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- The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection held its first public hearing Thursday.
- Lawmakers are examining Trump and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
- Trump responded to the hearing by attacking the House committee and promoting his bogus fraud claim.
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The upcoming January 6 committee hearing will focus on a deep dive that former President Donald Trump knew he lost the election but still tried to overturn it and his "dereliction of duty," a committee member said.
Democratic Rep. Elaine Lurie told NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd that the upcoming hearing will show how Trump tried to pressure local, state and federal officials to overturn the election, after baselessly claiming it was rigged against him.
"We've pieced together a very comprehensive tick-tock timeline of what he did," The Virginia lawmaker said.
Lurie told Todd that it's more accurate to say that the committee now has a timeline of what Trump was not doing before and during the insurrection than what he was doing.
"There is a gap there that we have tried through these witnesses, we've interviewed a thousand witnesses and a lot of people who work directly in the White House for the president, in his immediate vicinity throughout the day," she said.
"So we've pieced together a very comprehensive tick-tock timeline of what he did."
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A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence told him the day before the Capitol Riot that following former President Donald Trump's request to certify the election for him would eventually fail in court, according to a memo obtained by Politico.
Congress was in the process of certifying the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters who falsely believed the election had been rigged stormed the US Capitol.
Trump had previously asked Pence to certify the election in his favor, but attorney Greg Jacob told Pence in a memo that doing so would break multiple provisions of the Electoral Count Act.
According to Politico, in the memo, Jacob said the move could fail in the courts or put America in a political crisis where Pence would find himself "in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress … with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse."
The attorney will testify publicly in front of the House committee investigating the Capitol riots this week, however, his letter has been known to the committee for months, Politico reported.
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Rudy Giuliani, former advisor and personal lawyer to Donald Trump, said in an episode of his podcast the former president had "nothing to do with" the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The episode, released Saturday, was a response to the House select committee's televised hearings related to the investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021. On Thursday, the committee released findings that indicated the events of the day were an attempted coup intended to keep former president Trump in power.
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Fox News host Laura Ingraham claimed the January 6 Committee hearing on Thursday "bombed," despite reeling in nearly 20 million viewers.
Fox was the only major news outlet not to carry the hearing live on Thursday evening, which was the House Select Committee on January 6's first major public hearing about the Capitol attack, the efforts to overturn the election, and what then-President Donald Trump knew before and during the attack.
Committee members revealed that Trump and his allies staged "an attempted coup" and funded a misinformation campaign that "provoked the violence on January 6." They also said that Ivanka Trump "accepted" the attorney general's opinion that there was no election fraud, and that several Republican congressmen asked for pardons following January 6.
Ingraham's claim that the hearings "bombed" came as she responded to criticism from The View's Joy Behar.
"Fox News did not carry the January 6 Committee's live hearings last night. Shocker isn't it? But they still had plenty to say about it," Behar said. "The usual suspects, Tucker [Carlson] and Ingraham, dusted off their greatest hits, calling it a witch hunt, saying it's political revenge from Pelosi, and downplayed what happened on the 6th."
Behar added: "There were no commercial breaks last night on either show. So what does that tell you? That Rupert Murdoch is so desperate to keep his viewers away from the hearing, along with those two, that he is willing to lose millions of dollars."
Ingraham swiped back at Behar in a tweet, claiming to have had "two commercial breaks Thursday night." According to PolitiFact, Carlson's and Hannity's shows had no commercial breaks, whereas Ingraham "went to commercial a few times."
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Enrique Tarrio and four other members of the Proud Boys were charged this week with seditious conspiracy in what one constitutional expert calls a "textbook case" of sedition, but the charges themselves face an uphill battle in court.
Seditious conspiracy, sometimes referred to as "sedition," is law that first originated in 1789 to prosecute speech critical of the government.
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The public hearings for the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection resume on Monday, June 13, at 10 a.m. ET.
Catch up on our takeaways of the biggest moments from the first hearing on Thursday, June 9, 2022, and check out the full schedule.
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In a Friday tweet storm, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked several of her fellow representatives if they'd asked the White House for a pardon following the January 6 attack.
Her remarks came the day after the January 6 House select committee aired its first public hearing — in which GOP co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney alleged that several members of Congress asked for pardons after the insurrection.
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More than 19 million people watched the first public hearing of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, The New York Times reported Friday, citing preliminary figures from ratings company Nielsen.
The actual number is higher, The Times noted, as the preliminary tally does not include all networks and streaming services that aired the hearing.
The Thursday hearing aired from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on broadcast channels and cable news networks — but not on Fox News, which elected to stick its usual programming.
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Former President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at William Barr, calling him a "weak and frightened" attorney general and a "coward" after the House January 6 committee aired his testimony debunking Trump's false claims of widespread election fraud.
During Thursday's public hearing, the committee played recorded testimony from Barr in a closed-door interview saying that he didn't agree that the election was "stolen" and that he told Trump the idea was "bullshit."
Trump attacked Barr, his former attorney general, on his social-media platform, Truth Social, saying he "was always being 'played' and threatened by the Democrats and was scared stiff of being Impeached."
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Former President Donald Trump said his daughter Ivanka Trump doesn't understand elections after she testified that there was no fraud in the 2020 election.
The committee aired her testimony on Thursday, where she said that she "accepted" former Attorney General Bill Barr finding no evidence that the vote was stolen.
"Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results," Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday. "She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!)."
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Former President Donald Trump responded to the first public hearing by criticizing the House committee and repeating his fake voter fraud claims.
"So the Unselect Committee of political HACKS refuses to play any of the many positive witnesses and statements, refuses to talk of the Election Fraud and Irregularities that took place on a massive scale," he shared on Truth Social early Friday morning.
He added: "Our Country is in such trouble!"
Fox News
Fox News' prime-time shows refused to carry Thursday's hearing, with host Tucker Carlson bragging about the network's decision.
"The whole thing is insulting. In fact, it's deranged," Carlson said. "And we're not playing along."
"This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it," he said, apparently referring to those investigating the riot.
Host Sean Hannity on his own show called the hearing a "multi-hour Democratic fundraiser," without offering any evidence, and a "made-for-TV smear campaign against President Trump featuring sliced and diced video that fits their pre-determined political narrative."
And host Laura Ingraham painted the hearing as boring, saying: "In the end, this was nearly two hours of an unsuccessful, laborious attempt to connect the dots back to Trump, to Trump to a coup that never happened."
AP Photo/ Andrew Harnik)
Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House January 6 committee, said at Thursday's hearing that several Republican members of Congress asked for a pardon from then-President Donald Trump after the Capitol riot.
She called out Rep. Scott Perry in particular, saying: "Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6 to seek a presidential pardon."
"Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election," she added.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said watching the first televised hearing on the Capitol riot took her back to the traumatic experience of being there on the day.
Ocasio-Cortez posted a video of the hearing, where scenes of violence and sights of Trump supporters flooding the Capitol were being played.
"Good Lord. The way it all comes rushing back into the body. It's like it's that day all over again," she wrote.
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A high-ranking member of the Proud Boys told the January 6 panel that membership in the organization "tripled" after former President Donald Trump told them to "stand back and stand by."
Trump made the comments during a debate in September 2020. The former president was asked to disavow white supremacist groups and urge them to "stand down." But instead of doing so, Trump said: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."
A clip of an interview with Proud Boys member Jeremy Bertino aired during the televised January 6 hearings on Thursday night. He said Trump's comments were a watershed moment for the group.
Bertino was asked if the number of Proud Boys members increased specifically after Trump's comments.
"Exponentially," Bertino said. "I'd say, tripled, probably. With the potential for a lot more eventually."
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The January 6 panel released a never-before-seen video from inside House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's office during the January 6 Capitol riot.
In the video, the dozens of frantic staffers are seen pouring into the hallways of Rep. McCarthy's office.
The staffers appeared to be fleeing McCarthy's office as a radio transmission signaled that people would be moving through the tunnels of the Capitol building.
The House committee played the video during the first of six televised January 6 hearings. It pinpoints 2:28 p.m. — as violent clashes between rioters and police officers take place outside the Capitol, McCarthy staffers can be seen running through the hallway of his chambers.
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Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards said it looked to her like an "absolute war zone" on January 6, 2021, when supporters of former President Trump attacked the US Capitol, forcing officers to engage in "hours of hand-to-hand combat" beyond the scope of any law enforcement training.
Edwards, who was injured in the attack, told members of the House select committee on Thursday, "I can just remember my breath catching in my throat" while looking at the "carnage" and "chaos" of the riot scene.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," she told the committee. "There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding, they were throwing up…I mean I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood. You know, I was catching people as they fell."
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At the first of six public hearings planned for this month, the House committee displayed video of an interview with a Proud Boy who attributed Trump's comment to exponential membership growth in the far-right group.
In another interview, former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio cracked a wry smile and said he regretted not selling t-shirts brandished with the words "Stand back and stand by."
"One of the vendors on my page actually beat me to it, but I wish I would've made a 'stand back stand by' t-shirt," Tarrio said in his interview with the House committee.
Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
—Bloomberg (@business) June 10, 2022
Former Trump White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner testified in front of the January 6 House Committee that he thought White House Counsel Pat Cipollone's threat to resign was nothing more than "whining."
"I know that him and the team were always saying, 'We're gonna resign, we're not gonna be here' if this happens, that happens," Kushner, who is also the former president's son-in-law, said during an on-camera deposition Thursday. "I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you."
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GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming on Thursday evening issued members of her party a stark warning over their continued support of former President Donald Trump.
"I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain," Cheney, vice chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, said during the panel's first hearing.
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"The White House staff knew that President Trump was willing to entertain and use conspiracy theories to achieve his ends," Rep. Cheney said during opening remarks at the first public hearing investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
"They knew that the president needed to be cut off from all of those who had encouraged him. They knew that President Donald Trump was too dangerous to be left alone," she added.
Michael Reynolds/AP
Following the 2020 presidential election, then-Attorney General William Barr told Donald Trump that his claims of widespread election fraud were "bullshit" and entirely unsupported by evidence, it was revealed during the first January 6 committee public hearing.
Video of Barr recounting his remarks to Trump in a closed-door interview with the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was played on June 9, 2022, during the public hearing.
Barr said he spoke with Trump on at least three occasions between November and December 2020, and he described Trump's claims of election malfeasance as "crazy stuff" and said the falsehoods were influencing the public, doing a "great, great disservice to the country." Barr credited the timing of his December 2020 resignation, in part, to Trump's baseless election claims.
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Video testimony of part of Ivanka Trump's testimony to the January 6 committee was shown during the first public hearing of the investigation into the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
During the clip, Ivanka Trump was asked about then-Attorney General Bill Barr's statement that former President Donald Trump's claims that there was fraud in the 2020 election were incorrect.
"It affected my perspective," Ivanka Trump told the committee in recorded testimony, aired for the first time on Thursday. "I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying."Read Full Story
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Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, said that during these public hearings they would reveal more information about a "seven-part plan" to overturn the 2020 presidential election, led by former President Donald Trump.
—CSPAN (@cspan) June 10, 2022
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As a riot unfolded at the US Capitol, former President Donald Trump told aides that his own vice president might deserve to die, Rep. Liz Cheney said Thursday.
Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who co-chairs the House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection, made the claim in her opening remarks.
"Aware of the rioters chants to 'hang Mike Pence,'" Cheney said, "the president responded with this sentiment: 'Maybe our supporters have the right idea.' Mike Pence 'deserves it.'"
As The New York Times reported last month, two former White House staffers testified before the January 6 committee that Mark Meadows, Trump's ex-chief of staff, told them that he heard the former president make the comment.
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Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House panel investigating the January 6 attack, will say tonight that the American people deserve answers about the insurrection.
"We can't sweep what happened under the rug," Thompson says in early excerpts of his opening statement. "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 House Select Committee on January 6 will have its first major public hearing tonight, kicking off a series of public hearings about the attack, efforts to overturn the election, and what then-President Donald Trump was aware of in the lead up to it.
Thompson will add that American democracy "remains in danger."
"... Our work must do much more than just look backwards," Thompson will say. "Because our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over. 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."
Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, is facing a defining career moment after nearly three decades in Congress. Thompson told Insider's Camila DeChalus that the committee is his "signature work in the United States House of Representatives."
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Rep. Bennie Thompson is the chairman of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection. He has been in Congress for 29 years but views this investigation as his "signature work."
"There's a lot of other pieces of legislation that basically alter the trajectory of so many people in my district, in this country, as well as other pieces of legislation, but nothing compares to the importance of this committee and why I value its work as my signature work in the United States House of Representatives," he told Insider's Camila DeChalus in a May interview.
In the first public hearing of the January 6 committee, Thompson will take center stage.
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Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas offered up three things he'd rather do Thursday night than sit through any part of the January 6 committee's highly anticipated prime-time hearing.
"I've got to mow my lawn. Or comb my hair. Or maybe just watch the paint dry on the walls," Cruz said of what he considered better ways to invest one's time than validating the existence of "a political campaign ad for the Democrats."
Cruz bashed the ongoing House investigation as political theater meant to distract a recession-wary populace from all the ways he said President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have failed them.
"From the opening gavel to the close of the hearing, one hundred percent of their endeavor is a political Hail Mary pass," Cruz told Insider in the tunnels beneath the Senate chamber. "The American people are deeply unhappy with the disaster of the left-wing policy agenda we've seen for the last two years."
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A Justice Department lawyer revealed Thursday that transcripts of the 1,000 interviews conducted as part of the House January 6 committee's investigation into the Capitol attack will be made public in September. It would be an unprecedented release of documents that could shed new light on the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
The revelation came during a pretrial hearing for former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and four other members of the far-right group who were charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with their alleged role in planning and participating in the Capitol siege.
"The committee will release the transcripts in early September and a report of the committee's findings will be released around the same time," Assistant US Attorney Jason McCullough told a judge.
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The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection is holding a much-anticipated public hearing Thursday night.
The nine-member panel, chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, has spent months interviewing witnesses and examining phone and email records to try to get to the bottom of former President Donald Trump and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election and prevent President Joe Biden from taking office.
The committee, which includes Republican Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, is expected to hold a half-dozen public hearings in June.
Here's what you need to know ahead of the broadcast at 8 p.m. ET:
- How to watch the hearings
- The key witnesses who are likely to testify
- What to expect
- Sources say the evidence will put Trump "at the center" of the events
- Meet the lawmakers and staff leading the investigation
- At least 862 people have now been arrested for their actions on January 6
- More than 300 people have already pleaded guilty
- An oral history of the insurrection from 34 people who were there
- How the US Capitol riot led to Trump's second impeachment
- Liz Cheney's break from GOP leadership on the investigation
source https://www.businessinsider.com/live-january-6-committee-public-hearing-trump-insurrection-2022-6