Key revelations so farSam Levine
We’re a little under an hour into this hearing and already there have been a number of explosive revelations.
Here are some of the most notable:
Trump supported the assasination of Mike Pence. When he learned supporters were chanting “hang Mike Pence,” Trump said “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” Liz Cheney revealed on Thursday. “Mike Pence deserves it,” the president added. Congressman Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, inquired about a pardon after the 6 January riot. Perry played a key role in efforts to overturning the election. Ivanka Trump told the committee she was persuaded by Attorney General William Barr’s statement that there was no widespread fraud in the election. “I respect attorney general Barr, so I accepted what he was saying.” Jared Kushner dismissed the White House counsel’s threats to resign on 6 January, saying it seemed more like whining to him Attorney General William Barr told Trump his claims of a stolen election were “bullshit”. A Trump campaign lawyer told Mark Meadows in November that they weren’t finding widespread fraud. “So there’s no there there,” Meadows told the campaign lawyer. Sam Levine
As the committee played never before seen footage of the attack on the capitol, several law enforcement officers who were there that day could be seen in tears.
Among those in attendance are Harry Dunn, a US capitol police officer, Daniel Hodges, a Washington DC police officer who was beaten with his own baton, U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, and DC police officer Michael Fanone, who was nearly killed during the attack. U.S. Capitol Officer Caroline Edwards, who sustained a brian injury during the attack is also there and currently testifying. Several family members of law enforcement who died as a result of the attack attended, including Gladys Sicknick, the mother of office Brian Sicknick.
Officers Dunn, Hodges, Gonell and Fanone, who responded to the Capitol attack, are in attendance along with the widows of the officers who died in the aftermath of 1/6.
Dunn is wearing a shirt that says: “insurrection: a violent apprising against an authority or government” pic.twitter.com/Bqr2ElFeEX
— Julie Tsirkin (@JulieNBCNews) June 9, 2022 “I was an American, standing face to face with other Americans, asking myself … how had we gotten here,” said officer Caroline Edwards.
As was working on January 6 to protect the Capitol, she was called “Nancy Pelosi’s dog”, “incompetent”, “villain”, “traitor,” she said.
“They dared to question my honor. They dared to question my loyalty. And they dared to question my duty,” she said. “I am a proud American and I will gladly sacrifice everything to make sure that the America my grandfather defended is here for many years to come”.”
Witnesses sworn inNick Quested, a film-maker who was embedded with the Proud Boys, and Caroline Edwards, a Capitol police officer vowed to testified truthfully.
Both were there as Trump supporters breached the Capitol. Edwards was knocked unconscious as the mob advanced.
Key revelations so farSam Levine
We’re a little under an hour into this hearing and already there have been a number of explosive revelations.
Here are some of the most notable:
Trump supported the assasination of Mike Pence. When he learned supporters were chanting “hang Mike Pence,” Trump said “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” Liz Cheney revealed on Thursday. “Mike Pence deserves it,” the president added. Congressman Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, inquired about a pardon after the 6 January riot. Perry played a key role in efforts to overturning the election. Ivanka Trump told the committee she was persuaded by Attorney General William Barr’s statement that there was no widespread fraud in the election. “I respect attorney general Barr, so I accepted what he was saying.” Jared Kushner dismissed the White House counsel’s threats to resign on 6 January, saying it seemed more like whining to him Attorney General William Barr told Trump his claims of a stolen election were “bullshit”. A Trump campaign lawyer told Mark Meadows in November that they weren’t finding widespread fraud. “So there’s no there there,” Meadows told the campaign lawyer.
Joan E Greve
Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat of Virginia, is in the room tonight to witness the January 6 committee’s first primetime hearing.
“I was in the House Chamber on Jan. 6 as insurrectionists tried to break down doors and law enforcement bravely fought back,” Spanberger said on Twitter. “I’ll be watching the hearing tonight, because we need accountability.”
Spanberger is a member of the so-called “Gallery Group,” the House Democrats who were in the chamber as the insurrection started. The group has become close since the January 6 attack, and several of its members planned to attend tonight’s hearing together, Axios reports.
“This was no tourist visit to the Capitol,” Bennie Thompson said, introducing graphic video of the violent mob attack on the Capitol.
Trump supporters in tactical gear and body armor are seen attacking officers. Footage shows staffers running scared through the office of Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader who has tired to downplay the insurrection.
Footage of violence is spliced with Trump saying that these were “peaceful people”.
Max Benwell
What’s happening over at Fox News at the moment? After all, they’re not carrying the January 6 hearings live (leaving them to the smaller Fox Business network).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s Tucker Carlson downplaying the attack on the Capitol, which has been connected to the deaths of at least seven people.
On Fox News, Tucker Carlson brags about being the only network not to show the Jan. 6 hearing.
He says that Jan. 6 was a “a forgettably minor outbreak” of violence and says “it was not even close to an insurrection.”
— Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) June 10, 2022 Pence’s counsel to Trump attorney John Eastman: Attack was ‘thanks to your bullshit’Cheney previewed evidence that John Eastman, a lawyer involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, who, she said “did not actually believe the legal position he was taking”.
But it revved up the mob. As the attack on the Capitol was underway, and Mike Pence’s live was being threatened, Pence’s legal counsel emailed Eastman: “Thanks to your bullshit, we are under siege.”
Email records show that Eastman showed no remorse in his response: “My “bullshit” – seriously? … The ‘siege’ is because you and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way…”
And yet, Cheney continued, “While Congress was under attack on January 6, and the hours following the violence, the Trump legal team in the Willard Hotel war room,” continuing attempts to subvert the election results.
Cheney and the committee are making the case from the start that Donald Trump’s own administration, his own allies and aides were aware that he wanted to overturn the election results.
She is also making is a focused effort to diffuse accusations that the hearings are a partisan effort. Cheney, a Republican representative of Wyoming, played a clip of testimony from Pence’s chief of staff, explaining why the former vice president ultimately resisted Trump.
For four years, Pence “I was proud to have stood beside the president,” chief of staff Marc Short said in the clip. “I think he ultimately knew that his fidelity to the Constitution was his first and foremost.”
Cheney said that Trump’s effort to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to subvert the election results “wasn’t just wrong – it was illegal and it was unconstitutional.”
More clips presented show testimony from Barr saying that there wasn’t enough to overturn the election, and a preview of an interview with Ivanka Trump.
Asked what she made of Barr’s assertion that the election result was legitimate, Trump’s daughter said: “I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying.”
Committee Vice-Chair Liz Cheney led her speech with Trump’s own words: “President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol were, and I quote, ‘doing what they should be doing’,” she said.
She referenced Trump’s reaction to rioters’ chants of “Hang Mike Pence”: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea … Mike Pence deserves it.”
“On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States, despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” she said.
‘January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup,’ Thompson said.
The first video clip we are presented is of former Attorney General Bill Barr, who calls the claims of a stolen election “bullshit”. Barr testified that he repeatedly told Donald Trump that he didn’t agree with lies that the 2020 election was stolen. “Here was the attorney general of the United States, the top law enforcement official in the country, telling the president exactly what he thought about claims of a stolen election,” Thomson said.
But the big lie that the election was stolen didn’t end there, Thompson continued. “That was only the beginning of what became a sprawling, multistep conspiracy, aimed at overturning the presidential election, aimed at throwing out the votes of millions of Americans. Your vote. Your voice.”
Bennie Thompson, chair of House committee investigating the attack, began by invoking the “dark history” of Missouri, and a time when people in power justified “the actions of slavery, the Klu Klux Klan and lynching.”
“I’m reminded of that dark history, as I hear voices today, try and justify the actions of the insurrection on January 6, 2021,” he said.
January 6 hearing beginsLawmakers who were trapped in the upper gallery of the House as rioters descended are in the audience, as are police officers who defended the Capitol.
This is the first of several hearings that are the result of a year of investigation, including interviews with 1,000 witnesses.