What we've learned from hearings on the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, July 21, 2022. Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
WASHINGTON — Over the past six weeks, in a series of eight hearings, the select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has laid out findings from its nearly yearlong probe into former President Donald Trump’s role in the violent protest.
After interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses — from top White House aides to Trump supporters arrested for storming the Capitol — the panel has sought to make the case that the attack was provoked by the former president, who urged his supporters to descend on Washington to protest the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
“Over the last month and a half, the select committee has told the story of a president who did everything in his power to overturn an election,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the committee, said in taped remarks aired at Thursday’s eighth committee hearing. “He lied. He bullied. He betrayed his oath.”
Trump, via his personal social media platform, has pushed back against the panel’s work, calling it a “kangaroo court” while often dismissing his connection to former aides who testified before the panel.
Thursday’s eighth hearing was initially touted as the committee’s final hearing, but the panel has said it will return in September for more hearings as it continues to collect more witness testimony and evidence.
Here are five revelations we’ve learned from the summer series of hearings:
Trump was aware of weapons in the crowd
Trump was made aware on the morning of Jan. 6 that supporters gathering at the nation’s capitol were spotted with weapons including rifles and spears, but he brushed off security concerns raised by aides, saying those in the crowd were not there to harm him, according to testimony from a top aide to his chief of staff.
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump’s then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, told the committee under oath that Meadows was told by the head of Trump’s security detail that authorities surveying the crowd gathering on the National Mall to hear Trump speak at a rally had “knives, guns in the form of pistols and rifles, bear spray, body armor, spears and flagpoles … people are fastening spears onto the ends of flagpoles.”
Hutchinson, who was the featured witness in the committee’s abruptly called sixth hearing, told the panel that Trump was “furious” that security checkpoints with metal detectors were set up on the perimeter of The Ellipse where he was set to give his noon speech, had kept some of his supporters from making their way from the National Mall, closer to the rally stage.
She recounted hearing Trump say, “‘I don't even care that they have weapons, they're not here to hurt me. Take the [expletive metal detectors] away.’”
The committee repeatedly questioned Trump’s decision to urge his supporters to march to the Capitol building knowing that there were people in the crowd with weapons.
“Much of this information about the potential for violence was known or learned before the onset of the day, enough for President Trump to take steps to prevent it,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the co-chair of the committee, said during the sixth hearing. “He could, for example, have urged the crowd at the Ellipse not to march to the Capitol. He could have condemned the violence immediately once it began.”
As violence erupted, Trump ignored pleas to intervene
Republican lawmakers, longtime allies including Fox News personality Sean Hannity, White House lawyers and the president’s two eldest children all called on Trump to swiftly issue a tweet or statement condemning the emerging violence at the Capitol building. But he ignored those pleas for more than three hours, according to testimony from Thursday’s eighth hearing and text messages obtained by the committee from those in Trump’s orbit.
“President Trump sat in his dining room and watched the attack on television, while his senior-most staff, closest advisers and family members begged him to do what was expected of any American president,” said Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) at Thursday’s hearing.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the committee that as the violence unfolded, he never heard from Trump.
"You know, you're the commander in chief. You've got an assault going on the Capitol of the United States of America and there's nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?” Milley told the panel in a taped deposition that aired Thursday.
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump’s personal assistant Nick Luna and former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser Keith Kellogg, who were all with Trump at the White House as he watched ongoing coverage of the Capitol attack, all testified that Trump did not call any local or federal officials to quell the situation.
“I think that I was pretty clear that there needed to be an immediate and forceful response statement, public statement, that people need to leave the Capitol,” Cipollone told the panel.
At 4:03 p.m. nearly two hours after rioters broke through the Capitol, Trump began to film a message from the White House Rose Garden, telling those at the Capitol: “Go home, we love you, you’re very special."
Trump’s top advisers pushed back on ‘stolen election’ claims
In the days and weeks after the election, as Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani alleged cases of widespread voter fraud, members of Trump’s Cabinet, and his White House legal team pushed back on those claims.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr testified before that by early December the Justice Department had concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and in a tense White House meeting he said he told Trump that the claims of fraud were "[expletive]."
Barr said he feared Trump had "become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.”
Cipollone and White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified in separate interviews that they kept pressing Giuliani and Trump’s other outside legal advisers John Eastman and Sidney Powell to provide evidence of their allegations of fraud, including claims of voting machines rigged by foreign adversaries.
“What they were proposing, I thought was nuts,” said Herschmann in testimony aired during the seventh hearing on July 12.
Trump sought to pressure state lawmakers, Justice Department
In the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Trump and his legal advisers sought to pressure state lawmakers in certain battleground states, including Arizona and Georgia, to stop the state certification of election results, according to testimony from Republican officials in those states.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers testified during the fourth hearing on June 21 that he received a call from Trump days after the election urging him to replace the state’s set of electors with electors who would support Trump.
“I said, ‘Look, you’re asking me to do something that is counter to my oath,” Bowers said.
Senior Justice Department officials also testified during the fifth hearing on June 23 that Trump pushed the agency unsuccessfully to declare there was widespread voter fraud.
Richard Donoghue, a longtime senior Justice Department attorney, told the panel that Trump pressed senior officials to say the election was “corrupt,” but they told the president none of their investigations turned up evidence backing up widespread fraud.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a member of the committee, said at the hearing: “From the Oval Office, President Trump urged others to bring his ‘big lie’ to life. He didn’t care what the department’s investigation proved. What good were facts when they only confirmed his loss?”
More hearings to come in September
Cheney on Thursday confirmed that additional hearings will be held in September when the committee also expects to release a more exhaustive written report.
“We have far more evidence to share with the American people, and more to gather,” Cheney said.
Thompson, chairman of the committee, told reporters that the panel will likely release a preliminary report in September, but did not say whether the panel’s work would continue through to November’s general election.
"We're just getting a significant amount of information we didn't have access to,” Thompson said.
The panel is pressing the Secret Service to recover text messages and phone records from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 that Secret Service officials have said were lost during a pre-scheduled system migration weeks after the attack.
The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security has launched a criminal probe into the missing text messages, according to CNN and NBC, which first confirmed the news on Thursday.
Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.
