Two eyewitnesses to the Jan. 6 bombing gave detailed testimony about what they saw and experienced during the commotion at Thursday’s committee hearing.
Leading the news: “It was slipping into people’s blood,” said U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who is believed to have been the first officer injured on Jan. 6.
- “It was a carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw.”
- The Jan. 6 committee also played a video showing Edwards being pushed to the ground by the rioters, hitting him on the head against the steps of the Capitol where he was knocked unconscious.
- Edwards suffered a concussion from the attack and fainted for months after the uprising, the New York Times reports.
British documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who followed the far-right group Proud Boys, also described what he saw on January 6, saying the crowd had gone “from protesters to rioters to insurgents”.
- “I was amazed at the size of the group, the anger and the blasphemy,” he stated.
- Quested also described being “confused” because “a couple of hundred proud boys were marching to the Capitol” before Trump’s speech.
- “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.
The big picture: the testimony of two eyewitnesses served as a backdrop for the committee’s argument that the insurrection “was the result of a coordinated and multi-step effort to overturn the election results of the 2020 and stop the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe “. Biden, ”reports Alayna Treene of Axios.
- January 6 committee chairmen President Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) And Vice President Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) Linked Trump to the events of that violent day.
- “President Trump summoned the mob, rallied the mob, and ignited the flames of this attack,” Cheney said.
- “January 6 was the culmination of a coup attempt,” Thompson said.
What’s next: The Watergate-style hearing on Thursday at prime time was the first in a series of public hearings that are scheduled for the rest of the month.
- The commission is scheduled to hold a further hearing on June 13 at 10 a.m.
Go deeper … The January 6 committee broadcasts a closed-door video of Bill Barr’s statement