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| 6.9.22

Watch & Comment: January 6th Committee Holds Public Hearing in Primetime

How do you feel about the January 6th committee hearing?

Key Takeaways

  • The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol held a primetime hearing Thursday night.
  • The hearing featured a number of audio and video clips of former President Donald Trump’s advisors going through depositions. 
  • Those clips included Attorney General William Barr saying he told then-President Donald Trump his claims about election fraud were “bulls---”; Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, saying she believed Barr’s statements that there wasn’t widespread voter fraud; and Jared Kushner, Trump’s advisor and son-in-law, saying that White House counsel threatening to resign over Trump’s efforts to overturn the election amounted to “whining”.
  • Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) were the only members of the panel to speak during the hearing. Thompson said in his opening remarks, “January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup. A brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after January 6, ‘to overthrow the government.’” Cheney said that during the course of the January 6th riot, President Trump never called on any federal agency to secure the Capitol and that it was Vice President Pence attempting to do so.
  • Thompson and Cheney were also the only members to ask questions of the committee’s two witnesses, Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and filmmaker Nick Questad. Edwards suffered a concussion and was pepper-sprayed during the Capitol riot. Questad was filming a documentary with the Proud Boys as they marched to storm the Capitol, and some of the footage that was aired publicly for the first time tonight was recorded by him.
  • A clip from Questad's film captured Edwards being knocked down by the mob and hitting her chin on a handrail and the back of her head on concrete steps, which knocked her unconscious.
  • The select committee’s next hearing will be at 10 a.m. Monday, June 13th. It will be focused on the unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud made by Trump in the lead-up to January 6th. The third hearing, which will be held on June 15th, will focus on efforts by Trump to replace Dept. of Justice leadership after they refused to use the agency’s authority to try to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the election. 
  • The date of the fourth hearing is yet to be announced, although it will focus on the pressure campaign President Trump and his allies mounted against Vice President Pence. In all, there will be seven total hearings, and the final two will be about Trump summoning his supporters and instructing them to march on the Capitol. 

The original pre-hearing article appears below.

What’s the story?

  • The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to hold a primetime hearing Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern. 
  • Thursday’s hearing is expected to feature new video and audio of the Capitol riot, along with evidence showing a “coordinated, multistep effort” led by then-President Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election amid his unproven claims of widespread election fraud. A select committee aide told NBC will the hearing will “change history”.
  • It's expected to include a focus on the days leading up to the January 6th riot, which interrupted the certification of the Electoral College, and may include clips from depositions the committee has conducted.
  • The hearing is expected to last about an hour and a half, and the select committee retained a former ABC News executive for production help, so the viewing experience may be slightly different than the typical congressional hearing seen on C-SPAN. 
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Thursday at a press conference that members of the select committee “have been hard at work doing their patriotic duty to seek the truth, and we will see that revealed.” Pelosi went on to say that she has “kept my distance” from the committee since it began its work, and explained what her expectations are for the hearing:
“I believe that tonight will be sort of an opening of the narration - the narrative of what happened as an assault on our Democracy, on our Constitution, on our Capitol, on our Congress in a very violent way for a specific purpose: to undermine the Constitution of the United States on a day set aside for the peaceful transfer of power.”
  • Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spoke at a press conference Thursday and called the select committee “the most political and least legitimate committee in American history.” He also criticized two of the Democrats on the select committee, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) for objecting to election results in 2005 and 2017, and added: 
“The future of our nation rests on the ability of Americans to trust our political system, to have safer streets, to have affordable food and gas, and to have confidence that elected officials are listening to real concerns. Democrats are using January 6 to avoid accountability for making the nation less safe and less prosperous.”
  • McCarthy is one of the five lawmakers who has been subpoenaed by the select committee. The others are Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Mo Brooks (R-AL). 
  • The select committee’s investigation has also led to several individuals being held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas for information. Former Trump advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were indicted by the Dept. of Justice (DOJ) due to the contempt charges, while the DOJ declined to prosecute Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino.

Committee Controversy

  • The January 6th select committee has been a source of controversy since its inception in the summer of 2021. Earlier efforts to form a 9/11-style independent commission fell apart after Democrats wanted to retain the power to appoint all of its staffers and Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate. 
  • That led the House to create the select committee and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appointed Democrats plus Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who had been an outspoken critic of Trump’s efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election. 
  • Pelosi then rejected two of McCarthy’s GOP picks for the committee ― Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) ― which was contrary to prior precedent in the House. 
  • The speaker then added Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) to the committee, which then began its work with just her selections on the committee.


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— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: Tyler Merbler via Flickr / Creative Commons