What did the President do and when did he do it?

There has never been a hearing in the United States Congress like it in terms of content and drama

The United States house of Representatives Select Committee To Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol began to report to the American people what happened on that fateful day. The Capitol was attacked with the intent of stopping the Congress from fulfilling its constitutional responsibility to certify the 2020 presidential election and ensure the peaceful transfer of power. 

At the heart of their inquiry is the objective of discovering, and documenting, this decisive question with respect to the insurrection:  What did the President do, and when did he do it?  

The committee’s chairman, Rep Bennie Thompson of Mississippi (who is about to become a folk hero to audiences across the country) gave a history lesson in his opening remarks, drawing on the issues of race, voting and the imperative of preserving the Union and its democracy, from Lincoln to Trump. 

Thompson said that the president of the United States was trying to stop the transfer of power. Thompson said that Trump was at the centre of this conspiracy, and that January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup to overthrow the government.  “We must confront the truth,” Thompson said.

In terms of drama, the hearing presented hard evidence, with cinematic force, of how that day unfolded, and to document that the President had been repeatedly told, in the days following the November 3, 2020, election, that he had lost the election, and must abide by its result.

This, Trump refused to do.

Rep Liz Cheney. Republican of Wyoming, and vice chair of the committee, has been ostracised and vilified by her party for supporting and helping to direct this investigation. Cheney said there was evidence that Trump was complacent about threats made by the mob to hang Vice President Mike Pence.

She said that those who attacked the Capitol were provoked by what Trump had been telling them for weeks and were motivated by what Trump said earlier that day at the rally on the Ellipse. Cheney said that Trump knew he had lost the election, that the Trump staff told him he had lost the election, and showed video of Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, saying that she sided with the judgment of the Attorney General that the election was not stolen, and was not marred by fraud.

There were many other revelations: that Trump spent millions in a campaign of misinformation on the outcome of the election that led the violence, that several members of Congress sought pardons from Trump in the wake of their efforts in support his intent to overturn the election, that on January 6 Trump refused for hours requests that he tell the mob to leave the Capitol.

The first-hand testimony of Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, relating how she was attacked and saw her colleagues viciously assaulted, was harrowing.

In Monday’s hearings, former Attorney General Bill Barr said that Trump was delusional in his judgment of the election result – that Trump was “detached from reality.” Trump’s delusions drove all his efforts to campaign with his supporters to “stop the steal.” Trump raised hundreds of millions of dollars from his loyalists to prosecute his cause.

What is clear is that what the President did in the weeks following the election, and on January 6, almost ended America’s democracy.

Even the editors of the Wall Street Journal, one of Trump’s strongest supporters through his presidency, refuse to be blinded further.  This was their judgment over the weekend:

“The person who owns Jan. 6 is Donald Trump. Remarkably, he seems to welcome this. “January 6th was not simply a protest,” he wrote Thursday on Truth Social, “it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”

Pity the people who went to Washington believing this nonsense, not least the more than 800 who have been charged with criminal offenses. Thursday’s hearing ended with video of rioters explaining their thinking, as their criminal charges flashed on the screen. “I did believe that the election was being stolen,” one man said, “and Trump asked us to come.” Mr. Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on Jan. 6, and he is still doing it.”

Throughout this month, the Select Committee will show us what the President did in his attempted coup against the Republic, and when he did it.