Thursday’s hearing was the first in a series this month that will highlight the findings of the panel’s investigation, which included interviews with more than 1,000 people about how Trump and his team tried to overturn the results of the 2020 elections on multiple fronts.
Although CNN and other media outlets have reported many details, the committee’s hearings will try to tell the story of January 6 to the American people.
The committee reproduced a compilation of some of the most disturbing images of the January 6 attack.
They included unreleased material, including bird’s eye view of security cameras showing the huge pro-Trump crowd as it began swarming the Capitol grounds.
The footage also showed how the crowd picked up their signals directly from Trump, with a mutineer reading a Trump tweet on a megaphone for the other mutineers to hear. In this tweet, Trump criticized Pence for announcing that he would not annul the results of the 2020 election while chairing the joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
After that moment, the assembly of the committee showed a now famous clip of Trump supporters chanting: “Hang Mike Pence.”
They then showed a photograph of a makeshift bow and gallows that the mutineers raised near the Capitol, as well as a haunting clip of other mutineers shouting “Nancy! Nancy!” as they gathered in the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, looking for her.
These clips immediately recalled the horrors of January 6, which can easily be lost amid partisan disputes over the committee and its investigation. But under that investigation, there was a violent and deadly attack, which injured more than 140 police officers and resulted in several deaths. Visceral footage served as a terrifying reminder of a dark day in U.S. history.
Trump didn’t want the riot to stop
The committee revealed the testimony of Trump White House officials who said the former president did not want the attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop, he angrily resisted his own advisers urging him to call off the mutineers and thought their own vice president “deserved” to be hanged. .
It also offers a new window into Trump’s behavior during the riots, which the committee has repeatedly suggested would be a key part of his public hearings.
Vice President Liz Cheney described the testimony of a witness who said Trump knew the chants in “Hang Mike Pence” and seemed to approve of them.
Aware of the chants of the mutineers to “hang Mike Pence,” the president responded with this sentiment: [quote] “Maybe our fans have the right idea.” Mike Pence [quote] “He deserves it,” he said.
Cheney has previously described Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6 during those 187 minutes as a “duty breach.”
Proud Boys and Oath Keepers take center stage
The committee introduced to the American public two of the most militant far-right groups in the country, present on January 6: The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
These groups were at the forefront of the riot. They were among the first to rape the building and are accused of planning violence. Documenter Nick Quested, who testified Thursday, said he was with the Proud Boys when they met at the Capitol before Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, proving that they were not interested in the demonstration and were looking at the Capitol.
Thompson and Cheney tried to link Trump directly to these extremists, including their comment during a September 2020 debate that the Proud Boys should “retreat and stay out.” They showed new testimony from Proud Boys leaders about how they saw it as a call to arms.
Federal prosecutors in the Justice Department have charged 17 members of these groups with seditious conspiracy, an extremely serious complaint that the committee highlighted on Thursday.
The exciting testimony of the Capitol police officer
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards was the first witness to testify, becoming the face of law enforcement violence that day.
The committee said Edwards was the first officer injured by the rioters. He described his pride in his work to “protect the symbol of U.S. democracy” and the public scrutiny he suffered after falling unconscious and suffering a traumatic brain injury during the attack.
“I was called a lot on January 6, 2021 and the following days,” Edwards said. “They called me Nancy Pelosi’s dog, they called me incompetent, a hero and a bad guy. They called me a traitor to my country, my home, and my constitution. Actually, I wasn’t one of those things.”
“I was an American face to face with other Americans, wondering how many, many, many times we had come this far. They had called me names before, but my patriotism had never been questioned. or my duty, “Edwards added.
Edwards was called “the proud granddaughter” of a Navy veteran who fought in the Korean War.
“I’m my grandfather’s granddaughter, proud to wear a uniform and serve my country,” Edwards said. “They dared to question my honor. They dared to question my loyalty. And they dared to question my duty. I am a proud American and I will gladly sacrifice it to make sure that America which advocated my grandfather be here for many years to come “.
Trump’s team and family turn against him
The committee’s first hearing was reinforced with unreleased video clips showing members of the White House and the Trump campaign, as well as his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, talking about how they didn’t believe Trump. claims the election was stolen.
Former Attorney General William Barr said Trump’s allegations of election fraud were “shit.”
Ivanka Trump said she respected Barr and “accepted what he said” about the election.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the campaign data person told Trump in “quite forceful terms that he was going to lose.”
And the committee cited the testimony of Trump campaign attorney Alex Cannon, who testified that he told Meadows in “mid-to-late November” that the campaign had come out empty trying to find widespread fraud in key states that Trump lost. Cannon said Meadows responded to his assessment by saying, “So it’s not there.”
Staff fled the office of GOP High Representative McCarthy, but GOP returned to Trump
One of the new videos the committee presented showed employees of the office of Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy running frantically after rioters stormed the Capitol.
The clip was notable for McCarthy’s January 6 role and his opposition to the January 6 committee he has shown since.
On January 6, McCarthy had a heated phone call with Trump as the riots continued. The Jan. 6 committee has summoned McCarthy to ask for information about the call. And in the days immediately following the uprising, McCarthy said Trump was “responsible” for the attack.
But shortly after Jan. 6, McCarthy approached Trump. He has opposed the creation of a commission to investigate the January 6 attack and has repeatedly criticized the committee throughout its investigation.
Thursday’s hearing showed how the committee – and Cheney, who was ousted last year from his Republican leadership position by McCarthy – focused on the Republican leader.
In his opening statement, Cheney said Capitol leaders “begged for help from the president,” including McCarthy. He said McCarthy was “scared” and called several members of the Trump family after failing to persuade Trump himself.
Pence asked for help, not Trump
The committee also showed a new video of its interview with Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, saying that Pence was the one who ordered the National Guard troops to respond to the violence on January 6, but that the White House told him to say it was Trump.
“Vice President Pence: There were two or three calls with Vice President Pence. He was very excited and issued very explicit, very direct and unambiguous orders. There was no doubt,” Milley says in the video.
“He was very lively, very direct, very firm with Secretary Miller. ‘Army down here, lower your guard here. Suppress this situation, and so on,'” he added in reference to Pence.
Milley also described his interactions with Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that day, marking a stark contrast between those conversations with Pence.
“He said we have to kill the story that the vice president is making all the decisions. We have to establish the story, you know, that the president is still in charge and that things are stable or stable, or words in that “, Milley says in the video, referring to what Meadows told her.
“I immediately interpreted this as politics, politics, politics. Red flag for me, personally. No action. But I remember it clearly,” he added.
This story is being broken and will be updated.