The chairman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election is ready to open Thursday's prime-time hearing declaring the deadly attack and the lies that led to it put "two and half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said “the world is watching” the US Response to the panel's year-long investigation into the Capitol attack and the defeated president's extraordinary effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's election victory.
“America has long been expected to be a shining city on a hill. A beacon of hope and freedom,” Thompson planned to say, according to excerpts released in advance. "How can we play that role when our own house is in such disorder? We must confront the truth with candor, resolve and determination.”
The committee planned to present never-before-seen video and a mass of other evidence to show the “harrowing story” of the deadly violence that day and also a chilling backstory as Trump, the defeated president, tried to overturn Biden's election victory.
Thursday's prime-time hearing is providing eyewitness testimony from the first police officer pummeled in the mob riot and from a documentary filmmaker who tracked the extremist Proud Boys as they prepared to fight for Trump immediately after the election and then led the storming of the Capitol. The hearing is also featuring accounts from Trump aides and family members, interviewed behind closed doors.
“When you hear and understand the wide-reaching conspiracy and the effort to try to corrupt every lever and agency of government involved in this, you know, the hair on the back of your neck should stand up," Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a member of the 1/6 committee, said in an interview.
The 1/6 panel's yearlong investigation will begin to show how America's tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power came close to slipping away. It will reconstruct how Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, spread false claims of voter fraud and orchestrated an unprecedented public and private campaign to overturn Biden's victory.
Biden, in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas, said many viewers “are going to be seeing for the first time a lot of the detail that occurred.”
“I think it was a clear, flagrant violation of the Constitution,” he said.
Trump, unapologetic, dismissed the investigation anew — and even declared on social media that Jan. 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.” The result of the coming weeks of public hearings may not change hearts or minds in politically polarized America. But the committee's investigation with 1,000 interviews is intended to stand as a public record for history. A final report aims to provide an accounting of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the British set fire to it in 1814, and to ensure such an attack never happens again. The riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of pro-Trump rioters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the Capitol. At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.
Emotions are still raw at the Capitol, and security will be tight for the hearings. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.