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A series of five scheduled hearings by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack began on June 9, 2022. The first and fifth hearing were scheduled in the evening so that they could be broadcast on prime time television.[1] House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy plans to lead a response in Congress in defense of Trump.[2]

Hearing schedule[3]
Hearing Date Day Eastern Time Video Transcript
1 June 9 Thursday 8 P.M. (ET) [4] [5]
2 June 13 Monday 10 A.M. (ET)
3 June 15 Wednesday 10 A.M. (ET)
4 June 16 Thursday 10 A.M. (ET)
5 June 23 Thursday 8 P.M. (ET)

First hearing (June 9, 2022)

The first hearing was carried live by the major broadcast television networks ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as cable channels such as C-SPAN, CNN, Fox Business Network, MSNBC, and Newsmax, as well as various live streaming outlets. Fox News did not carry the hearing live; its regular programming of Tucker Carlson Tonight and Hannity was aired without commercial breaks. During the weeks following the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity had often amplified Trump's election falsehoods on their programs; previously disclosed text messages between Hannity and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany were presented during the hearing.[6][7][1][8][9] Nielsen Media Research estimates that at least 20 million households watched the first hearing on traditional television, comparable to the average rating for NBC Sunday Night Football, which ranks as television's number one program.[10]

The committee panel noted that Donald Trump attempted to overturn a free and fair democratic election by promoting a seven-part conspiracy.[11][12] According to Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, "Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government ... The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.” Trump, according to the committee, "lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president."[11][12]

False claims of vote fraud

The committee revealed clips of videotaped testimony:

  • A senior adviser to the Trump campaign, Jason Miller, testified that Trump was internally advised he had lost the election. According to Miller, the campaign's top data aide, Matt Oczkowski, told Trump very shortly after the election "in pretty blunt terms, that he was going to lose".[13]
  • Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon testified he'd spoken to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in November 2020 soon after the election and told Meadows there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. According to Cannon, Meadows replied: "So there's no there there".[14]
  • Attorney general Bill Barr said, regarding Trump's desire to put out the message that "the election was stolen": "I told the president [it] was bullshit."[14]
  • Ivanka Trump said she "accepted" Barr's assessment.[14]
  • Jared Kushner claimed that he had deemed White House counsel Pat Cipollone to be "whining" when Cipollone and other members of his team threatened to resign on principle.[15]

Representative Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, said that Representative Scott Perry and other Republican members of Congress had "sought Presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election."[5] Jared Kushner, in his videotaped testimony, admitted to fast-tracking pardon requests during the administration's final weeks.[15]

Attack on the Capitol

Compilation of video from the January 6 attack, which was released by the committee and played during the first hearing

The committee showed video, much of it never before seen by the public, of the mob charging the Capitol and battling police. The video began with scenes of roughly 200 Proud Boys leading the assault on the Capitol. As later scenes showed a violent rampage, audio was overlaid of Trump later saying, "The love in the air. I’ve never seen anything like it." As the attack lasted several hours, the video contained timestamps to illustrate the timeline.[16]

Live, in-person testimony was given by documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys on January 6, and Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, injured in violence instigated by the Proud Boys on January 6.[17]

Quested testified that he joined the Proud Boys at the Mall at 10:30 a.m., and that the Proud Boys walked past the Capitol at 11:52 a.m. He noted there was "only one police officer on the barricades that subsequently are overrun by the protesters. We then walked around the Capitol, and then we doubled back...around 12:45, we walked over to the peace circle and we stopped." He added, "I don't know if violence was a plan, but I do know that they weren't there to attend the rally because they had already left the rally by the time the president had started his speech."[5]

The committee revealed videotaped testimony of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. According to Milley, it was Pence who directly ordered the National Guard to respond on January 6, yet the White House told him to say that the order came from Trump.[14]

Second hearing (June 13, 2022)

Former U.S. attorney from Atlanta BJay Pak is scheduled to testify. Pak resigned his position days before the January 6 attack; he later told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the White House informed him Trump would fire him if he did not publicly state his office had found election fraud in Georgia.[18][19]

Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election attorney, will testify about the failure of Trump's election lawsuits amidst the absence of any evidence of widespread fraud.[20]

Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News politics editor, will testify. Fox News was the first network to declare Biden as having won Arizona in the 2020 election; after Stirewalt defended that journalistic choice, Fox News fired him in January 2021.[21]

Al Schmidt, the Republican former city commissioner of Philadelphia will testify. He had drawn Trump's ire for refusing to publicly announce the city's election results were rife with fraud. He resigned in 2021, saying he had received death threats.[22]

Bill Stepien was subpoenaed to testify, but he canceled his appearance due to a family emergency; his attorney was to read a statement on his behalf.[23] Stepien is a longtime Republican operative who joined Trump's 2016 campaign, later becoming the White House political director, before becoming Trump's campaign manager two months before the 2020 election. He was involved in the Stop the Steal effort, including spreading false information about voting machines despite a staff memo finding the allegations were false. Stepien had provided the committee a deposition under subpoena in December 2021.[24][25]

References

  1. ^ a b Phillips, Amber (June 7, 2022). "How to watch the Jan. 6 committee hearings and what to watch for". Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 6, 2022. Retrieved June 7, 2022.
  2. ^ Zanona, Melanie; Cohen, Zachary; Nobles, Ryan (June 5, 2022). "Trump mobilizing his MAGA allies to defend him ahead of January 6 hearings". CNN. Archived from the original on June 6, 2022. Retrieved June 5, 2022.
  3. ^ US Government (June 6, 2022). "Hearings | Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol". Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Archived from the original on June 7, 2022. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  4. ^ "06/09/2022 Select Committee Hearing". House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Archived from the original on June 9, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
    • Thompson presentation at 14:17
    • Cheney presentation at 28:00
    • January 6 video at 1:02:35
    • Witness testimony at 1:24:15
  5. ^ a b c "Here's every word of the first Jan. 6 committee hearing on its investigation". NPR. June 10, 2022. Archived from the original on June 11, 2022. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
  6. ^ Mastrangelo, Dominick (June 7, 2022). "Fox News Channel won't carry coverage of prime-time Jan. 6 hearing live on its news channel,". The Hill. Archived from the original on June 7, 2022. Retrieved June 7, 2022.
  7. ^ Baragona, Justin (June 9, 2022). "Newsmax Declares It'll Cover Jan. 6 Hearing—After Star Host Says It Won't". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  8. ^ Folkenflik, David (June 10, 2022). "Only one major cable news channel did not carry the Jan. 6 hearing live: Fox News". National Public Radio. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022. As it turned out, the hearings would also have repeatedly required Fox to have broadcast flat contradictions of what many leading Fox News personalities have told their audiences in the past year and a half — including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Instead, their prime-time shows continued without commercial interruption Thursday, offering an alternate reality to a hearing that showed vivid and bloody detail of a national crisis.
  9. ^ Jamie Gangel; Jeremy Herb; Elizabeth Stuart; Brian Stelter (April 30, 2022). "CNN Exclusive: New text messages reveal Fox's Hannity advising Trump White House and seeking direction". CNN. Archived from the original on June 9, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  10. ^ Koblin, John (June 10, 2022). "At Least 20 Million Watched Jan. 6 Hearing". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  11. ^ a b Broadwater, Luke (June 9, 2022). "'Trump Was at the Center': Jan. 6 Hearing Lays Out Case in Vivid Detail". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 9, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  12. ^ a b Baker, Peter (June 9, 2022). "Trump Is Depicted as a Would-Be Autocrat Seeking to Hang Onto Power at All Costs - As the Jan. 6 committee outlined during its prime-time hearing, Donald J. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  13. ^ "Jason Miller suggests Jan. 6 committee should have included what he said next on 2020 election analysis". www.cbsnews.com. June 10, 2022. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
  14. ^ a b c d Herb, Jeremy; Cohen, Marshall; Cohen, Zachary; Rogers, Alex (January 10, 2022). "Takeaways from the prime-time January 6 committee hearing". CNN. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  15. ^ a b Haberman, Maggie (June 10, 2022). "Jared and Ivanka, Without the Power or the Masks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  16. ^ Feuer, Alan (June 9, 2022). "Three Characters at the Heart of an Unsettling Jan. 6 Narrative". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 12, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  17. ^ Feuer, Alan; Goldman, Adam (June 6, 2022). "Proud Boys Charged With Sedition in Capitol Attack". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 6, 2022. Retrieved June 6, 2022.
  18. ^ Dress, Brad (June 12, 2022). "Former Trump campaign manager to testify before Jan. 6 committee on Monday". The Hill. Archived from the original on June 13, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  19. ^ Benner, Katie (August 11, 2021). "Former U.S. attorney in Atlanta says Trump wanted to fire him for not backing election fraud claims". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 12, 2021. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  20. ^ Gangel, Jamie (June 12, 2022). "Conservative election attorney Ben Ginsberg to testify to January 6 committee on Monday". CNN. Archived from the original on June 12, 2022. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  21. ^ Vlachou, Marita (June 10, 2022). "Former Fox News Editor Says He'll Testify At Next Jan. 6 Hearing". HuffPost. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  22. ^ Dress, Brad (June 12, 2022). "Former Trump campaign manager to testify before Jan. 6 committee on Monday". The Hill. Archived from the original on June 13, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  23. ^ "Committee to focus on how Trump's 'big lie' fueled the insurrection". The Washington Post. June 13, 2022. Archived from the original on June 13, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  24. ^ Dress, Brad (June 12, 2022). "Former Trump campaign manager to testify before Jan. 6 committee on Monday". The Hill. Archived from the original on June 13, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  25. ^ Luke Broadwater; Maggie Haberman (June 12, 2022). "Trump Campaign Chief to Headline Jan. 6 Hearing on Election Lies". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 13, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.

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