The House panel that was investigating this Jan. 6 uprising within the U.S. Capitol laid the blame at the feet of Donald Trump Thursday night, declaring that the incident was not accidental but was happened as an “attempted coup” and a direct result of his failed attempt to stop the presidential election in 2020.
A never-before-seen video of 12 minutes of the harrowing violent incident and shocking evidence from Trump’s inner circle The 1/6 committee offered an in-depth account of how Trump’s repeatedly denying that he was committing fraud and his incessant efforts to thwart Joe Biden’s election caused the violence and threatened American democracy.
“Democracy remains in danger,” declared Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. Chair of the panel, at the hearing. He scheduled it for the right timing to get all Americans as is possible.
“Jan. 6 was the day of a coup attempt an egregious attempt according to one rioter just after Jan. 6, to destabilize the ruling government,” Thompson said. “The violence was no accident.”
In a previously unreleased video clip, the panel aired a quip by the former Attorney General Bill Barr who testified that Barr said to Trump that the allegations of a fake electoral process are “bullshit.”
In another instance, the daughter of the former president, Ivanka Trump, testified before this committee she was in agreement with Barr’s conclusion that there was no evidence of election fraud. “I accepted what he said.”
Others showed the leaders from the extreme Oath Keepers as well as Proud Boys prepared to storm the Capitol to protest against Trump. One rioter after another informed the committee members that they went to the Capitol because Trump demanded they do so.
“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” declared Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming. The vice-chair of the panel was the leader for most of the session. “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 from the room where Cheney gave an interview of the incident that revealed that when Trump was informed that the Capitol crowd was chanting to vice president Mike Pence to be hanged, Trump responded that maybe they were right and that the vice president “deserves it.”
Trump was furious when Pence who was the president of Congress the day before, did not accept his directive to veto Biden’s win as official.
Officers from the police force who stopped the mob embraced while sitting in the conference room, recalling the violence they endured in January. 6. Officer Harry Dunn teared up as bodycam footage showed rioters smashing his colleagues with flags as well as baseball bats.
In an emotional testimony, U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards told the panel that she had slipped into other people’s blood when rioters drove through her and towards the Capitol. She was injured in the brain during the chaos.
“It was carnage it was chaos,” she added.
Biden who was at Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas Biden, who was at Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas, declared that many of the attendees had “going to be seeing for the first time a lot of the detail that occurred.”
Trump has not apologized, he rejected the investigation again -and declared via social media, that the events of Jan. 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.”
Republicans who sit on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: “All. Old. News.”
The results of the two-hour hearing and the next sessions of open hearings might not be able to change the minds of people in a politically divided America. The committee’s inquiry with 1,000 interviews is designed to be a record of the past. The final report is expected to give an account of the most brutal incident that took place in Capitol Hill Capitol ever since the British burned the building in 1814, and to ensure that such an incident will never happen in the future.
The riots left more than 100 officers injured as well as bloodied and beat up as the throng of Trump supporters, some Armed with bats, pipes, as well as bear spray rushed through the Capitol. There were at least nine people who died in the course of and following the riots which included a woman who was killed and shot by police.
The emotions are still raw in the Capitol and security was tight security for the hearing. Police officials reported an increase in threats made against Congress members. Congress.
In this context, the committee was talking to an uneasy America in the lead-up to the midterm elections of the fall, where the voters will decide which party will be in Congress. The majority of TV networks broadcast the debate live. Fox News Channel did not.
The chairman of the committee and civil rights activist Thompson began the hearing with a the broad sweep of American historical context. Thompson said he had heard who omitted the truth on January. 6 his personal experience as a child growing up in a period and location “where people justified the action of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching.”
Cheney her daughter, former Vice Cheney, daughter of former Vice Dick Cheney, outlined what the committee has learned about the events that led to the hot January day when Trump invited those who backed him into Congress in order to “fight like hell” for the presidency, as lawmakers tackled the routine task of certifying last November’s election results.
One of the witnesses included documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who filmed the Proud Boys storming the Capitol as well as an important meeting with the then-chairman of the group Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and another extremist group known as the Oath Keepers, the night prior to the meeting in the adjacent parking garage.
Court documents indicate there were members in members of the Proud Boys along with the Oath Keepers who had been discussing in November of last year a need to fight for Trump in his position. The leaders of both groups, as well as several members, have since been charged with sedition allegations relating to the attack of a military nature.
In the crowd were a number of lawmakers, who were huddled 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.”
In the months ahead the panel will be expected to discuss Trump’s strategy for “Stop the Steal” and the pressure he put on his Justice Department to reverse his defeat in the election despite the fact that he had failed in dozens of legal cases as well as his own attorney general confirming that there was no fraud of a magnitude that could have tilted the outcomes to his advantage.
The panel had to overcome obstacles right from the beginning. Republicans opposed the creation of an independent group that could have looked into the attack on Jan. 6 attack the same way as the 9/11 Commission was investigating the 2001 terrorist attack.
In the end, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the one to push the Jan. 6 panel through Congress in spite of the objections from Senate Republican Chairman Mitch McConnell. She slammed Republican-appointed lawmakers, who had voted Jan. 6 against certifying elections, and eventually announced seven Democrats and two Republicans.
House GOP Chairman Kevin McCarthy, who has been implicated in the investigation and defied the subpoena of the committee for an interview, was echoed by Trump during his speech on Thursday. McCarthy called the committee a “scam” and labeled the probe as a politically motivated “smokescreen” for Democrats’ goals.
The hearings are expected to expose Americans to a variety of figures, some of them well recognized, while others are a mystery and also to what they have said and done in the course of Trump and his associate’s attempts to alter the results of the election.
The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 individuals for the violence on that day the largest dragnet it has ever seen.