What to watch at the first congressional hearing on the January 6 insurrection

Commission investigating insurgency to present unpublished material 2:21 (CNN) — The House select committee investigating January 6 will use its first prime-time public hearing Thursday to make the case that former President Donald Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to nullify the 2020 election and prevent the transition of power, they reported. The panel will uncover new evidence that aides say will help “connect the dots” between Trump’s election lies, his attempts to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and the violence that broke out on January 6, 2021. when rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the counting of electoral votes. Commission aides have described the first public hearing, which will take place during prime time, as the commission’s opening salvo, previewing what is to come in the month of scheduled hearings. Here’s What to Expect: New Video and Attempt to Draw a Direct Line Between Trump and Violence This Thursday, the commission plans to show previously unreleased video of testimony collected during closed-door depositions that includes interviews with White House aides. of Trump, campaign officials and members of the Trump family. Aides to the commission said they also plan to show a video to remind the public of what happened on Jan. 6 when the Capitol was invaded by a violent mob. “We’re going to bring the American people back to the reality of that violence and remind them of how horrible it was,” said an aide. The commission said the “vast majority” of the video it plans to show has not been seen publicly before.
That video will be supplemented by live testimony from two witnesses who saw the rioters up close: US Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was one of the first injured by rioters on January 6, and documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who had unique access to the militia members who participated in the attack. The commission will try to use that evidence to draw a direct line between Trump and the groups that perpetrated the violence on January 6. Commission Chairman Bennie Thompson and Vice Chairman Liz Cheney will make opening remarks and will be the ones to question witnesses on Thursday, their aides said. While the hearings won’t be the panel’s last word — a report is due later in the year — it is the panel’s highest-profile opportunity to convince the public, whose views have hardened, why they should care about what which happened on January 6. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are preparing their own counterprogramming to attack the commission’s work as a political attack on Trump. What is expected from the hearing on the assault on the Capitol? 3:15 Trump’s lobbying campaign and his inaction on January 6 Thursday’s hearing is the first in a series planned this month to illustrate what the panel’s months-long investigation into January 6 has uncovered. Aides said the initial hearing would serve to lay out a summary of the commission’s findings, which all point to Trump himself. The two witnesses who will testify this Thursday will play a key role in that opening statement. “We hope they will recount his experiences, particularly what they saw and heard from the rioters who tried to occupy the Capitol, from the rioters who tried to prevent the transfer of power,” commission aides told reporters. Future hearings are expected to be based on what happens this Thursday night. CNN previously reported that former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and his then-deputy Richard Donoghue were invited by the commission to testify during one of its public hearings. Rosen and Donoghue have previously spoken with the commission behind closed doors about Trump’s pressure campaign against top Justice Department officials to investigate baseless claims of voter fraud. Testimony provided by people close to former Vice President Mike Pence is also expected to appear, in some capacity, during the series of hearings. Trump and his allies mounted a pressure campaign against Pence to convince him to help overturn the election result, and the former vice president’s aides have detailed concerns they had about his safety before and on January 6. . The panel is also expected to focus on what Trump was doing — and not doing — as the violence on Capitol Hill unfolded, linking the former president’s inaction to his role at the center of a larger conspiracy. The commission has in its possession videos of statements with former Trump officials and members of the Trump family, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who were with the president on January 6 and can talk about what he was doing that day. Some of those images will be revealed during the first hearing, but could also appear during later presentations. Video of Trump’s inner circle The commission conducted more than 1,000 closed-door depositions as part of its investigation, including several members of Trump’s inner circle: daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner and senior House aides White Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller. Those depositions are now likely to play a key role in public hearings, even if Trump allies don’t plan to testify publicly, according to commission aides. Aides said there are currently no plans to release transcripts of the depositions, meaning the hearings will only include snippets of what was said behind closed doors. However, the video could provide a new insight into what members of the Trump family thought about the former president’s push to annul the 2020 election. The storming of the Capitol, America’s darkest day 1:12 Commission aides also noted that Thursday’s hearing will include new video of the violent attack on Capitol Hill itself. Video of the riot created some of the most dramatic moments of the 2021 Senate impeachment trial, and aides say much of the video the committee plans to show at hearings has not been previously seen. What will be missing: The opposition Although Thursday’s committee hearing will have all the trappings of a typical congressional hearing — a chairman, opening statements, witnesses — one key component will be missing: the opposition. Attendees said Thompson, a Democrat, and Cheney, a Republican, will do most of the talking during the opening hearing, showing how the commission is the product of a bipartisan effort. But although the January 6 commission is made up of five Democrats and two Republicans, they all work with the same goal of showing how Trump was at the center of the attack on Capitol Hill. That will give the commission more control over what happens on Thursday. There will be no interruptions, outbursts or bombast by opponents of the commission, as there was during the House impeachment hearings in 2019. But the setup also means it risks Thursday ending up feeling more like a long presentation than as a congressional hearing. For Trump and his allies — who have repeatedly attacked the commission as their hearings approached — criticism of them will have to come from outside. That’s not to say they don’t have a platform: Fox doesn’t plan to air the hearing this Thursday, so the network’s conservative anchors can offer real-time counter programming.