remaking America into a Christian fundamentalist state. Fewer have been told about the vulnerable people manipulated by a dishonest president who exploited fear and pain to try …