Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) , fourth from left, and Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) are seated The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on Capitol Hill on June 9, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Former President Donald Trump spurred a “mob of domestic enemies” to conduct an “attempted coup” that was an attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Jan. 6 Committee declared at the long-anticipated start of its debut hearings.
The Committee’s Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) opened his remarks by invoking his background as a Democratic congressman from Mississippi, a part of the country where he noted many justified slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching.
“I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021,” Thompson said.
Referring to the committee’s co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as a patriot, Thompson denounced what he described as a false portrayal of the investigation as political rather than bipartisan. Cheney noted that Trump said he thought his supporters may have had the “right idea” to call for then-Vice President Mike Pence’s hanging.
“You will hear testimony, live and on video, from more than half a dozen former White House staff in the Trump administration, all of whom were in the West Wing of the White House on Jan. 6,” Cheney said.
Both agreed with the need to revisit an attack on the U.S. Capitol that is now some 17 months in the rear view mirror.
“We can’t sweep what happened under the rug,” Thompson said. “The American people deserve answers. So I come before you this evening not as a Democrat, but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us: ‘We the People.’ And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people.”
Thompson noted, however, that “our democracy remains in danger.”
“The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over,” Thompson said. “There are those in this country who thirst for power but have no love or respect for what makes America great: devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect Union.”
In the lead-up to the hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters that the committee’s findings would put Trump “at the center” of a plot to try to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The committee’s aide echoed that framing in a call with reporters, describing a “coordinated, multi-step effort” by dangerous extremists to overturn the election.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, the first law enforcement official injured during the attack that day, is expected to testify about her lingering injuries. She suffered a concussion and traumatic brain injury after rioters overturned a barrier that she guarded, knocking her over and prompting the ongoing prosecution of her accused assailant Ryan Samsel. The committee indicated that she had not returned to the force since that time.
British documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, the second anticipated witness, unspooled videotape supplementing an already enormous visual record of the Jan. 6th attack. As of late March of this year, Capitol Police reportedly turned over an estimated 14,000 hours of footage. A burgeoning docket of more than 840 cases made generous use of tape on across social media, YouTube, assorted surveillance and closed-circuit surveillance. The Department of Justice regularly releases videos introduced as federal courtroom exhibits to the press and public.
And yet, the full visual story had not been fully released.
Quested—the filmmaker behind the Afghanistan War documentary Restrepo and a number of rap videos—tracked the movements on the ground.
After its primetime debut, the Jan. 6 Committee will try to reach morning audiences next week on Monday and Wednesday. Both of those hearings have been scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Ostensibly a bipartisan panel, the Jan. 6 Committee includes only two Republicans: Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. But they have become the party’s virtual outcasts for their vocal criticism of Trump, whom polls show to be the GOP’s runaway favorite in polling for 2024.
House and Senate Republicans spurned efforts to create a non-partisan commission structured like the 9/11 Commission, and the party’s leadership has fought to delegitimize the committee’s work. Fox News, the conservative broadcaster, controversially stood alone among mainstream networks not to air the proceedings in full.
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“There Was No There There.”
Cheney’s remarks were punctuated with video clips of deposition testimony from various members of Trump advisors. In one clip, Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon recalled a late-November conversation with then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who had asked Cannon if he was “finding anything” in support of the effort to overturn the election results.
“I told Meadows that we weren’t finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states,” Cannon said.
“What was Meadows’ reaction?” a committee lawyer asked.
“So there’s no there there,” Cannon replied, recalling what Meadows said to him.
Cheney also shared video of testimony from Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, testifying about her reaction when she heard then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s statement that there wasn’t any meaningful evidence of voter fraud.
“It affected my perspective,” Ivanka said. “I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was saying.”
Cheney also outlined a late-night meeting between retired Lt. Gen. Michael Michael Flynn, former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and others on Dec. 18, 2020. That meeting went on for “hours” before Trump advisors heard about it and “rushed to intervene,” Cheney said.
Early the next morning, shortly before 2:00 a.m. on Dec. 19, 2020, Trump sent his infamous “will be wild” tweet, calling his supporters to a “big protest” in Washington on Jan. 6.
Cheney closed out her opening remarks by speaking directly to her Republican colleagues who continue to defend Trump and minimize the Jan. 6 attack.
“There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone,” Cheney said. “But your dishonor will remain.”
Thompson then shared a video that followed the chronology of that day, starting with the crowd gathering at the Capitol and culminating in the violent breaches of the building.
Once the video ended, Thompson called the first recess of the night.
This is a developing story.
(Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP)
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