(CNN)In just over 30 hours, the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol will officially unveil its first findings in a primetime hearing that is expected to be carried live on all broadcast and cable news channels, save Fox News.

       And House Republican leaders have no idea -- or, at least, a decidedly incomplete view -- exactly what the committee will be presenting, flying blind into what could be one of the turning points in the 2022 midterm elections.

       How House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his fellow Republican leaders got to this point is worth revisiting, as it looks like a clear miscalculation on their part.

       Start here: Legislation to form an independent commission -- modeled on the 9/11 commission -- designed to understand how the January 6 insurrection happened (and how to keep it from happening again) passed the House with 35 Republican votes in May 2021.

       That bill went to the upper chamber, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled his opposition to it -- effectively killing it.

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       That move put things back in the House's hands. In late June 2021, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she was forming a select House committee aimed at studying January 6.

       "It is imperative that we establish the truth of that day and ensure that an attack of that kind cannot happen and that we root out the causes of it all," she said of the necessity of the committee.

       On July 1, she named eight members of the committee: seven Democrats and Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who had voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump over his role on January 6.

       Later that month, McCarthy announced his five selections for the committee -- including firebrand Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee.

       Pelosi quickly rejected the Jordan and Banks picks. "With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee," said Pelosi by way of explanation. (Both Jordan and Banks voted to object to the 2020 Electoral College count.)

       At which point, McCarthy pulled all five GOP nominees. "Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts," said McCarthy.

       (Sidebar: Republicans have not pursued their "own investigation of the facts.")

       At the time, Republicans saw the moves from Pelosi and McCarthy were seen as a positive political development.

       As CNN wrote at the time:

       "One senior GOP source argued that Pelosi's move was a 'gift' to Republicans because they never wanted to take part and, if they were on the committee, would be forced to confront complicated questions over Trump's role in January 6."

       Less than a week after McCarthy pulled his nominees, Pelosi announced that she was appointing another Republican -- Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger -- to the panel. Kinzinger, like Cheney, had voted for Trump's impeachment in 2021 and had emerged as a vocal critic of the former President.

       And not surprisingly, neither Cheney, who was removed from Hpuse Republican leadership in May due to her criticisms of Trump, nor Kinzinger, who announced later in the year he would not seek reelection, were interested in being conduits for McCarthy on the committee.

       Then the committee began its work. And it began to succeed at getting people -- including many of those close to Trump on January 6 -- to talk. To date, the committee has conducted roughly 1,000 interviews. It has gained access to a trove of emails connected to that day and more than 2,000 texts to and from then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

       "We are going to have hearings that I believe will be compared to the Watergate hearings because they are going to blow the roof off the house in terms of explaining to America what actually happened in the attack on our democracy," predicted Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the January 6 committee, earlier this year.

       Whether or not this first hearing -- or the committee's findings more broadly -- live up to that prediction by Raskin remains to be seen. But what's crystal clear is that McCarthy's decision not to put any of his allies on the committee amounted to cutting off his nose to spite his face. Rather than gaining a window into what the committee knows, McCarthy is totally shut out. Which is a politically perilous place to be.