The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol held its first prime-time hearing on Thursday.
During the nearly two-hour hearing, the House select committee placed former president Donald Trump at the center of an “attempted coup” and “multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election,” with the panel’s chairs emphasizing how Trump and his allies repeatedly tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Never-before-seen footage and graphic testimony from a Capitol Police officer, who described the crowd as an “absolute war zone,” brought some in the hearing room to tears, as the committee laid out how it will explain in subsequent hearings a “sophisticated seven-part plan” by Trump to steal the election.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the 11-month-long investigation with more than 1,000 interviews revealed that Trump was “well aware” of the violence at the Capitol and security risk to Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers but chose to do nothing.
“Not only did President Trump refuse to tell the mob to leave the Capitol, he placed no call to any element to the United States government to instruct at the Capitol be defended,” she said. “The vice president — Pence — did each of those things.”
Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after rioters knocked her to the ground, described in detail what she called a “an absolute war zone” as officers struggled to hold the line.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding. They were throwing…I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood,” she said.
“I was catching people as they fell…It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw,” she added. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think as as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”
Source-ABC
