Tonight, the House Select Committee Investigation of the January 6th Capitol Riot held its first of six, planned, televised hearings. It began at 8:00 PM EST and adjourned at 9:54 PM, thus lasting almost two hours with a ten-minute break.
Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is the committee chair and Liz Cheney (R-WY), the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is the vice chair. The committee consists of seven Democrats and two Republicans, with the latter being fierce critics of former President Donald Trump. The other committee members are Republican Adam Kinzinger and Democrats Adam Schiff, Zoe Lofgren, Pete Aguilar, Elaine Luria, Stephanie Murphy, and Jamie Raskin. Cheney and Kinzinger voted to impeach Trump the second time.
This investigation has been the biggest ever undertaken by the U.S. Congress in our nation’s history. It concerns the formal certification by Congress, in accord with the Constitution, of the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election, and events leading up to it. All 535 members of Congress were present for that historic meeting in the Capitol. The committee has now interviewed over a thousand people and viewed about 140,000 documents relating to that day’s breach of governing power. This first hearing consisted mostly of two interviews and much video of events that took place mostly on January 6th at the Capitol.
At 8:00 PM EST, Chairman Bennie Thompson, who is Black, opened the proceeding with a seven-minute introduction. It consisted of the following: (1) his background of being a from the formerly slave state of Mississippi, (2) the Civil War, (3) the importance of defending our constitutional form of democracy, and (4) how it was threatened by former President Donald Trump falsely alleging a fraudulent election in 2020 and therefore trying to systematically overturn that result, in which he lost to Joe Biden, and that those efforts culminated with Trump inciting his political supporters to riot at our nation’s Capitol for the purpose of stopping the presidential transition of power.
Thompson showed a video clip in which Trump’s selected Attorney General William Barr turning against him after the election, telling him “in no uncertain terms” that there had been no fraud in the election that, if corrected, would have produced a “different result,” meaning that Trump would have won. Barr therefore resigned in late December. Thompson summarized his own remarks by alleging that the Capitol riot was an “attempt to thwart the will of the people” and that it “put two and half centuries of democracy at risk.”
At 8:15 PM, Chairman Thompson introduced Vice Chair Liz Cheney. For the next 35 minutes, she laid out the plan for the hearings. Many of Cheney’s Republican colleagues in Congress had been downplaying the Capitol riot and thus denigrating the necessity of this investigative committee. So, she said the committee would show that “the attack on our Capitol was not a spontaneous event” as some of her Republican colleagues have alleged. Rather, she claimed the hearings will show that the attack was planned by many. She asserted, “Trump planned and oversaw” an effort to overthrow the election results.
A brief video clip of Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanca, was then shown. An interviewer asked her if she believed the election was fraudulent and that her father had won. She said that ever since Attorney General William Barr had declared that it was a fair election, so that Joe Biden had indeed won, she believed him. For me, that was a highlight of this hearing. It has been reported increasingly of late that Ivanca and her husband Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, both of whom were advisors to the president, had early on disassociated themselves from efforts to overturn the election.
Another brief video clip was shown, which the public had already seen, in which Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence stated emphatically for the first time, and only a few months ago, “President Trump was wrong” about a fraudulent election.
Next were comments by Federal Judge David Carter had written in a 44-page ruling, “it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.” Carter called it a “coup in search of a legal theory.” He further wrote, “If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution.”
Vice Chair Cheney then declared, “The peaceful transfer of power has been defended by every American president but one–Donald Trump.”
Cheney finished and Thompson then showed videos of the Capitol riot. I thought their visibility was of high quality and the sound was quite good, better than what we had been used to on TV. We could hear the boisterous and raucous crowds gathered illegally inside the Capitol constantly chanting loudly, “Where’s Mike Pence?” and later, “Hang Mike Pence.” We then heard President Trump, reportedly watching this proceeding on television in the Oval Office, saying, “Maybe our supporters had the right idea. Pence deserves it.” He meant Pence deserved a death by hanging.
Mr. Thompson then temporarily adjourned the hearing at 6:01 for a ten-minute break.
Chairman Thompson reconvened the hearing by swearing in two witnesses who would take up most of this second half of the hearing. They were Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and documentary film maker Nick Quested. Ms. Edwards is 31 years old, pretty, and articulate.
Thompson first interviewed Edwards. She spoke of the verbal abuse she endured from Capitol rioters and defended her true patriotism to our country. The rioters knocked her unconscious and she has suffered brain damage from it. She later returned to duty, “slipping is peoples’ blood.” She called it “a war scene.”
Thompson then had Quested speak. From about two weeks before January 6th, 2021, to the riot that day, he spent his time following leaders of the two alt-right, violent groups named Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. President Trump had first tweeted on December 19th, 2020, that he would hold a political rally on January 6th near the nation’s Capitol, and he was calling all of his political supporters to attend it, saying “it will be wild.” Proud Boys and Oath Keepers therefore were planning and organizing to riot at the Capitol that day, on Jan. 6th. As it turned out, they actually marched on the Capitol starting at about an hour or more before Trump began delivering his 80-minute speech at noon that day at the Ellipse park, about one mile from the Capitol. So, they didn’t even attend Trump’s speech, carrying their agenda to get violent at the Capitol well before Trump told his supporters at the Ellipse to march on the Capitol.
Cheney then began questioning Edwards at 9:31 PM. He said Proud Boys were wearing military clothing and bullet-proof vests.
At 9:46 PM Thompson interviewed Edwards. She always answered spontaneously, and her testimony was riveting and heartfelt. Thompson soon showed more video of the Capitol riot, with interviews of several of those rioters saying they were there because President Trump had so directed them.
At some point in the hearing there was testimony about the Trump administration having been warned by security personnel and others days in advance of the Capitol riot, especially the day before, that there was a strong possibility of violence. And the media has been reporting recently that Vice President Mike Pence’s chief-of-staff Marc Short warned on January 5th that Trump aides could try to physically prevent Mike Pence from doing his job, a mere formality of tradition, of certifying the election results at the Capitol.
Thompson adjourned the hearing at 9:54, so that it lasted almost two hours counting the ten-minute break.
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