Insurrection inquiry blames Trump for Capitol ‘carnage’
The producers hope it will be a summer blockbuster that grips America. At its heart, a president clinging to power, urging on a mob to storm the nation’s Capitol and keep him in the White House. Around him, a cast of misfit lawyers, right-wing thugs, a QAnon shaman, and thousands of followers.
After months of work, hundreds of witnesses called to testify, and thousands of documents subpoenaed, the congressional committee investigating the riot at the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6 last year has begun laying out its findings on primetime TV.
With never-before-seen security video, and testimony from victims of the violence and witnesses to the plotting, the committee has pulled out all the stops to grab America’s attention.
The panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans – both of whom have been exiled by their party – claims to have amassed compelling evidence of an unprecedented conspiracy to subvert democracy following Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. That conspiracy climaxed with an armed siege at the doors of the House of Representatives, with one protester shot dead and hundreds of police officers injured.
At the centre of it all is Trump himself, urging his supporters outside the White House to ‘‘fight like hell’’ as his power slipped away.
Democratic representative Jamie Raskin, a member of the panel, said it had evidence that suggested the former president did ‘‘a lot more’’ than incite the riot. ‘‘The hearings will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House,’’ Raskin said.
Trump has railed for months at the ‘‘lies and Marxist tactics’’ of what he calls the ‘‘Unselect Committee’’. But despite the bombast, he is wary of what the hearings may reveal.
Trump has ordered his allies into a counter-offensive to flood the media with their own messaging. The hearing, which began yesterday, is being broadcast live by almost every big network with the exception of Fox News.
To hold America’s attention, the six hearing sessions are being broadcast in tightly choreographed, movie-length episodes, produced by James Goldston, the former president of ABC News and an award-winning documentary maker. The hearings are being shown on a big screen at the Robert A Taft Memorial in Washington, DC, with free ice cream for visitors.
While the basics of attack on the Capitol are well known, the committee is trying to tell the story of how it happened, and how to prevent it from ever happening again, for history.
The made-for-TV hearings – including video of police officers being brutally beaten and rightwing extremists leading the crowds into the Capitol – come as some have tried to downplay the violence.
‘‘We can’t sweep what happened under the rug,’’ said Mississippi’s Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the panel, as he opened the hearing. ‘‘The American people deserve answers.’’
The committee has conducted more than 1000 interviews with people connected to the siege, and collected more than 140,000 documents.
Thompson laid out the committee’s initial findings that Trump led a ‘‘sprawling, multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election’’, and that the insurrection was a culmination of this ‘‘attempted coup’’.
The panel’s vice-chairwoman, Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, called it a ‘‘sophisticated seven-part plan’’.
The hearing will feature never-before-seen video testimony from Trump’s family and close aides, many of whom were interviewed by the committee remotely.
The panel started by showing a video interview with former US attorney general Bill Barr, who said he told Trump at the time that his election fraud claims had no merit.
The panel also showed video testimony from Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who spoke to the committee in April. She told the panel that Barr’s declaration ‘‘affected my perspective’’.
Another Trump adviser, Jason Miller, told the panel that campaign advisers had told the president in ‘‘clear terms’’ that he had lost the election.
The committee showed new, graphic video from the insurrection, moving through a timeline of the violence.
Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer, testified in graphic terms about the bloody scene outside the Capitol that day and the traumatic brain injury she suffered when members of the Proud Boys militia group and others pushed her to the ground as they led the mob into the Capitol.
‘‘I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell,’’ she said. ‘‘It was carnage. It was chaos.’’
The panel’s other witness was British filmmaker Nick Quested, who was with members of the Proud Boys as they walked from Trump’s rally in front of the White House to the Capitol. Quested was also filming members of the group the day ahead of the attack as they planned and met with members of the Oath Keepers group in an underground garage.
Some Republican lawmakers have tried to downplay the insurrection, saying Democrats are overly focused on the attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
‘‘I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell . . . It was chaos.’’
Caroline Edwards, Capitol Police officer