Highlights from the Seven Prior House Select Committee Hearings on January 6th
Tonight’s prime time coverage of the 8th January 6th hearing will include never-before heard radio calls for assistance from former Vice President Mike Pence’s detail during the insurrection at the Capitol (Courtesy of the January 6th Select Committee/Official Government Photo).
With mountains of bolstering evidence and the eighth Committee hearing on the horizon, we look back at the seven previous hearings and highlight the most profound evidence shared. So far we know that tonight’s Committee hearing will add an additional layer of understanding to the insurrection and the former president’s plans and intentions.
Article by Emily Barkann, Chief White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON - The House Select Committee on January 6th will hold a live hearing tonight, July 21st, during prime time. This is the eighth and last planned summertime hearing and “will focus on the 187 minutes between when former President Donald Trump’s Ellipse speech on Jan. 6 ended and his prerecorded video asking protesters to go home posted to Twitter later that afternoon,” according to NPR. The committee will hear testimony from two former White House officials, former National Security Council member Matthew Pottinger and one-time Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, according to reports from NPR. The hearing will not focus on the highly discussed Secret Service text messages from January 5th and 6th.
In the previous seven hearings the public has learned an abundance of information surrounding the January 6th insurrection and the Trump administration’s involvement in the coordination and attack during that day.
For most of hearing seven, the Committee focused upon a Trump tweet from December 2020 in which the former president claimed that it was “statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” despite numerous members of his administration informing him that he had lost the election. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” the former president continued, “Be there, will be wild!” The committee made clear that they believe the tweet was a “call to arms.” “President Trump’s tweet drew tens of thousands of Americans to Washington to form the angry crowd that would be transformed on Jan. 6 into a violent mob,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). The committee also provided video testimony of former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone stating that he was “vehemently opposed” to appointing Sidney Powell as Special Counsel to oversee the seizure of voting machines in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. To finish the hearing, the Committee provided live testimony from one man who pleaded guilty to participating in the insurrection and entering the Capitol building, Stephen Ayres, and a former member of the Oath Keepers, Jason Van Tatenhove, who spoke to the legitimacy of right-wing radicalization.
During the sixth Committee hearing on June 28th, Cassidy Hutchison, the 26-year-old former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified that the former president had significant involvement in the insurrection. On the morning of January 6th, Hutchison told the Committee that staffers notified Trump that weapons were confiscated from some of his supporters at the rally. Trump told his staffers to “take the mags away,” in reference to metal detectors because the people in attendance were “not here to hurt” him. Trump then reportedly had hoped to march to the Capitol, but when Robert Engel, the Secret Service agent in charge on January 6th, told Trump that it was not safe for him, he screamed, “I’m the f**king President. Take me up to the Capitol now,” according to Hutchison’s recounting of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato’s story. Then, Trump “reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” Hutchison recounted. Trump then lunged at Engel, according to Hutchison’s recounting of Ornato’s story. In the sixth hearing, Hutchison also alluded to some of Trump’s spats of violent anger. “I remember hearing noise coming from down the hallway…The President was extremely angry at the attorney general’s…interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall…I grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off the wall,” explained Hutchison when discussing Trump’s state of mind post-election.
In hearing five, former Acting Attorney General Jeffery Rosen, former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and the former head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel testified that Trump heavily pressured the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election. The House Committee also learned that several Republican lawmakers who aided the former president requested pardon arrangements from top White House officials. Extremely damning testimony was presented to the Committee, exemplifying President Trump’s repeated attempts to sway the Department of Justice into corroborating his story that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue informed the Committee that President Trump was convinced that there was a 60-percent ballot error rate. When the real error rate was calculated, it was .0063 percent, which is “well within tolerance,” Donoghue stated.
One month ago today, on day four of the hearings, the Committee featured testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his deputy Gabe Sterling, Arizona House of Representatives Speaker Rusty Bowers and other Republican officials. This hearing was multi-faceted with several important bits of information. “These officials testified about their unwillingness to participate in legally dubious schemes that would undermine the election, including efforts to subvert the Electoral College with fake pro-Trump electors,” reported CNN. The Committee also broke down Trump’s direct involvement with efforts to “put forward slates of fake electors in key battleground states—a key part of the broader effort to overturn Biden’s legitimate election victory,” according to CNN. This hearing largely covered the attempts to overthrow the election, but also focused upon Trump’s lackluster integrity and tendency to lie. “No matter how many times senior Department of Justice officials, including his own attorney general, told the President that these allegations were not true, President Trump kept promoting these lies and put pressure on state officials to accept them,” stated Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
The third Committee hearing focused primarily on Trump’s attempts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to assist in the overturning of the presidential election. During this hearing, the panel provided graphics that described how dire of a situation the former Vice President was in as insurrectionists breached the Capitol building and came nearly forty feet from him with the intent to cause serious bodily harm. Despite the Committee shedding Pence in a positive light and emphasizing his heroic actions in not helping Trump, it was hard to miss that Pence was absent from the hearing.
In day two of the January 6th House Committee hearings, the panel handsomely built upon their first day of testimony with more taped testimony from Trump’s “campaign advisers and lawyers,” said NPR. The panel described the political climate within the administration, with an account from Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, that some people within the Trump campaign referred to themselves as “Team Normal” as opposed to the ever-unstable “Team Trump.” Another account from former Attorney General Bill Barr relayed that Trump became “detached from reality” and did not listen to professional aids within the campaign and administration.
The first January 6th House Committee hearing aired in early June during a primetime television spot. The panel began with a 12-minute video of the violence from the insurrection, and shared testimony from Trump’s “most inner circle,” according to PBS. The panel aimed to lay out a clear argument that the former president is responsible for the undeniable attacks on democracy and must face implications for his actions. One of the most stunning revelations from the first hearing was “when [Liz] Cheney read an account that said when Trump was told the Capitol mob was chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged, Trump responded that maybe they were right, that he ‘deserves it,’” according to PBS.
The eighth hearing will absolutely provide further insight into the January 6th insurrection. With the previously mentioned Secret Service text messages suddenly in the fore focus, it seems as though this is only the beginning. Tune into the eighth House Committee hearing tonight at 8 p.m. EST.