Panel presents Capitol attack evidence

Former President Donald Trump is expected to watch, so is President Joe Biden.
Two witnesses will testify tonight, including Caroline Edwards, an injured Capitol Police officer.
British documentarian Nick Quested, who filmed around the Capitol during the attack, will testify.
House Republicans criticize the investigation as illegitimate and partisan.

WASHINGTON – The nine House members investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack begin to unveil what they’ve learned Thursday in a primetime hearing, the wind-up to a year-long effort to uncover every detail of that day, including what former President Donald Trump did or did not do as the violence intensified and what can be done to prevent a repeat.

⏳ What got us here?: A mob of Trump supporters, in an attempt to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election, overwhelmed police, broke into the Capitol and ransacked the building in a deadly riot Jan. 6, 2021. This committee was formed to investigate the attack and produce a report, which is expected in the fall.
🖊️What is about to happen?: At 8 p.m. ET during a live hearing from the Capitol, Jan. 6 committee members promise to weave a tapestry of cooperating witness testimony, text messages and emails, pictures and video to chronicle for the American public what happened and why.
📜What’s at stake?: The committee hopes to provide the most comprehensive account yet of the riot, the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years, and recommend ways to prevent another threat to the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. The hearings come months before the midterm elections, when Republicans seek to retake control of Congress.

Bennie Thompson: Donald Trump was “the center of this conspiracy”

In case there was any doubt, committee chairman Bennie Thompson made clear the night’s main theme: President Donald Trump engineered a plot to steal the 2020 election from President-elect Joe Biden.

“Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy,” Thompson said, describing Jan. 6 as “the culmination of an attempted coup.”

Thompson pledged to show evidence to back up his claim.

– David Jackson

Barr opposed Trump’s claims 2020 election was ‘stolen’

Former Attorney General William Barr told the House panel investigating the Capitol attack he resigned in December 2020 from the Trump administration rather than challenge the election results.

Barr, who has said publicly the Justice Department found no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, said he met with then-President Donald Trump on Nov. 23, Dec. 1 and Dec. 14 to make it clear he didn’t agree with putting out the election was stolen.

“I told the president it was bull—-,” Barr said in a videotaped deposition played at the hearing. “I didn’t want to be a part of it and that’s one of the reasons that went into me leaving when I did.”

– Bart Jansen

Police officers and widows of officers who died are in attendance

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, and D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone are in the hearing room, seated behind where witnesses will testify.

Erin Smith, Serena Liebengood, and Sandra Garza – all widows of officers who died in the aftermath of Jan. 6 – are seated with them.

Dunn is wearing a shirt that shows definitions of “insurrection,” including “January 6, 2021”

– Dylan Wells

Thompson: American democracy ‘remains in danger’

The chairman of the House Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, will open Thursday’s hearing saying efforts to undermine the Constitution and thwart the will of the American people aren’t over, according to excerpts of his remarks.

Thompson, D-Miss., will say “our democracy remains in danger” and must be protected through the investigation of the Capitol attack. He said a series of hearings this month won’t just look backward at what happened Jan. 6, 2021, but also forward to protect the rule of law.

“We can’t sweep what happened under the rug,” Thompson will say. “We must confront the truth with candor, resolve and determination.”

–Bart Jansen

Who’s on the panel:Meet the members of the January 6 House select committee ahead of first public hearing Thursday

What’s is the Jan. 6 committee’s hearing schedule?

Thursday’s hearing is the first in a series of public hearings on the Jan. 6 committee’s findings.

The next hearing is Monday at 10 a.m., followed by Wednesday, also at 10 a.m. The fourth hearing will take place at 1 p.m. next Thursday.

Several more hearings are expected to be announced in the coming days.

Who’s watching?:Jan. 6 committee’s long-awaited hearings promise revelations. Will a divided US want to hear them?

– Chelsey Cox

Open minds but no high expectations at a DC watch party

At a watch party in the Taft Memorial Carillon hosted by the non-profit progressive consumer group Public Citizen, a couple hundred of attendees are anxiously and excitedly waiting for the long awaited Jan. 6 hearing.

Glenn Daigon, from North Bethesda MD, says he doesn’t want to be too excited or disappointed with how the hearing turns out: “I don’t see this as a slam dunk either way.”

But he would like to see at least some “indictments and convictions.” He says if there’s no accountability for the Capitol attack, “there’s no point” in the hearings.

– Kenneth Tran

What is Donald Trump doing during the hearing?

Don’t expect former President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence to testify –but Trump is expected to watch, according to people who have spoken with him in recent days.

Trump, a prolific and mercurial watcher of television news during his four years in the White House wants to know what the special House committee, packed with political opponents, will bring out to show to the American people, particularly since he has no allies on the committee to tip him off ahead of time, said two people who have talked with him recently and spoke on condition of anonymity about private conversations.

The original panel would have included GOP allies of Trump but House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy removed all five of his choices after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of them.

– Chelsey Cox

Trump tuned in:Who will be Jan. 6 hearing’s most avid viewer? Donald Trump, with a team ready to hit back.

Jim Jordan spurns Jan. 6 committee as Saturday subpoena deadline looms

In an 11-page letter sent to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, questioned the panel’s legitimacy and again asked its members to share the information amassed on him before he agrees to testify.

“While some courts have recognized the Select Committee’s investigation as having a legitimate legislative purpose, it does not necessarily follow that the Select Committee’s subpoena to me is in furtherance of a legitimate legislative purpose,” Jordan writes in the letter, sent the day of the committee’s first public hearing.

Jordan is one of five GOP members subpoenaed by the select committee, alongside Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; Andy Biggs of Arizona; Mo Brooks of Alabama; and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California. Jordan has until Saturday to comply with the subpoena.

– Ella Lee

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House GOP Leader McCarthy declines to address 2020 election legitimacy

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Thursday declined to say clearly whether President Joe Biden rightfully won the 2020 election.

“We’ve asked this question a long time,” McCarthy said to reporters during a press conference. “Joe Biden is the president. I think you can look that there’s a lot of problems still with the election process.”

McCarthy, who said Thursday he has answered the questions many times before, has shifted his views since the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection attempt. He suggested days after the attack that Trump resign, but has refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the committee investigating that day.

– Erin Mansfield

Biden calls Jan. 6 attack a ‘flagrant violation of the Constitution’ ahead of primetime hearing

President Joe Biden called the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol “a clear, flagrant violation of the Constitution” Thursday, hours before a House committee investigating the insurrection holds its first public hearing.

“A lot of Americans are going to see for the first time some of the details that occurred,” Biden said, giving unprompted remarks on the hearing at the beginning of a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Los Angeles at the Summit of Americas.

“I think these guys broke the law and tried to turn around the results an of election. There’s a lot of questions – who’s responsible, who’s involved? I’m not going to make a judgment on that.”

– Joey Garrison

More:Menendez: Mexico’s president tried to ‘blackmail’ Biden to invite ‘dictators’ to Americas summit

Bill Barr met with committee about Trump’s election fraud claims

A week before the first public hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee, former attorney general Bill Barr met with the panel about Trump’s claims of election fraud during the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s claims are seen by some as a catalyst for the attack on the Capitol.

Barr’s meeting focused on material in his book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General.” Though he left the Trump administration weeks before the insurrection, Barr was still the nation’s top law enforcement officer during and after the presidential election.

After a Justice Department investigation into the fraud claims, Barr told the Associated Press in December 2020 that the agency hadn’t “seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

– Chelsey Cox

First 2 witnesses are injured Capitol Police officer, documentarian

Two witnesses are expected at the first hearing. One is Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when the mob pushed her to the ground after breaking through a fence of bicycle racks outside the Capitol.

She was the first of 140 officers injured that day, according to the committee. Other officers have recalled hearing her pleas for help.

The other witness is an acclaimed British documentarian, Nick Quested, who filmed around the Capitol during the attack. The day before the riot, Quested also filmed the leaders of two far-right groups – Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who are each charged with seditious conspiracy – meeting in a parking garage near the Capitol, according to the New York Times.

More:Who invaded the US Capitol on Jan. 6? Criminal cases shed light on offenses

What Republicans are saying: Some blast committee as illegitimate, partisan

House Republicans have blasted the committee as illegitimate, partisan and a sham because of how it was set up.

The heart of the complaint is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to seat GOP Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio on the panel. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., then pulled his nominees rather than have her vet them. Pelosi then appointed nine members – including GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois – rather than the 13 authorized.

Federal courts have upheld the panel’s authority repeatedly. But Republicans argue the one-sided appointments mean there will be no meaningful cross-examination of witnesses or alternate views presented during hearings.

What we don’t know about Jan. 6:What Trump’s family told the committee, whether attack was organized

Biden plans to watch hearings

President Joe Biden is expected to watch some of Thursday’s hearing despite hosting the Summit of the Americas in California, according to White House chief of staff Ron Klain.

Biden waived executive privilege to give the committee access to Trump administration documents as part of the investigation.

“These are important hearings,” Klain told MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Wednesday. “He believes in executive privilege generally, but there is no executive privilege to overthrow the government of the United States. There is no executive privilege to protect plans on an insurrection.”

What kind of evidence does the committee have?

The panel collected more than 100,000 documents and more than 1,000 witnesses cooperated in the inquiry. Pictures and thousands of hours of video from security cameras and body-worn cameras on police officers illustrate how the violent mob smashed its way into the Capitol.

“People have gotten information in snippets over the course of a year plus, but the fact is that we’re going to tell the story in a coherent thread through the hearings,” said a committee member, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va. “It was a tragic event for our country that there were villains that day, of course. But there were people who were heroic, who through their actions really prevented a much worse outcome.”