Lying Conman Wanker Trump ‘Lit the Flame’ for Riot, Cheney Says
"EXPLAINER: Hundreds charged with crimes in Capitol attack"
The bipartisan House panel investigating the attack, led by Representatives Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, opened its landmark series of public hearings by making the case for a methodical conspiracy led by former President Donald J. Trump.
Video - 1:43 Jan. 6 Committee Blames Trump for Attack on Capitol
Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, led the first hearing on the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which included testimony from a Capitol police officer and a documentary filmmaker. Kenny Holston for The New York Times
Luke Broadwater
The Jan. 6 hearings put Trump at the center of the plot that resulted in the Capitol riot.
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The other witness on Thursday was Nick Quested, an Emmy Award-winning British documentarian who was embedded with the Proud Boys during the riot, filming footage with the group’s blessing.
Video - 0:48 Documentarian Embedded With Proud Boys Recounts Jan. 6 Riot
Nick Quested, an Emmy-award winning British documentarian, described to House committee members
the violence he witnessed during the attack on the Capitol. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Quested had been following the Proud Boys during the months after the 2020 election, attending a number of rallies and meetings, including one between the Proud Boys’ former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, the day before the riot.
In his account, Mr. Quested helped describe the mood on the other side of the demonstrations, where he said he had followed “a couple of hundred” Proud Boys, some from as far away as Arizona, marching on the Capitol.
“I was surprised at the size of the group, the anger and the profanity,” he said. “And, for anyone who didn’t understand how violent that event was, I saw it. I documented it.”
The contrasting testimonies of Mr. Quested and Ms. Edwards helped complement video clips played in between them that showed furious groups of demonstrators blowing through barricades and anxious police officers retreating.
Mr. Quested’s testimony, in particular, helped set the stage for coming hearings, which are expected to home in on the role extremist groups and other political agitators played in inspiring the riot.
“The atmosphere was much darker at this date than it had been,” he said.
3 hours ago
Michael S. Schmidt
In a preview of what we could see at the next hearing, the committee played a clip of Trump’s spokesman, Jason Miller, testifying about how Trump had been told by a campaign aide in the Oval Office in the days after the election that he was going to lose the election.
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3 hours ago
Michael S. Schmidt
The next hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday and will focus on how even though Donald J. Trump was told by aides that he lost the election, and it was not stolen, he still continued to push that lie to his supporters. “In our second hearing, you will see that Donald Trump and his advisers knew that he had in fact lost the election,” Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, said in her opening statement. “But despite this, President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information.”
3 hours ago
Emily Cochrane
Chairman Thompson, speaking on CNN, says “we made a conscious effort to only put on what we could prove,” including the videos and tweets from former President Trump. He says “we are building a case based on the facts and circumstances that our investigation determines.”
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3 hours ago
Emily Cochrane
The committee also teased a number of revelations — including that a number of House Republicans apparently sought presidential pardons in the days after Jan. 6. It will be interesting to see the testimony and basis for those, particularly after those pointed clips of Bill Barr, members of Trump’s family, and other White House aides acknowledging the undeniable truth that the 2020 election was fairly won by President Biden.
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3 hours ago
Catie Edmondson
Despite a trove of reporting on what happened on Jan. 6 and in the lead up to the attack on the Capitol, this hearing delivered several new, indelible moments of horror. Among them: Ms. Edwards testifying that she was “slipping in people’s blood” outside the Capitol that day, and Ms. Cheney reading testimony that Mr. Trump agreeing with the rioters that his vice president “deserved” to be hung for refusing to overturn the election.
3 hours ago
Carl Hulse
There is no doubt who the committee wants held responsible for the assault on the Capitol: Donald J. Trump. That was made very clear in the prime-time proceeding.
3 hours ago
Alexandra Berzon
An important backdrop as the hearings continue next week is that the vast majority of Republicans still believe the election was stolen, and that number has stayed steady.
4 hours ago
Emily Cochrane
Cheney says Scott Perry and other G.O.P. House members sought pardons.
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Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, sought a presidential pardon after the Jan. 6 riot. Stefani Reynolds for
The New York Times
The House committee suggested it had evidence that multiple House Republicans, including Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, had sought presidential pardons after the Jan. 6 riot for their efforts to challenge and overturn the 2020 election.
“Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after Jan. 6 to seek a presidential pardon,” Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, said. “Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”
She did not provide details regarding the basis for the assertion. In an email, Jay Ostrich, a spokesman for Mr. Perry, who has declined to testify before the committee, called the assertion “a ludicrous and soulless lie.”
While Mr. Perry is known to have played a key role in undermining the 2020 election and in Mr. Trump’s efforts to resist a peaceful transfer of power, Ms. Cheney’s comments appeared to be the first time the committee had publicly confirmed Mr. Perry’s efforts to seek a pardon.
The committee had previously said it was aware of an effort to secure a pardon, including in a letter to Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, who they said had been identified as a “potential participant.”
Former White House staff members, the committee wrote in the letter, had “identified an effort by certain House Republicans after Jan. 6 to seek a presidential pardon for activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
Committee members had said they wanted more information about the request, why it was made and what the scope of the potential pardon was. It was also unclear whether Mr. Biggs or other Republicans had directly approached Mr. Trump with the request.
Mr. Biggs, at the time the letter was sent, declined to answer questions about the potential pardons.
4 hours ago
Michael S. Schmidt
What we learned in the second hour of the hearing: The Proud Boys and attacks on the police were the focus.
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