The first hearing in the House of Representatives on the events surrounding the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a compact and controlled two-hour, conceived review of what was described as a methodological conspiracy, led and coordinated by President Donald J. Trump, to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and democracy itself.
It was also a lure for the American people to watch the next five scheduled hearings.
Here are some excerpts:
Trump was at the center of the conspiracy.
The chairman of the committee, Benny Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and the vice president, Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, began to set out what they described as Mr Trump’s complex, deliberate scheme to stay in power, unprecedented in American history and with dangerous consequences for democracy.
“Jan. “6 was the culmination of a coup attempt,” Mr Thompson said.
Both leaders spoke harshly about Mr. Trump and the threat he posed to American democracy. They made it clear that despite his continuing fuss about stolen elections, Mr Trump deliberately spread allegations of election fraud that people close to him knew to be fake, trying to use government apparatus and the courts to seize power, and then, when all else failed, he sat approvingly in the White House while a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol, threatening to hang his vice president.
Key figures around Trump have never believed his lie about stolen elections.
The hearing used video footage of testimonies from some of Mr Trump’s closest aides and allies to show that the Trump campaign and his White House – and perhaps the president himself – were well aware that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 election. He showed how Mr Trump and his loyalists used the calculated campaign of lies to bind their followers and build support for his attempt to stay in power through illegal means and violence.
The commission released excerpts from videotaped interviews with former Attorney General William P. Barr, who said he had told Mr Trump that talking about widespread fraud in the 2020 election was “nonsense.” There was a video of his daughter, Ivanka Trump, saying he accepted Mr Barr’s conclusions, and campaign lawyer Alex Cannon, who told Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff, that Trump’s allies had found no election problems. that could turn results into key states. “So he’s not there?” According to Mr Cannon’s account, Mr Meadows replied.
At one point, in one of the most potentially damaging moments of the recorded interviews, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was shown dismissing threats against Pat A. Chipolon, then a White House adviser, to resign in the face of Mr. Mr. Trump as “whining.”
A Capitol police officer fighting the rebels humanized the drama.
Caroline Edwards, a Capitol police officer believed to have been the first to be injured during the riot, testified in appalling detail about the first police line violation, in which she was crushed under bicycle racks that were pushed over her and a handful of other officers who had no chance of holding back the crowd.
“The back of my head locked the concrete stairs behind me,” she testified, recounting the moment before she lost consciousness. Her testimony that she continues to fight the rebels in her efforts to defend the Capitol contrasts strikingly with the commission’s account that Mr Trump was sitting in the White House watching with visible sympathy as the mob searched the building, shouting at his assistants. they begged you to stop the violence and say at one point, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.”
When she came and saw the scene behind the police lines, Officer Edwards said, her breath caught. She slipped in blood, saw fellow officers writhing in pain and suffering from bear spray and tear gas, and stared at what she described as a military scene unfolding in front of the Capitol.
“It was a massacre,” she said. “It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw. “
The Proud Boys made an organized effort.
One witness, British documentary filmmaker Nick Custed, who was linked to extremist Proud Boys, testified that the group’s leadership was in conspiracy with another extremist organization, Oath Keepers, long before the riot to plan. an attack to disrupt the Capitol.
Mr Questid showed footage of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tario secretly meeting with Stuart Rhodes of The Oath Keepers on January 5, and he spoke about the group that broke away from a morning rally behind the White House. on January. 6 for police intelligence around the Capitol.
“I am not allowed to say what will happen today, because everyone will just have to watch,” a woman said in a video on the morning of January 6, when there was no obvious hint of an attack.
Something more remains to be done about the role of Trump and Republicans
The hearing ended with a hint of what was to follow at the next hearings, which committee members hope will show how Mr Trump is personally responsible for the Capitol’s worst attack since the British search of him in 1814 and that he remains a threat to the American democratic experiment.
The committee concluded with videos of the rebels themselves, who say they believe they were invited to Washington that day by their president, who asked them to fight for him.
“He set fire to the fuse that eventually led to the violence on January 6,” Mr Thompson, chairman of the commission, told Mr Trump.
Ms Cheney, whose insistence on condemning Mr Trump and participating in the investigation has turned her into a pariah in her own party, said the case the commission would do would tarnish Republicans indelibly.
“Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the defenseless,” she said. “The day will come when Donald Trump will leave, but your dishonor will remain.
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