Capitol attack’s full story: Panel probes U.S. risks
WASHINGTON — The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol played out for the world to see, but the House committee investigating the attack believes a more chilling story has yet to be told — about the president and the people whose actions put American democracy at risk.
With personal accounts and gruesome videos the 1/6 committee expects Thursday’s prime-time hearing to begin to show that America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power came close to slipping away. It will reconstruct how the president, Donald Trump, refused to concede the 2020 election, spread false claims of voter fraud and orchestrated an unprecedented public and private campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
The result of the coming weeks of public hearings may not change hearts or minds in politically polarized America. But the committee’s year-long investigation with 1,000 interviews is intended to stand as a public record for history. A final report aims to provide an accounting of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the British set fire in 1814, and ensure it never happens again.
“This is not a game,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor and coauthor of “How Democracies Die,” who has written extensively on the world’s democratic governments.
“We suffered an assault on our democracy the likes of which none of us have seen in our lifetime.”
Emotions are still raw at the Capitol 17 months after Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency. That was on a Wednesday, two months after the election, a traditionally celebratory if ho-hum day when Congress is tasked with certifying the November results.
Security will be tight for the hearings.
Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.
Against that backdrop, the committee will try to speak to a divided America, ahead of the fall midterm elections when voters will decide which party controls the Congress. Most TV networks will carry the hearings live, Fox News will not.
“We’re going to tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee.
“You really have to go back to the Civil War to understand anything like it.”
First up will be wrenching accounts from police who engaged in hand-tohand combat with the mob, with testimony from U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who was seriously injured in the melee. Also appearing Thursday will be documentary maker Nick Quested who filmed the extremist Proud Boys storming the Capitol. Some of that group’s members have since been indicted as have some from the Oath Keepers on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.
In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Department of Justice to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases and his own attorney general attesting there was no fraud on a scale that that could have tipped the results in his favor.
“It’s going to be there for the permanent record, and I think that’s important for history,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia.
The panel, made up of nine lawmakers, faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the Jan. 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.