Jan. 6 Committee Hearing: Riot Defendants Say Trump ‘Asked’ Them To Storm Capitol

Breaking Business Jan. 6 Committee Hearing: Riot Defendants Say Trump ‘Asked’ Them To Storm Capitol Nicholas Reimann Forbes Staff I cover national politics, with a focus on Donald Trump. Jun 9, 2022, 10:17pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Topline The January 6 committee closed out its first primetime hearing Thursday with a video montage of convicted and alleged rioters claiming former President Donald Trump “asked” them to go to the Capitol on January 6, in a night of bombshell revelations on both the Capitol riot and Trump’s months-long push to overturn his election loss.

Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U. S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, in Washington.

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[+] (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images) Getty Images Key Facts Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss. ), chair of the committee, said Trump “energized” far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to storm the Capitol weeks before the January 6 riot, when he tweeted that his supporters should travel to D.

C. and said: “Be there, will be wild!. ” Nick Quested, a documentary filmmaker who was following the Proud Boys, said in live testimony to the committee that members of the extremist group started moving toward the Capitol before Trump finished his speech at a “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House—marching toward Capitol Hill by the “hundreds.

” Among other jarring revelations during the two-hour hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo. )—the committee’s vice chair—said former President Donald Trump told White House staffers on January 6 the rioters were “doing what they should be doing,” and he responded to rioters’ chants to hang Vice President Mike Pence by saying Pence “deserves it.

” Despite harried efforts by White House staff, Trump was hesitant to call off the rioters, and he didn’t place any calls to agencies like the Department of Defense to ask for help resecuring the Capitol, Cheney said. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said in recorded testimony that Pence took charge and asked for National Guard support during a phone call on the day of the riot, while Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows primarily focused on the riot’s political ramifications.

Following the storming of the Capitol, Cheney said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa. ) was one of “multiple” members of Congress who asked for pardons (it’s not clear why Perry would want a pardon, but he reportedly pushed Trump to install Jeffrey Clark—an obscure Justice Department official who supported Trump’s false voter fraud claims—as attorney general).

Cheney said in the days following the riot, members of Trump’s cabinet discussed invoking the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which spells out a process for the cabinet to sideline the incumbent president. The committee also looked at Trump’s effort to overturn the election results: Lawmakers played testimony of former Attorney General Bill Barr calling Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election “bulls***,” along with a video of the former president’s daughter Ivanka Trump saying she “accepted” Barr’s position there was no widespread fraud. Cheney says White House Counsel Pat Cipollone “threatened to resign multiple times” in the weeks preceding the riot because he was concerned the Trump Administration’s behavior was illegal—though in videotaped testimony to lawmakers, Trump’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner said he interpreted these threats to quit as “whining.

” Thompson said the attack on the Capitol was part of a “conspiracy to thwart the will of the people,” calling the assault an “insurrection” that “put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk. ” Surprising Fact Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who the committee said was the first officer injured on January 6, described a “warzone” at the Capitol filled with “hours of hand-to-hand combat” between police and rioters, who Edwards said attacked police with pepper spray and tear gas. Crucial Quote “It was carnage.

It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw,” Edwards said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.

” Key Background The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, began its investigation into the attack last summer. It has interviewed dozens of former Trump staffers as part of its probe, which has largely centered on determining Trump’s role in the riot. The former president and many of his supporters have slammed the investigation as a politically driven witch hunt, and some Trump allies have resisted cooperating with the committee.

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