As U.S. Capitol Attack Hearings Open, Republican Says Trump 'Lit The Flame'

The chairman of the congressional panel probing the deadly 2021 U.S. Capitol attack by Donald Trump's supporters on Thursday opened the hearings into the causes of the violence by accusing the former president of being at the center of a conspiracy to thwart democracy.

After almost a year of investigation, the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack showed videotaped testimony from senior Trump White House officials and campaign officials.

"Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one writer put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government," Democratic U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee's chairman, said in his opening statement. "The violence was no accident. It was Trump's last stand."

One of the two Republicans on the committee, its vice chair Representative Liz Cheney, opened by blaming Trump for the violence that followed his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

"Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: That the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president," Cheney said. "President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack."

Since leaving office last year, Trump has kept up his false claims that his 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud, an assertion that has been rejected by multiple courts, state election officials and members of his own administration.

Indeed, the first video testimony shown during the hearing was an interview with William Barr, who served as Trump's attorney general, saying that he had told Trump he did not believe the election was stolen, calling those claims "bullshit."

"We can't live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that there was fraud in the election," said Barr, who resigned before Trump left office.

Close Trump associates who have spoken to the committee include his son Donald Jr., daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Attorney General William Barr and senior aides to former Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump, publicly flirting with another White House run in 2024, called the committee in a statement on Thursday "political Thugs."

The hearing also will feature two in-person witnesses, U.S. Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, who sustained a traumatic brain injury in the attack, and Nick Quested, a filmmaker who captured footage of the far-right Proud Boys group, accused of planning the deadly attack.

Other Capitol Police officers who fought with rioters on Jan. 6 were present in the audience for the hearing including Officer Harry Dunn, who wore a T-shirt bearing the word "insurrection" and Officer Michael Fanone, who was beaten and electrocuted with a taser during the attack. Some House Democrats who are not panel members also attended.

A total of six hearings are expected this month as the Democratic-led committee attempts to reverse Republican efforts to downplay or deny the violence of the attack, with five months to go until the Nov. 8 midterm elections that will determine which party controls both the House and the Senate for the following two years.

The pro-Trump mob sought to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's victory, attacking police and causing millions of dollars in damage. Four people died the day of the attack, one fatally shot by police and the others of natural causes. More than 100 police officers were injured, and one died the next day. Four officers later died by suicide.

The committee wants to make the case not just that the attack was planned with the cooperation of members of Trump's inner circle, but that there is an ongoing threat to U.S. democracy.

Biden on Thursday described the attack as "a clear, flagrant violation of the Constitution," telling reporters: "I think these guys and women broke the law, tried to turn around the result of an election."

PARTISAN LENS

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday underscored the partisan lens through which many Americans view the assault. It found that among Republicans about 55% believed the false claim that left-wing protesters led the attack and 58% believed most of the protesters were law-abiding.

Two Republican Georgia state election officials who Trump tried to pressure to "find" votes that would overturn his election defeat will testify to the hearings later this month, a source familiar with the matter said.

Some congressional Republicans criticized Trump in the first days after the attack, but since then almost all have shifted their tone.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday called the committee a "smokescreen" for Democrats to push dramatic changes to voting laws. "It is the most political and least legitimate committee in American history," McCarthy said.