A recap of Jan. 6 hearings, and what’s ahead
Panel has detailed then-President Trump’s plan to overturn the election.
The House Jan. 6 select committee has covered a lot of ground in its seven hearings, but it has left at least one question unanswered: What was President Trump doing while a mob of his supporters was rioting at the U.S. Capitol, trying to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president?
That’s the most likely subject of the committee’s next hearing, which is expected to be held next week.
One thing we do know from committee sources is that the panel wants to hold the hearing in prime time on the East Coast, similar to the panel’s opening session June 9.
That first hearing drew 20 million people, or twice the number who tuned in to this year’s most popular television series.
The proceedings are being broadcast live on YouTube, the major TV networks and cable news channels (Fox News opted not to carry the opening hearing in prime time but provided live coverage of the following ones).
Carefully scripted by the committee, the hearings have been laying out the findings from the investigation it began more than 11 months ago.
At the committee’s hearing Tuesday, the panel explored how Trump’s focus shifted after Dec. 14, when the states’ electors cast their votes in favor of Biden.
After a rancorous meeting with advisors and White House attorneys, Trump issued an early-morning tweet on Dec. 19: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
The tweet “electrified and galvanized his supporters, especially the dangerous extremists in the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other racist and white nationalist groups spoiling for a fight against the government,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 panel, said at the hearing.
“We can’t sweep what happened under the rug,” Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said June 9 at the opening hearing. “The American people deserve answers.”
Here is what happened at the hearings held so far, as well as some suggestions about what to expect next.
Thursday, June 9
The committee led with a graphic look back at the attack on the U.S. Capitol that occurred as lawmakers tried to count electoral votes.
One key moment was a 10-minute video with previously unseen footage of protesters battering their way into the Capitol.
Another was the testimony of Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who said she was “slipping in people’s blood” as she fought to defend the lawmakers inside.
Monday, June 13
The second hearing revealed evidence that Trump and his advisors knew there was no election fraud yet spread the “Big Lie.”
Trump, the committee said, was informed multiple times by campaign staffers and Atty. Gen. William Barr that there was no proof of fraud.
Thursday, June 16
This hearing focused on the pressure that Trump and conservative California lawyer John Eastman exerted on Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from seven states won by Joe Biden — which might have enabled Trump to hold on to the presidency — even though they knew their actions were illegal.
The panel heard from a top Pence aide, who said the vice president never believed he had the power to throw the election to Trump, as well as a conservative judge who helped Pence resist Trump’s demands.
Tuesday, June 21
The committee heard testimony from the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and two election officials from Georgia, all Republicans, about the efforts by Trump and his lawyers to get them to reverse election results without the legal authority to do so.
An election supervisor from Fulton County, Ga., also spoke emotionally about the harassment she, her mother and her grandmother endured after they were accused by Trump of election fraud — a claim he knew had been debunked.
Thursday, June 23
Three former top Justice Department officials in the Trump administration recounted the former president’s concerted efforts to have the department declare the election tainted and to push state legislatures to throw out the results.
When they resisted, they said, the president was set to name another appointee, Jeffrey Clark, as the acting attorney general, only to back off when the department’s entire leadership threatened to resign.
Federal investigators raided Clark’s home the week of the hearing.
Trump “wanted the Justice Department to help legitimize his lies, to baselessly call the election corrupt, to appoint a special counsel to investigate alleged election fraud,” Thompson said.
Tuesday, June 28
In a surprise move, the committee brought former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson in to testify publicly while the House was in recess.
Her main focus was on conversations she had with top administration officials in the White House’s West Wing leading up to and during the events of Jan. 6.
Among other revelations, she testified about being told that Trump had waved off concerns about weapons in the crowd that day, that he’d wanted to go to the Capitol so badly that he’d tussled with a Secret Service officer in his vehicle, and that he didn’t think the rioters who were chanting “Hang Mike Pence” were doing anything wrong.
Trump has criticized her testimony on Truth Social, his fledgling social media network, calling her “Lyin’ Cassidy Hutchinson,” among other critiques.
Tuesday, July 12
The committee laid out how Trump’s call for a protest on Jan. 6 reverberated with his supporters and extremist groups, who interpreted it as a summons to stop Congress from affirming Biden’s victory in the electoral college.
The hearing featured parts of former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s recorded deposition.
A former Twitter employee, whose recorded testimony was presented anonymously, said Trump seemed to be tweeting directly to extremist groups, and judging by the messages he saw, the witness said, he expected violence on Jan. 6.
The panel also heard from Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the extremist Oath Keepers group, who said the day “was going to be an armed revolution.”
Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, told the committee that he went there only because Trump urged his supporters to do so in his speech that day.
Next week
The session is expected to lay out in detail what Trump did while a violent mob of his supporters descended on the Capitol, interrupting a joint session of Congress to finalize Biden’s election as president.
One of the lingering questions about the attack is why it took so long for the National Guard to come to the aid of the overwhelmed local and U.S. Capitol Police forces.
At the June 9 hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s vice chair, said then-Vice President Pence had to summon federal troops because Trump would not.
Cheney said the hearing will include more testimony taken privately from Cipollone, who’s been described by Hutchinson and other witnesses as one of the main forces resisting Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.
According to Hutchinson, Cipollone urged her on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, to make sure Trump didn’t go to the U.S. Capitol, saying, “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”
One other possibility: By the time it holds its next hearing, the committee may finally have testimony from former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who is awaiting trial on charges of contempt of Congress for defying the panel’s subpoena last year.
Mother Jones magazine has recently published leaked audio from a meeting Bannon held with associates a few days before the 2020 election, in which Bannon correctly predicted that Trump would preemptively claim victory and try to overturn the election results if he lost.
This session could be the final one for the committee, which had been expected to save the discussion of Trump’s actions during the assault for last. But it is continuing to interview witnesses and gather testimony.