The House Select Committee looking into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, wrapped up its first round of hearings on Thursday.
During these hearings, witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who participated in the attack, and many others testified.
The committee tried to depict the former President’s strategy to maintain power and his role on January 6 using live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen materials.
The panel’s agenda was outlined in Vice Chair Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) opening remarks during the first hearing in June.
Here are some of the main topics Cheney promised the committee would look into during the hearings and what they have found thus far. In September, the panel intends to meet again for additional hearings.
The committee revealed fresh details about the “unhinged” Oval Office meeting that occurred on December 18, 2020, following which then-President Donald Trump tweeted what Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) referred to as an “explosive invitation,” inviting supporters to visit Washington, DC, on January 6. Trump instructed the audience to “march” to the Capitol that day during his rally and to “fight like hell.”
After weeks of Trump making untrue statements regarding the election results, calls to action were issued.
Stephen Ayres, a rioter who admitted guilt to breaking and entering the Capitol on January 6, said during the seventh hearing that he hadn’t even planned to go there until he heard Trump speak at the Ellipse.
Ayres, who has lost both his house and his work, stated: “Well, basically, you know, the President got everybody revved up and told everybody to head on down.” So, we essentially simply did as he instructed.
Despite knowing about the attack just minutes after he returned to the White House, the committee used its final hearing of the series to go into depth about the 187 minutes that the former president Trump did nothing while the Capitol was being attacked.
Witnesses claimed that Trump ignored the safety of his own vice president, responding police, and the joint session of Congress for more than three hours while watching the violence play out on Fox and getting many pleadings from Republican allies and advisors to disperse the mob.
As the riot broke out, Trump did not make a single call to any of his law enforcement or national security personnel, according to previously unseen video testimony that was shown during Thursday’s session.
The committee demonstrated that even after being informed that their theories lacked validity, the then-President and his group persisted in making fraudulent electoral allegations.
The committee heard testimony from several former Trump advisors who claimed they tried to convince the then-President that there was no credible proof of significant voter fraud and refused to support his plot to rig the election.
The panel used the fourth session to go into detail about the impact that Trump’s campaign of public pressure had on election officials.
Republican Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state for Georgia, informed the committee that threats had been made against him and his family and that he believed they were attempts to get him to resign because he was opposed to taking part in an electoral recount.
In the third session, the committee emphasised how Trump’s lawyer John Eastman knew his attempt to thwart the election would be unsuccessful if it reached the Supreme Court, yet the right-wing lawyer kept stoking Trump’s optimism.
The group offered numerous conspiracy theories during the second session to persuade state legislators to support Trump’s efforts to rig the election.
A truckload of ballots being flown from New York to Pennsylvania, Georgia election workers scanning tens of thousands of ballots for Biden that came from a suitcase, and accusations that Dominion Voting Systems changed numerous Trump votes to Biden votes were some of the conspiracy theories. (Each of these allegations has been refuted.)
During the second hearing, CNN’s Fredreka Schouten reported that the former president’s political action committee received the majority of the $250 million that was raised after the election, as opposed to the “election integrity” endeavour that was promoted to his contributors.
The sixth hearing featured testimony from the panel regarding a meeting in January 2021 where the then-President considered replacing acting Attorney General Jefferey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a senior Justice Department employee who later supported Trump’s fraudulent claims of election fraud.
When it was determined that there was no evidence of voter fraud, Rosen, who succeeded Bill Barr after the latter’s resignation in December 2020, declined to utilise the Justice Department’s resources to assist Trump in overturning the election.
When Rosen attended the meeting on January 3, 2021, Trump reportedly said, “You don’t even agree with the charges of election fraud, and this other man at least might do something,” Rosen testified to the committee, alluding to Trump’s potential decision to install Clark.
Rosen’s deputy Richard Donoghue stated that the then-President instructed him and another top Justice Department official to “simply say that the election was crooked and leave the rest to [him] and the Republican legislators” during the presidential transition.
On January 6, at a speech at the Ellipse, Trump urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to “do the right thing” by invalidating the electoral votes of crucial states and returning them to their state governments for re-certification by Republicans to support him.
The committee played a video of Capitol rioters expressing their ire at Pence for not carrying out Trump’s wish after repeatedly telling Trump that his plan for Pence to annul the election on January 6 was illegal. Despite repeated warnings from advisers, Trump still tried to carry out his plan.
The committee also discovered through the testimony of former Trump White House assistant Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump appeared to agree with the rioters’ request that Pence should be hanged, as stated by her boss, Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.
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She told the panel, “Mark, we need to do something more, they’re literally screaming for the vice president to be f—ing hung.
I remember (White House Counsel) Pat (Cipollone) saying something to that extent. Mark had said, “You heard it, Pat, he feels Mike deserves it, he doesn’t think they’re doing anything illegal,” or words to that effect.
One White House security official testified that members of Pence’s security detail began saying their goodbyes to their loved ones.
On Thursday, the committee demonstrated just how dire the security situation during the riot became for Pence.
