WASHINGTON (AP) — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has laid the blame firmly on Donald Trump, saying the assault was not spontaneous but an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and startling testimony from Trump’s most inner circle, the 1/6 committee provided gripping detail Thursday night in contending that Trump’s repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory led to the attack and imperiled American democracy
“Democracy remains in danger,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the panel, during the hearing, timed for prime time to reach as many Americans as possible.
“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” Thompson said. “The violence was no accident.”
The hearings may not change Americans’ views on the Capitol attack, but the panel’s investigation is intended to stand as its public record. Before this fall’s midterm elections, and with Trump considering another White House run, the committee’s final report aims to account for the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814, and to ensure such an attack never happens again.
Testimony on Thursday showed how Trump desperately clung to his own false claims of election fraud, beckoning supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress would certify the results, despite those around him insisting Biden had won the election.
In a previously unseen video clip, the panel played a remark from former Attorney General Bill Barr, who testified that he told Trump the claims of a rigged election were “bull——.”
In another clip, the former president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified to the committee that she respected Barr’s view that there was no election fraud. “I accepted what he said.”
Others showed leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys preparing to storm the Capitol to stand up for Trump. One rioter after another told the committee they came to the Capitol because Trump asked them to.
“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s vice chair who took the lead for much of the hearing. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we’re in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”
There was a gasp in the hearing room when Cheney read an account that said when Trump was told the Capitol mob was chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged for refusing to block the election results. Trump responded that maybe they were right, that he “deserves it.”
At another point it was disclosed that Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a leader of efforts to object to the election results, had sought a pardon from Trump, which would protect him from prosecution.
When asked about the White House lawyers threatening to resign over what was happening in the administration, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner scoffed they were “whining.”
Police officers who had fought off the mob consoled one another as they sat in the committee room reliving the violence they faced on Jan. 6. Officer Harry Dunn teared up as bodycam footage showed rioters bludgeoning his colleagues with flagpoles and baseball bats.
In wrenching testimony U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards told the panel that she slipped in other people’s blood as rioters pushed past her into the Capitol. She suffered brain injuries in the melee.
“It was carnage. It was chaos,” she said.
The riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of pro-Trump rioters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the Capitol. At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.
Biden, in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas, said many viewers were “going to be seeing for the first time a lot of the detail that occurred.”
Trump, unapologetic, dismissed the investigation anew — and even declared on social media that Jan. 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.”
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: “All. Old. News.”
Emotions are still raw at the Capitol, and security was tight. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.
Against this backdrop, the committee was speaking to a divided America. Most TV networks carried the hearing live, but Fox News Channel did not.
The committee chairman, civil rights leader Thompson, opened the hearing with the sweep of American history. saying he heard in those denying the stark reality of Jan. 6 his own experience growing up in a time and place “where people justified the action of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching.”
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, outlined what the committee has learned about the events leading up to that brisk January day when Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency.
Among those testifying was documentary maker Nick Quested, who filmed the Proud Boys storming the Capitol — along with a pivotal meeting between the group’s then-chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, the night before in nearby parking garage. Quested said the Proud Boys later went to get tacos.
Court documents show that members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were discussing as early as November a need to fight to keep Trump in office. Leaders both groups and some members have since been indicted on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.
In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.
The panel faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the Jan. 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.
Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ushered the creation of the 1/6 panel through Congress and rejected Republican-appointed lawmakers who had voted on Jan. 6 against certifying the election results, eventually naming seven Democrats and two Republicans.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has been caught up in the probe and has defied the committee’s subpoena for an interview, called the panel a “scam.”
In the audience were several lawmakers who were trapped together in the House gallery during the attack.
“We want to remind people, we were there, we saw what happened,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn. ”We know how close we came to the first non-peaceful transition of power in this country.”
The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 people for the violence that day, the biggest dragnet in its history.
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.
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For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.
Takeaways: Jan. 6 panel says Trump led ‘brazen’ conspiracy
WASHINGTON (AP) — House investigators are making the case to the American public in a prime-time hearing that the violent insurrection by President Donald Trump’s supporters should not be forgotten.
While the basics of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol are well known, the committee is trying to tell the story of how it happened, and how to prevent it from ever happening again, for history. The made-for-TV hearings — including video of police officers being brutally beaten and right-wing extremists leading the crowds into the Capitol — come as some have tried to downplay the violence.
“We can’t sweep what happened under the rug,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the panel, as he opened the first in the series of hearings Thursday evening. “The American people deserve answers.”
Takeaways from the Jan. 6 committee’s first hearing:
LAYING IT ALL ON TRUMP
Thompson laid out the committee’s initial findings that Trump led a “sprawling, multi-step conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election.” The panel’s vice chairwoman, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, called it a “sophisticated seven-part plan.”
The committee plans to look at how Trump pushed his false claims of widespread fraud and how it it eventually prompted the violence at the Capitol. They argue that his lies prompted far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to jump into action.
“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt,” Thompson said.
The committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews with people connected to the siege and collected more than 140,000 documents. They will use that evidence over the course of the hearings this month to show how the attack was coordinated by some of the rioters in the violent mob that broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory — and how Trump’s efforts started it all.
“The attack on our Capitol was not a spontaneous riot,” Cheney said.
TRUMP’S INNER CIRCLE SPEAKS
The hearing featured never-before-seen video testimony from Trump’s family and close aides, many of whom were interviewed by the committee remotely.
The panel started the hearing by showing its video interview with former Attorney General Bill Barr, who told Trump at the time that his fraud claims had no merit. Barr, who said publicly at the time that the Justice Department had not found fraud, told the committee members that he had told Trump it was all “bull——.”
The panel also showed video testimony from Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who spoke to the committee in April. Ivanka Trump told the panel that Barr’s declaration “affected my perspective.”
“I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he said,” she told the committee.
Another Trump adviser, Jason Miller, told the panel that campaign advisors had told the president in “clear terms” that he had lost the election.
‘THIS ISN’T EASY TO WATCH’
The committee showed new, graphic video from the insurrection, moving through a timeline of the violence. It started with rioters angrily walking toward the Capitol, then showed them breaking through thin police barriers and brutally beating police.
Using security footage, police body cameras, video from those who broke in and audio from the police scanner, the video showed rioters using flagpoles, tactical equipment and other weapons to hit officers as they overwhelmed them and broke inside. Some of the body camera footage was from the ground looking up, as officers watched their attackers beat them.
At the same time, it showed what was happening inside — the beginning of the joint session to certify Biden’s election win and, eventually, some lawmakers, including House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, fleeing from the violence.
And it showed the rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” referring to the vice president who had defied Trump’s orders to try to thwart Biden’s certification, and chanting “Nancy! Nancy!” referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
MADE FOR TELEVISION
The committee took the unusual step of launching the hearings with a prime time show — aimed to gather as many viewers as possible.
It’s still unclear how many will tune in, but the panel is producing the hearing in hopes of becoming must-see television, featuring never before seen video footage of the violent insurrection.
The hearing room was also set up for impact, with a huge screen hanging over the lawmakers.
‘WE WERE THERE’
Lawmakers who were trapped together in the House during the insurrection are attending Thursday’s hearing after having dinner together. The members, all Democrats, were caught in an upper gallery of the chamber as rioters beat on the doors.
Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., said the House members, who were eventually evacuated without harm, are dismayed that an event that exposed the fragility of democracy could “somehow be whitewashed by tens of millions of people.”
Some GOP lawmakers have tried to downplay the insurrection, charging that Democrats are overly focused on the attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
“We want to remind people, we were there, we saw what happened. We know how close we came to the first non-peaceful transition of power in this country,” Phillips said.