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Jan 6 Hearing #1

Jan 6 Hearing - 6/9/22

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Jan. 6 Committee hearings – Day 1
PBS NewsHour, June 9, 2022 – 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm (ET)
Liz Cheney says Trump ignored pleas to stop Jan. 6 violence | Jan. 6 hearings
PBS NewsHourJune 10, 2022 (33:15)
‘It was carnage. It was chaos,’ Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards says of Jan. 6 attack
PBS NewsHourJune 10, 2022 (14:05)
Liz Cheney’s huge moment
CNN, Scott JenningsJune 10, 2022

I’ve been wondering who the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot sees as its primary audience. On Thursday night, it was pretty clear: Attorney General Merrick Garland. I am sure the committee members would love to change public opinion (which hardened fairly quickly in the weeks after the attack on the Capitol) and to convince Republicans that former President Donald Trump cannot be trusted again with the presidency.

But Thursday’s hearing felt like a desperate plea to the Department of Justice to indict Trump and his co-conspirators for what was repeatedly called an “illegal” attempt to circumvent the results of the 2020 election. Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who co-chaired the committee, delivered a long presentation that felt like the opening arguments of a criminal trial. The phrase “you will hear…” was used multiple times, just the way a prosecutor would lay out an opening argument to a jury before proceeding with evidence and witness testimony.

The initial construction of the hearing may have hampered its effectiveness. Committee chairman Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson’s long speech (complete with his own personal narrative and historical anecdotes) had virtually nothing to do with the matter at hand and risked losing people who might have tuned in for something other than the usual boring congressional pablum. Thompson’s comments about the “peaceful transfer of power” rang a little hollow given that he personally voted in favor of objecting to the results in Ohio during the counting of former President George W. Bush’s electoral college votes in 2005.Thompson was always a strange choice to lead this committee, given his history of trying to interrupt a previous president’s electoral college certification.

The January 6 Committee’s Devastating Opening Statement
Dennis AftergutJune 10, 2022

The House Select Committee investigating Donald Trump’s criminal conspiracy to end our democracy delivered a withering opening argument last night. At least that’s how it looked to this former prosecutor.

The committee dramatized its first act with previously unseen video of the January 6 mob’s attacks on law enforcement; powerful testimony from Caroline Edwards, a courageous, injured Capitol police officer who described a “war scene” in which she was “slipping in other people’s blood”; and a few well-placed bombshells. More on them in a moment.

Here are four elements of the committee’s compelling “opening statement”:

The first January 6 hearing served up surprising revelations — that all point to Trump
Vox, Ben JacobsJune 10, 2022

The first hearing of the January 6 select committee lived up to the ample hype surrounding it, providing a cogent case — with compelling new details — for Donald Trump’s culpability in the violent effort to overturn the 2020 election.

The thesis of the committee’s case — that “January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup” — was laid out by Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) at the very beginning of the hearing. It was bolstered with a somber presentation carried live across broadcast and most cable networks that previewed the seven additional hearings the committee will hold in the coming weeks.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, a committee staffer said ​​the goal was to present “new details showing that violence was a result of a coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 election and stop the transfer of power and that Donald Trump was at the center of that effort.” Despite questions about whether the committee could deliver any new information — there’s been extensive reporting, not to mention an entire impeachment trial on this already — it did.

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