In its first public hearing, the US House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol presented a clear division of responsibility on Thursday evening. Then-President Trump incited his supporters into a “wild” protest against the ratification of Joe Biden’s election victory. “He lit the flames of this attack,” said commissioner Liz Cheney. The right-wing fighting group Proud Boys then led the physical assault on the House of Representatives in Washington.
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Instead of getting lost in the two-hour session with a series of names of those involved in the preparations for this attack, the committee limited itself via videos and interrogations to a sketch of (the reason for) the violence on that day. “It looked like a war zone,” said one policewoman, still shocked.
The reason was that President Trump would not admit his election defeat, no matter how many people close to him told him that he had really lost. In short excerpts from previous interrogations, the commission showed testimonies from, among others, former Attorney General William Barr and Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka. Barr called Trump’s conspiracy theories about voter fraud “complete nonsense” and “completely baseless.” And Ivanka Trump told the commission that she “respected” Barr and “accepted” his statement.
‘Stain on your blazon’
They were emphatic efforts by a Democratic Party-dominated committee to convince the general public that not only Trump’s opponents saw through his “big lie,” but also his (former) stalwarts. They also showed an excerpt from a speech by Vice President Mike Pence, who said he could not single-handedly invalidate the election results, as Trump had wanted Pence to do on January 6.
The major role played by Liz Cheney in this first public hearing served the same function. She is one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee, which is why she has disgraced her party. She has to fight for her political existence as a Wyoming representative during the August primaries, and Trump is putting all his weight into making her lose.
Yet she is still a Republican delegate, which sharpened her condemnation of her fellow party members “who defend the indefensible”: “One day Donald Trump will be gone. But then this stain will still be on your reputation.”
Also read: Republican Party Continues to Struggle with Trump’s Legacy and Capitol Storming
Commission chair Bennie Thompson said in his opening remarks that the current deniers of what happened on January 6 remind him of the people who in the past “explained” slavery, lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan.
Committee members had hinted beforehand that this first of a series of public sessions was primarily intended to show Americans once again how close the country had come to a coup that day. The assault videos and the testimony of Officer Caroline Edwards were intended to convey that idea. Edwards talked about agents being covered in blood or vomiting. The montages showed images of the raging crowd hitting the officers with ice hockey sticks, iron bars and flagpoles.
lure Trump out of the tent
There was indeed some new information presented. For example, after Jan. 6, some Republican delegates are said to have asked Trump for a presidential pardon – something the spokesperson for named Representative Scott Perry immediately labeled a “disfigured and soulless lie.”
Cheney also outlined what will be presented in upcoming hearings, the next of which is Monday. “You will hear President Trump yelling and being ‘very angry with his advisers who told him to do more [om de menigte weg te laten gaan bij het Capitool, red.]† And when he heard the rioters say ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ sang, the president replied along this line: “Maybe our supporters are right.” Maybe Mike Pence ‘deserves’ this.”
The question is whether the hearings can change people’s minds about the events. The idea that Biden won the election thanks to fraud is fairly widely accepted among Republican voters. During the broadcast, the Twitter account of Republican representatives on the Justice Committee wrote: “Everyone. Old. News.’ Trump-promoting Fox News was the only TV channel that did not broadcast the hearing live. Yet their programs also always talked about the January 6 committee and how it had been ‘exposed as a partisan get-together’ with ‘false claims and large gaps’.
An analyst had said in advance that the Republicans, who as a party are not cooperating in this investigation into the attack on the rule of law, will do their best to ignore the committee as much as possible. The only uncertain factor, he thought, was Donald Trump. Would the former president, notorious for his thin skin and long toes, manage not to respond to what the committee says about him? The first night’s indictment seemed tailored to Trump and almost intended to provoke a response.
The ex-president’s response came shortly after the hearing concluded around midnight Eastern time yesterday. On his Truth Social channel, the social medium Trump started after he was banned from Twitter, he called the committee members biased and accused them of not presenting “positive witnesses and statements” that support his allegations of voter fraud. He also lashed out at the TV documentary maker who has engaged the committee to present her message in a visually appealing way. Trump: “Our country is in such huge trouble.”