The select committee of the House investigating the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol revealed a new vision of what happened that day during its high-hour hearing Thursday night. It was the first in a series of scheduled public hearings.
Many of the revelations on Thursday night came from witnesses recorded on the camera of witnesses, including the daughter of former President Trump, who have appeared before the committee in recent months. The hearing also featured new eyewitnesses who were at the Capitol that day. Although some elements of these issues may have appeared in the news, the hearing on Thursday night left a record of the details.
Here are six things the audience first publicly confirmed Thursday night:
1. Trump never asked any law enforcement to protect the Capitol. Instead, Pence did, says Cheney.
According to Vice President Liz Cheney, Trump, who was president at the time of the riots, did not make a single call to a federal agency to run law enforcement agencies to protect the Capitol. Instead, then-Vice President Mike Pence did so, effectively assuming the role of president.
“President Trump not only refused to tell the crowd to leave the Capitol, but did not call on any element of the United States government to instruct that the Capitol be defended,” Cheney said. “He didn’t call his secretary of defense on January 6. He didn’t talk to his attorney general. He didn’t talk to the Department of Homeland Security. President Trump did not give any orders to deploy the National Guard that day. “He made every effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets. Vice President Pence did each of these things.”
In the committee’s audio, Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, urged him to establish a “narrative” that Trump, not Pence, had the control and ordered the shots. Milley said he considered the request “political, political, political.”
The committee is likely to delve deeper into this point in future hearings, as it is unclear what Trump was doing in those critical hours of January 6th.
2. Ivanka Trump said she accepted Barr’s assessment of the election
Then-Attorney General William Barr testified that he told Trump he did not agree with his belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
“I made it clear that I didn’t agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and posting this stuff, that I told the president it was nonsense **,” Barr said in a recorded testimony. “And I didn’t want to be a part of it.”
When Barr determined that President Biden had won the election, Ivanka Trump, Trump’s daughter and adviser, told the committee that she believed him.
“I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying,” he said.
The president’s daughter was the first member of the former first family whose testimony was given during the hearings.
3. Several Republican lawmakers apologized to the White House after Jan. 6
Cheney also claimed that several Republican members of Congress called for presidential pardons in the days following the Capitol riots, including Rep. Scott Perry. Perry has refused to comply with the committee’s summons.
“Many other Republican congressmen have also called for presidential pardons for their role in trying to revoke the 2020 election,” Cheney said.
He did not name the other Republicans.
4. Jared Kushner accepted White House lawyer’s threats to resign as “plonicis”
President’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was asked by Cheney during his recorded statement about “multiple threats” made by White House attorney Pat Cipollone and his team to resign amid what Cheney called the “lawless activity” that surrounded it. Trump’s efforts to hold the presidency.
“Do you know of any cases in which Pat Cipollone threatened to resign?” Cheney asked Kushner in a clip played during Thursday’s public hearing.
“Like I said, my interest at the time was to try to get as many pardons as possible,” Kushner said. “And I know he and the team always said, ‘We’re going to resign, we won’t be there if this happens, if this happens. So I took it as a cry, to be honest with you.’
5. The proud boys began marching toward the Capitol before Trump’s speech began
The Proud Boys began marching on the Capitol even before Trump’s speech began gathering supporters, according to documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who was in the middle of filming a documentary about the Proud Boys on January 6th.
“I was confused to some extent as to why we were moving away from the president’s speech because that’s what I felt we were there to cover,” Quested said.
6. Trump cabinet members discussed the 25th Amendment, says Cheney
Cheney said members of Trump’s cabinet discussed the “possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment,” adding that the U.S. public will hear more information at upcoming public hearings. The 25th Amendment offers the Council of Ministers a way to replace the President. It was never invoked on January 6 or the following days.
Assault on the United States Capitol
More More Kathryn Watson
Kathryn Watson is a political journalist for CBS News Digital based in Washington, DC