The House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol began its first in a series of long-awaited public hearings Thursday by revealing new footage of the riot and testimony to make the case that the deadly attack was the direct result of then-President Donald Trump's attempts to cling to power.
The committee promised that the six additional hearings that have been scheduled will make it clear how Trump supporters came to lay siege to the Capitol to block members of Congress from formalizing Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Catch up quickly with key moments from the prime-time hearing:
- The committee aired sober, never-seen-before testimony from ally after ally, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, admitting they knew Trump's stolen election claims were unfounded.
- Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards testified that she was "slipping in people's blood" as she battled rioters.
- Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chair of the committee, argued that Jan. 6 was the "culmination of an attempted coup" coordinated by extremist groups like the Proud Boys answering Trump's call.
- Republicans cast the hearing as a partisan distraction.
Rep. Perry spokesman calls pardon claim 'ludicrous'
During the hearing, Cheney said Rep. Scott Perry, a Trump ally who objected to the election results on Jan. 6, sought a presidential pardon in the final days of Trump's term.
"This is a ludicrous and soulless lie," spokesman Jay Ostrich told NBC Philadelphia when he was asked about a request for a pardon.
Perry is the head of the conservative Freedom Caucus.
Thompson says committee has 'documentation' of GOP lawmakers who sought pardons from Trump
After the hearing finished, Thompson was asked by reporters about the committee’s claim that multiple Republican lawmakers sought pardons from Trump after Jan. 6.
Thompson said he didn’t want to get ahead of information that would be revealed in future hearings, but he added, "We have documentation." He wouldn’t say how many Republicans sought pardons. Cheney said earlier that the committee learned that Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and other GOP members of Congress wanted Trump to pardon them.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee, told reporters that his main emotion after he left the hearing was one of sadness.
“I feel sad to be thrusted back into these events and to have some of our colleagues not being interested in what we found. That’s really my emotion right now,” he said. Many House Republicans have ignored the committee’s work, while some of Trump’s closest allies have gone on offense, calling it a “witch hunt.”
“The details of it are just absolutely unrefuted and they’re irrefutable,” Raskin later added. “And the fact that we have elected officials in the country who are still trying to deny the truth is shocking to me.”
Republicans accuse Democrats of trying to divert attention from other issues
Republicans were largely silent about the substance of Thursday night's event while casting the hearing as a partisan attempt to distract the public by continuing to revisit the deadly riot.
"Where’s the primetime hearing on President Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal?" Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted during the hearing. He also tweeted, "Gas is $5 per gallon."
Jordan also appeared to push back against the committee's argument that Trump incited his supporters and inspired them to attack the Capitol.
"PEACEFULLY and patriotically make your voices heard. -President Trump, Jan. 6, 2021," Jordan tweeted, quoting part of Trump's speech on the Ellipse that day.
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York said Americans are concerned about "sky-high gas prices, the border crisis, the baby formula shortage" in an interview on Fox News, which chose not to broadcast the prime-time hearing. "These hearings are no more than an attempt to change the narrative. They are desperate," she added.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., tweeted, "Tonight’s J6 committee hearing is the most blatant attempt to distract the American people from the disastrous and failed policies of the Democratic Party."
Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., tweeted, "Where is the prime time coverage of the fatal fentanyl analogues flowing through our wide open border?"
Trump’s inner circle admits to the Jan. 6 committee: He lost the election but wanted to overturn it
Ally after ally of former President Donald Trump — his daughter, the former attorney general, a former senior campaign aide — admitted to congressional investigators that his claims that the 2020 election were stolen from him were false.
Their remarks were just some the revelations during the first day of the Jan. 6 committee hearings, interspersed with shocking, never-before-seen video of the deadly attack and powerful statements from a Capitol Police officer who battled rioters.
The panel says it is building a case that Trump was responsible for the events of the day.
'Trump asked us to come': Video shows rioters saying they marched on Capitol at Trump's request
In the final video of the evening played by Thompson, several Trump supporters said plainly that they attended the Jan. 6 rally and stormed the Capitol because Trump asked them to.
“What really made me want to come was the fact that I had supported Trump all that time. I did believe, you know, that the election was being stolen and Trump asked us to come,” said Robert Schornack, who the committee said was sentenced to 36 months’ probation for his role in the insurrection.
Eric Barber, who the committee said had been charged with theft and unlawful demonstration, said Trump “personally asked for us to come to D.C. that day.”
“And I thought, for everything he’s done for us, if this is the only thing he’s going to ask of me, I’ll do it,” Barber said. He added that it was “one of my disappointments” that Trump never marched to the Capitol with the rioters.
“He said he was going to go with us,” Barber said. “That he was gonna be there.”
John Wright, who is awaiting trial for felony civil disorder and other charges, said, “I know why I was there, and that’s because he called me there, and he laid out what was happening in our government.”
Capitol Police officer recalls 'carnage,' 'chaos' during attack
In harrowing testimony before the break, Edwards described her experience trying to hold off the mob in graphic detail. Edwards suffered a concussion when she cracked her head on the steps outside the Capitol after she was knocked to the ground by rioters pushing back a barricade.
“I can remember my breath catching in my throat, because what I saw was a war scene,” she said, comparing the “carnage” to “something out of a movie."
“Officers on the ground. They were bleeding, on the ground, throwing up,” she said.
“It was carnage. It was chaos,” she added. She added a moment later, “I’m not combat-trained."
Edwards described looking up at the west front at one point and being shocked at “the war zone” it had become.
Earlier, she described how the back of her head “clipped the concrete” stairs behind her after she was pushed over by rioters.
After she regained consciousness, Edwards still returned to duty, running toward the west front of the Capitol to try to hold the line at the Senate steps, she said.
“More people kept coming at us. It just seemed like more and more people coming on to the west front. They started overpowering us,” she said.
After Washington, D.C., officers showed up, she ran to another location to resume holding the line, when she saw Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick “with his head in his hands” and appearing “ghostly pale.”
Sicknick died of natural causes the day after the riot after he suffered two strokes.
Thompson places Trump at center of an extremist plot to attack the Capitol
Chairman Thompson placed Trump at the center of a conspiracy to stage a coup by summarizing the testimony of filmmaker Nick Quested, who recorded a meeting between the leaders of two violent groups that led the insurrection: The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
“What you witnessed is what a coordinated and planned effort would look like,” Thompson said after Quested detailed the hours he spent with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio before the insurrection and filming the riot. “It was the culmination of a monthslong effort spearheaded by President Trump.”
Tarrio has pleaded not guilty to charges of seditious conspiracy.
Thompson said the Proud Boys first launched their attack on the Capitol at the Peace Circle — “the first security perimeter that those marching from the Ellipse would have come to as they moved toward the Capitol.”
He described the Peace Circle walkway as a place “where the thousands of angry Trump supporters would arrive after President Trump sent them there from the Ellipse.”
Thompson went on to say that the “Proud Boys timed their attack to the moments before the start of the joint session in the Capitol, which is also where President Trump directed the angry mob.”
