Panel puts Trump at center of plot
Jan. 6 committee launches hearings into US Capitol riot
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol planned to open a landmark series of public hearings Thursday by playing previously unreleased video of former President Donald Trump’s top aides and family members testifying before its staff, as well as footage revealing the role of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, in the assault.
Committee aides said the evidence would show that Trump was at the center of a “coordinated, multistep effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election” that resulted in a mob of his supporters storming the halls of Congress and disrupting the official electoral count that is a pivotal step in the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
The prime-time hearing was to be the first in a series of six, during which the panel plans to lay out for Americans the full magnitude and significance of Trump’s systematic drive to invalidate the election and remain in power.
The committee has scheduled two daytime hearings for next week on Monday and Wednesday.
“We’ll demonstrate the multipronged effort to overturn a presidential election, how one strategy to subvert the election led to another, culminating in a violent attack on our democracy,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the committee, said before Thursday’s hearing. “It’s an important story and one that must be told to ensure it never happens again.”
Live testimony from a documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys during the attack,
and a Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, who was injured as rioters breached barricades and stormed into the building, was scheduled for Thursday’s hearing.
The committee also planned to present what aides called a small but “meaningful” portion of the recorded interviews its investigators conducted with more than 1,000 witnesses, including senior Trump White House officials, campaign officials and Trump’s family members.
Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka Trump, his son-inlaw Jared Kushner and his son Donald Trump Jr. are among the high-profile witnesses who have testified before the panel.
Quested, a British documentarian who has worked in war zones such as Afghanistan, spent a good
deal of the post-election period filming members of the Proud Boys, including the group’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the riot. Quested accompanied the Proud Boys to pro-Trump rallies in Washington in November and December 2020, and was on the ground with members of the group Jan. 6, when several played a crucial role in breaching the Capitol.
Edwards, a well-respected Capitol Police officer, is believed to be the first officer injured in the attack, when she suffered a concussion during an assault at a barricade at the base of Capitol Hill. A man who has been charged with taking part in the assault, Ryan Samsel, told the FBI during
an interview more than a year ago that just before he approached the barricade, a high-ranking member of the Proud Boys, Joseph Biggs, had encouraged him to confront police.
Other officers around the building recall hearing Edwards calling for help over the radio — one of the first signs that mob violence was beginning to overrun the police presence. Months after the attack, she continued to have fainting spells believed to be connected to her injuries.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee chair, and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the vice chair, are taking the lead in presenting evidence and questioning the witnesses.
The session was expected to kick off an ambitious effort by the committee,
which was formed in July after Republicans blocked the creation of a nonpartisan commission to investigate the attack, to lay out for Americans the full story of an unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy that led to a deadly riot, an impeachment and a crisis of confidence in the political system that continues to reverberate.
The hearings are unfolding five months before midterm elections in which the Democrats’ majority is at stake, at a time when they are eager to draw a sharp contrast between themselves and the Republicans who enabled and embraced Trump, including the members of Congress who abetted his efforts to overturn the election.
Republicans are planning countermessaging that began Thursday morning, when the party’s House leaders took turns at a news conference on Capitol Hill bashing the panel’s work as “illegitimate” and a “sham.”
They argued the committee was out of touch with the pocketbook concerns of many Americans.
“Is Nancy Pelosi going to hold a prime-time hearing on inflation?” Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, said. “I’d sure like to see that. I think a lot of Americans would. Is Nancy Pelosi going to hold a primetime hearing on lowering gas prices? They’ve refused to so far.”
The Jan. 6 panel has not yet committed to the full slate of witnesses for the six televised hearings and is still discussing the possibility of public testimony with several prominent Trumpera officials.