House committee probing Capitol Hill attack commences first of 6 televised hearings today

The House Select Committee probing the January 6 attack on US Capitol Hill commenced its first of the six prime time hearings on Thursday. The session opened with a video of former US President Donald Trump's second attorney general William Barr outlining before the panel how he clashed with Trump over accusations of election fraud, Wall Street Journal reported. The Select Committee members, comprising 7 Democrats and 2 Republicans, aimed at making a case to prove Trump tried to incite his followers and wrongly accused the elections of being "rigged," hindering the smooth transfer of power.

The hearing based on the year-long investigation of the incident leading up to the security breach of a federal building began at 8 pm (Washington time), lasting for less than two hours. In massive revelations, Committee chairman Bennie Thompson (Democrat from Mississippi) and Vice Chairman Liz Cheney (Republican from Wyoming) presented that then, it was US Vice President Mike Pence and not Trump who called for military action to defend the US Capitol. "Trump placed no call to any element of the US government to instruct that the Capitol be defended," Cheney said, as per WSJ.

Quoting testimony of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark, she added that Pence issued "very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that." Both the committee chairman and vice chairman alleged that, based on the findings, Trump was "at the center" of the coordinated attack to reverse the 2020 US Presidential elections, CNBC reported.

'Shocking and infuriating even after a year and a half' 

On an eventful first day, the jury showed new videos from the day of the riot and listened to testimony from Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a grave head injury during the violence. In her testimony, officer Edwards claimed that she was called "(US House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi's dogs, incompetent...and a traitor." Sad over being questioned about her patriotism, she stood her ground saying: "In actuality, I was none of those things. I was an American standing face to face with other Americans asking myself many times, many, many times, how we had gotten here. I had been called names before but never had my patriotism or duty been called into question.”

In a tense room, the kin of the victims of the ghastly attack watched a replay of the day in graphic footage. "It is shocking and infuriating even after a year and a half," said Dean Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota, as quoted by WSJ. Unseen footage of the chaos and events leading up to it led lawmakers to break down into tears as the hearing session continued. "I never imagined that in doing our jobs that we would not be safe and that we would feel so helpless at the moment to protect our democracy," Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, was quoted as saying by WSJ.

As the session adjourned on Thursday, the prime-time hearing saw eye-opening testimonies of first responders who were pummeled in the riot. The jury watched a documentary by a filmmaker tracking the extremist 'Proud Boys', who contributed to events leading up to the Capitol Hill attack. "Putting it all together in one place and one coherent narrative, I think, will help the American people understand better what happened on January 6th and the threats that that could potentially pose in the future," Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a member of the 1/6 committee, said in an interview.

(Image: AP/Unsplash)