“The outcome of a coup attempt by Donald Trump”. That’s what committee chair Bennie Thompson called the storming of the Capitol in early 2021. He went on to say at the start of the first public hearing of the parliamentary committee investigating the storming that “the violence was not an accident, but Trump’s latest attempt to survive”.
Thompson is referring to the 60 lawsuits that Trump lost after his defeat in the election. “He lost in the courts, just like he did in the voting booths,” Thompson said. “For ordinary Americans it ends there, but for Donald Trump it started there.”
The commission showed pieces of interrogations of close associates of Trump. In the clips, they said they told Trump that he had lost the election and that there was no evidence of electoral fraud. Former chief prosecutor Bill Barr admitted he told Trump his allegations were “bullshit”. Despite this, Trump continued to insist that he lost wrongly.
Republican committee member Liz Cheney spoke of a “clever plan” by the then president to change the election results. She emphasized that the impetus for the storm was a tweet from Trump, in which he called on his supporters to come to the Capitol. “It’s going to get wild,” Trump wrote.
Fragments of interrogations of members of the extremist militias Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were also shown. These groups played a prominent role in the riots. The leaders met on the eve of the storming in a parking garage in Washington, according to testimonies. “Trump only asked me two things: vote for him and come on January 6 (the day of the storming, ed.),” a member of the Proud Boys told the committee.
The commission’s first public hearing began Thursday at 8 p.m. local time and will be broadcast live by major news channels. The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, chose the time to get the attention of as many Americans as possible. More hearings will be held in the coming weeks, where witnesses will be heard and investigative results presented.
Four people were killed in the storming of the Capitol on the day itself, one of whom was shot and killed by police. Four police officers involved in the defense of the complex later committed suicide. More than a hundred people were injured.
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