Jan. 6 hearings

The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, is returning to prime time for its final planned hearing this month that will seek to show in ...

Matthews, the former deputy press secretary, was one of several White House aides calling for Trump to condemn the violence. That's where I knew that I was leaving that day," Pottinger said in the video deposition. Committee aides say that the panel will show how Trump "refused to act to defend the Capitol" while rioters were attacking it. Previous reporting from CNN and others, as well as excerpts from committee depositions that have been publicly released -- have detailed how Trump was watching television outside the Oval Office as rioters breached the Capitol walls. Pottinger, the former deputy national security adviser, served under Trump for four years. I think our members have all indicated there is potential for future hearings.

This is the final hearing planned so far for the summer but the committee has left the door open for additional hearings to be scheduled.

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol will hold the last of its summer series of hearings at 8 p.m. ET.

Some 29% said the hearings made them more likely to back a Democrat, while 19% said they were steered more toward a Republican candidate.\n\nThe survey was taken before the most recent House select committee hearing, which generated headlines when a former White House aide testified that Mr. Trump had been told that some of his supporters were armed when he urged them to march to the Capitol and sought to join them there.\n\nWhile some polls find that many Americans are worried about the future of U.S. democracy, surveys generally find that voters see inflation, the overall economy, crime, abortion or other matters as more pressing concerns. Committee members have suggested that their presentation will make the case that Mr. Trump failed to use his powers to call off the attack.\n\nIn the Quinnipiac poll, some 61% said they believed Mr. Trump deserved “a lot’’ or “some’’ blame for the attack, including 45% who said he deserved “a lot’’ of the blame. The poll was taken July 11-17.\n\nQuinnipiac University found similar results: 61% of Americans said they were following the committee’s work very closely or somewhat closely, a July 14-18 survey found. Americans on the whole are paying attention to the House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but there is little sign that the committee has pushed the matter to the top of the list of voter concerns.\n\nThose are some of the conclusions from polls that have tested public opinion in recent weeks. Some 36% said he deserved “not much’’ or none of the blame. Here are some of the main findings about the committee's work from recent surveys:\n\nAmericans are paying attention.\n\nNearly six in 10 Americans, some 58%, say they are paying a lot of attention or some attention to the hearings, with 41% saying they are paying little or no attention, an NPR/PBS/Marist survey found.

The primetime Jan. 6 hearing on July 21 will focus on Trump's conduct as the Capitol was being stormed, exploring his response as rioters broke into the ...

Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Elaine Luria (D-Va.) — two military veterans — are expected to focus on Trump’s inaction and will question two witnesses in person: Sarah Matthews, Trump’s deputy White House press secretary, and Matthew Pottinger, a former National Security Council official. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol holds a prime-time hearing on Thursday focused on President Donald Trump’s defiant inaction as a mob stormed the Capitol, ransacked the seat of democracy, assaulted law enforcement and sought to carry out Trump’s demand to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win.

Former President Donald Trump could not be compelled to call off the mob that nearly destroyed democracy.

Again and again, the panel has asserted that Trump was an instigator and a would-be participant in the charge, an unhinged leader who literally lunged for the wheel of the car that would take him to the Capitol. “The mob was accomplishing President Trump’s purpose,” Representative Adam Kinzinger said tonight. Sarah Matthews, a former deputy press secretary who testified at the hearing, told the panel that Trump could have delivered live remarks to the nation “within a matter of minutes” simply by walking down a hallway to the White House press-briefing room. Trump continued to resist urgent pleas to issue a forceful denunciation of the violence from members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy; prominent Fox News commentators such as Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity; and two of his children, Ivanka and Don Jr. Even when he agreed to send tweets and film a video, aides testified that he haggled over the wording. Viewers tonight saw a mash-up of senior administration officials testifying that they were aware of no Trump calls to the secretary of defense, the attorney general, or the secretary of homeland security. After the Secret Service rebuffed his demands to join the crowd himself, the president settled into his seat at the head of the dining-room table. The mob came so close to Pence that, the committee revealed tonight, the Secret Service agents protecting him feared for their lives and wanted “to say goodbye” to their families.

The January 6 committee, in its final public hearing until the fall, presented damning new evidence Thursday highlighting then-President Donald Trump's ...

We saw previously undisclosed outtakes of video statements that Trump released on January 6 and 7, which showed Trump struggling to condemn the rioters. After all, the panel hired a prominent former TV executive to produce the hearings, and has worked aggressively with subpoenas and court battles to obtain mountains of new material. The panel has conducted eight public hearings so far, and has seen impressive TV ratings while presenting substantial amounts of damaging new information about Trump and January 6. As mentioned, the hearing featured testimony from an unnamed White House security official and a DC police sergeant who provided more context on the Secret Service's activities. While the detail about Trump lunging toward a Secret Service agent was just one snippet of Hutchinson's testimony, the pushback likely contributed to the committee's decision to add additional testimony backing up her account during Thursday's hearing. Luria said the committee had information from two additional sources to partially corroborate Hutchinson's testimony that Trump lunged at his Secret Service detail. In this respect, the panel delivered on its promise to bring new material. "He was very animated, very direct, very firm to Secretary Miller: Get the military down here, get the Guard down here, put down this situation." The committee has previously gone after congressional Republicans for their role aiding Trump's efforts to overturn the election, including seeking pardons after January 6. In addition, the panel spotlighted Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican who led the Senate's objection to the election results on January 6. "You know, you're the Commander in Chief. You've got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America and there's nothing? The House select committee also revealed, for the first time, Secret Service radio traffic as agents assessed the Senate stairwell where Pence would be evacuated, while rioters were confronting police in a hallway downstairs at the same time.

The committee, across eight hearings, has built a case – more political than legal – that Trump, who continues to lie about the election and teases he'll ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

At the eighth in a series of public hearings held by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, the panel accused former President Donald J. Trump ...

Outtakes from that address obtained by the committee showed an angry Mr. Trump telling the teleprompter operator to edit out of the address a phrase about the election now being over. “And there was a heated discussion about that.” Other testimony played by the committee showed that White House aides believed that if Mr. Trump headed to the Capitol he would have been joining a violent event. A day after the assault, Mr. Trump taped an address, but he still could not bring himself to say that the election was over. Testimony played on Thursday from an anonymous White House security official and a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Department who was driving in Mr. Trump’s motorcade corroborated that claim. “There was a lot of yelling,” the official told the committee. Through a range of witness testimonies, the committee demonstrated that Mr. Trump never reached out to the heads of any law enforcement or national security department or agency in the government to seek help in responding to quell the violence. Testimony from a White House security official, who had access to what Secret Service agents in the Capitol protecting Vice President Mike Pence were saying to each other over their radios, showed how agents feared for their lives as protesters drew near. “And so Mr. Cipollone had to take the call himself.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, expressed dismay with Mr. Trump’s response in his interview with the committee. “You’re the commander in chief — you’ve got an assault going on the Capitol of the United States of America and there’s nothing? Members of Congress, aides and his own daughter, Ivanka, made pleas to Mr. Trump to call off the violence as it unfolded in front of him on television. But witnesses told the committee that Mr. Trump not only ignored them but repeatedly signaled that he did not want anything done.

Officers from the U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police forces attended the first Jan. 6 hearing, at which Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards ...

- After the hearing, Ayres apologized to Hodges of the D.C. Metropolitan Police and Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police for his participation in the attack. - Later on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told a White House employee that Pence “let him down” during the riot. He said he lost his job and that the riot "changed my life and not for the good." The rioter apologized to police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 after his testimony. - Hutchinson told the committee that Trumpacted erratically several timeson and leading up to Jan. 6. He urged staffers to "let the people in" and remove the metal detectors slowing down the crowd. - Evidence revealed in thethird Jan. 6 hearingshowed a concerted effort by Trump and his allies to use slates of fake electors in battleground statesto overturn the 2020 election. Trump knew that some people in the crowd had weapons and encouraged staffers to let them in regardless. State officials also faced heat from Trump and his supporters, the committee revealed in the fourth Jan. 6 hearing. - Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 were frequent attendees of the Jan. 6 hearings. - Testimony inhearings four and fiverevealed that federal lawmakers helped Trump in his efforts to overturn the election. But that money didn't go toward supporting litigation; it went to a Trump-backed political action committee called Save America PAC, which in turn, gave $1 million to Meadows' charitable organization, $1 million to a policy institute that employs several former Trump officials and more than $200,000 to the "Trump Hotel collection," the committee said.

We hear from people in Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle and Lancaster, Pa., about their reaction to the Jan. 6 hearings. There have been eight hearings so far.

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

Six weeks of televised hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have not collapsed Donald Trump's support, ...

Moving on from Trump doesn’t necessarily mean repudiating Trumpism. The former president didn’t invent the political attitudes associated with his name — opposition to immigration, suspicion of liberal elites, a desire to turn back the clock on racial and gender diversity. There’s also the behavior of other ambitious Republicans, who have grown bolder in their challenges to him. Whoever wins the 2024 nomination will resemble Trump much more than Sen. Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 candidate and exemplar of the GOP establishment of yore. The share of Americans who say that Trump bears “a great deal” or a “good amount” of the blame for what happened stood at 57% in the latest survey, up slightly from 53% in December, Marist found. Currently, 55% of Americans have a negative view of Trump, compared with 41% who see him positively, according to the average of polls maintained by the Fivethirtyeight website. That 14-point deficit compares with 10 points in May — not a huge shift, but movement in the wrong direction for a person hoping to mount a political comeback. Trump and people close to him also could face charges from a grand jury in Georgia examining efforts to overturn the election results in that state, according to court filings. Views are more dug in on the question of Trump’s personal culpability, the poll found. Instead, the accusation served as a convenient way to deflect questions from senators about whether Trump knew in advance about the potential for violence and what, if anything, he did to stop it. Thursday’s hearing showed that for hours, Trump did nothing to stop the violence. But even before the hearings, losses by Trump-endorsed candidates in other primaries showed the limits of his power to reward or punish. Yes, Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, able to exact revenge against political figures who openly fight him.

Fox News's primetime stars chided Biden for contracting the virus they say he alleged couldn't be caught with a vaccine.

And then heasked why no Secret Service agents were called to testify, conveniently leaving out the part where they submitted a single text message to the committee after deleting all their exchanges from that day. He skewered the committee for not calling the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, or Washington mayor Muriel Bowser to testify about the lack of security at the Capitol while suggesting a slew of crude reinforcements that might’ve kept the mob at bay. Science, and the left’s supposed efforts to monopolize it, was a consistent theme on both Carlson’s and Hannity’s shows. He had Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist Harvey Risch on the show to tout ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as far more effective defenses against Covid – despite considerable medical assertions to the contrary. Carlson opened his hour-long show with a spirited takedown of Biden, scolding him for spreading the virus during his Middle East trip and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for dismissing the question of where the president might have contracted the virus. On Thursday night, as the Congressional hearings into the January 6 Capitol riot drew to a close, Tucker Carlson directed his outrage at a president he felt had lied and was not being held accountable for falsehoods that shook popular faith in the American democratic system.

“I wanted an excuse to look into and research topics,” Overstreet said. “And I realized like, oh, if I have to go explain this to someone else … then I have to ...

She also tries to use clips of videos of the hearings she finds on Congress.gov to help add credibility to her recaps. “I think it’s really important to talk about it on the app, because the more people who are aware of what’s going on, the more interested they become in it,” Silverman said. One of her recent videos is about the boycotting of Walgreens over reports that the pharmacy was denying birth control to some customers. Many of the creators say they work hard to avoid that. One compared the ratings of the hearings to regularly scheduled programming. “Believe it or not, that’s not even the most unhinged thing Trump does that she describes,” Silverstreet adds.

The House Jan. 6 committee wrapped its eighth hearing Thursday with the promise of more hearings in September.

There is nothing in the principles of prosecution and any other factors which prevent us from investigating anyone – anyone – who is criminally responsible for an attempt to undo a democratic election.” - Letter of the law: "There's no real legal process for the so-called criminal referral. The report is to include "findings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective measures." The committee is expected to produce a report this fall outlining its findings and recommendations, but it has not set a deadline for its release. But they're the ones that make the criminal charges, not a legislative committee," Lofgren said. - Subpoena power: "I would not want to tell the attorney general how to conduct his investigations. The Justice Department's ongoing criminal investigation has resulted in charges against 800 people so far, and it is investigating two attorneys who backed Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But I will say this, they have subpoena power and they have a lot easier way to enforce their subpoenas than the Congress does. I think it would be important to hear everything he has to say," Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the committee's two Republicans, said during an interview on CBS News' "Face the Nation." Rep. Liz Cheney faces a Trump-backed opponent who is polling well ahead of the three-term incumbent in Wyoming's GOP primary on Aug. 16. Trump's inaction during the Capitol riot comes into focus The consequences for our nation.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Vicki Nelson is busy. She's a school principal in Maryland. But she has been making time to watch the January 6 hearings. VICKI ...

And I am hungry for a leader who will use the full force of our laws to protect our democracy. But that definitely was, like, the last nail in the coffin. SHARON ANDERSON: I personally feel like the trial is just a dog and pony show. Eighty percent of Democrats are paying at least some attention to the hearings, compared to around 4 in 10 Republicans. For Bill Hastie, an Alabama Republican, the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson stood out as a sign the hearings are biased. So just that sequence made an impression on me and, again, reinforced, you know, what I would call a certain amount of unfairness to the proceedings. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben spoke with some respondents to get a fuller picture of their reactions.

Donald Trump is now forever the president who threw his lunch against the wall. The House hearings on the Capitol insurrection added dramatic new details to ...

During span of about six weeks, witnesses testified that former president pressured state officials, Justice Department and vice president.

You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Customer Service. WASHINGTON—In a series of eight televised hearings, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol sought to paint a damning picture of a president willing to incite a mob to hang on to power after running out of options in reversing his election defeat. Jan. 6 Hearings Sought to Paint Fuller Picture of Trump’s Effort to Stay in Power

By their nature, congressional hearings are boring. Politicians speechify. The pace is slow and halting. If anyone manages to say anything important, ...

Congressional hearings: The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol has conducted a series of hearings to share its findings with the U.S. public. Five people died on that day or in the immediate aftermath, and 140 police officers were assaulted. Here’s a guide to the biggest moments so far. (Two were in May, before the hearings began; the Highland Park tragedy was on the Fourth of July.) But it’s Cheney, undoubtedly, who is the heart and soul of the hearings. “She is breathtakingly different and is the person driving this whole operation in a totally unexpected way,” Bettag said. Meanwhile, the intense interest by news consumers in the Russian invasion of Ukraine had waned somewhat. 2. Pace. Although somber and unflashy in tone, the hearings have been characterized by something almost unheard of in this kind of congressional forum: briskness. And that they certainly have done. CNN spent nearly as much time recapping and analyzing afterward as the hearing itself had consumed. “They cut that out completely,” Bettag said. 1. Newsworthiness. Each hearing has produced at least one legitimate nugget of actual news, and sometimes more than one.

Investigating a threat to democracy was always going to be important. But this time, it also managed to be buzzworthy.

Ultimately, the hearings had the same job as that of any ambitious TV drama: to make a complex story coherent. Within minutes of the Hawley clips’ airing, social accounts screen-grabbed them for jokes and scored them to “Yakety Sax” and the “Chariots of Fire” theme. Not to mention Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; political thrillers love a surprise witness. And the vice chairwoman, Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, used her remarks to underscore the immediacy. Beginning the first hearing with footage of the mayhem at the Capitol was an unusual choice by congressional standards. The conservative legal scholar J. Michael Luttig warned in a June hearing that Mr. Trump or a like-minded successor could “attempt to overturn the 2024 election in the same way.” A graphic dropped us into the executive dining room, from the point of view of the president in his customary spot facing the tube. Later, we saw outtakes of a sullen Mr. Trump the day after the attack, shooting a cleanup video meant to deplore the violence. Using mostly interview snippets, deftly cut together, the July 12 hearing brought to life a White House meeting in which Trump loyalists floated “unhinged” gambits for seizing the election apparatus — the oral history of a cabal. Above all, the hearings, which aired a capstone prime-time session on Thursday night — a midseason finale, if you will — had to compete with our expectations of what constitutes a “successful” TV hearing. They drew an audience for public-affairs TV in the dead of summer. There was the MAGA echo chamber that has primed a huge chunk of America to reject, sight unseen, any accusation against former President Donald J. Trump.

An early assessment of the House select committee on its political, legislative and prosecutorial objectives.

A series of news reports from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal has suggested, however, that the hearings may have altered views among some senior officials in the department. The one policymaking area in which the committee has unambiguously moved the needle is on reform of the Electoral Count Act, which was nicely advanced by a tight and compelling hearing focused on the absurd legal arguments offered by Trump lawyer John Eastman as part of Trump’s last-ditch effort to get Mike Pence to overturn the election results. After the start of the hearings, a series of national polls found that around half of the country believes Trump should be charged with a crime. As for the rest of the GOP, the relative silence of Republican Party leaders in response to the hearings largely made the committee’s point — that these people were integral in encouraging and facilitating Trump’s at-best-reckless behavior, and that there is no good reason to believe they will comport themselves any better if Trump returns to power. The nominal purpose of the committee was to gather and disseminate information about what caused the riot, but the members also made a strategic decision at the outset to present a clear and unique villain: Trump himself. Former Attorney General William Barr was presented as a brave truth-teller despite the fact that he himself spent months in the run-up to the 2020 election stoking concerns among Republican voters over baseless and false claims of election fraud.

A former Trump White House official says the clearest impact on Trump can be seen in the Republican Party's powerful donor base.

Jeff Leach, a Republican in the Texas House of Representatives representing part of Collins County in the outskirts of Dallas, was a supporter of Trump throughout his presidency. A different former aide to Trump said that the hearings were unlikely to have changed many minds among Republicans. “I don’t think it moved anybody,” the former aide said. Shifting perceptions of Trump’s actions around Jan. 6, and the possibility that he may be prosecuted for it, have colored discussions over whether he should run again, and, if so, when he should announce. “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said. “That was THE moment for me,” Leach wrote, adding: “we Republicans need someone else running for President in 2024.” Few potential Republican challengers have ever had to go head to head against Trump and face the type of withering political attacks Trump built his career on. “Donald Trump lived his life for 30 years on the pages of the New York tabloids before he ever ran for office. “I don’t want to say the election is over,” Trump says to aides in the room, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump. “I just want to say that Congress has certified the results without saying the election’s over, OK?” “The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies,” said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and the committee’s vice chair. While polling data confirms Republican voters still like Trump, it also shows that more of them are now open to backing a different presidential candidate for 2024, even if Trump chooses to throw his hat in the ring for a third time. But even if many Republicans are not watching them, they have not been able to avoid learning about the information coming out of them. The hearing on Thursday detailed Trump’s repeated refusal to quell the deadly mob, even when he knew that some of them were armed and that Vice President Mike Pence’s life was in danger.

Former President Trump on Thursday vented his anger with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) during the House select Jan. 6 committee's hearing ...

We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. See All “Having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.” “I think we’re going to have a crowded field for president. See All “Is this the same Mitch McConnell who was losing big in Kentucky, and came to the White House to BEG me for an Endorsement and help?

“Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our ...

“You can see the effect of the hearings in the percentage of Republicans who want him to run again,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. Congressional hearings: The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol has conducted a series of hearings to share its findings with the U.S. public. Policies without the craziness.” The other said the committee lacks credibility among Republicans but could still create discomfort about “Trump’s drama.” “I don’t see anything in the coverage that would significantly alter his support in the party.” “I think it’s weakened him in a massive way,” she said. That sentiment may cause some voters to tire of Trump, in part because of his focus on debating the results of an election he lost. About half identified it that way, while a quarter, including 2 of 5 Republicans, described it as an unfortunate event, but in the past and not one to worry about. Republicans who have chosen to stick with the former president could also see their standing harmed by that preference. Hogan said he believes much of the ultimate impact from the hearings will depend on “what happens with potential actions by the Justice Department.” “But they’re making a political calculation about who can win.” Even Larry Hogan, the anti-Trump Republican governor of Maryland who is considering a White House bid in 2024, offered a measured assessment of the committee’s influence. Trump has also urged House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and others to push back more aggressively against the committee, and has complained there are no Republicans on television defending him.

How did the attack on the U.S. Capitol come together? What did President Trump know and why did he take so long to respond?

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

Nearly 17.7 million television viewers tuned in Thursday to the second prime-time hearing in the House select committee's investigation into the Jan.

Congressional hearings: The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol has conducted a series of hearings to share its findings with the U.S. public. Five people died on that day or in the immediate aftermath, and 140 police officers were assaulted. Here’s a guide to the biggest moments so far. According to Nielsen, the June 28 hearing with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s damning testimony ranked the highest among the daytime hearings, garnering 13.2 million viewers across networks. During the hearing, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) led the questioning of former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, Trump’s deputy White House press secretary. Fox News did not show the hearing and instead aired its usual programming featuring Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. The network reported 2.66 million viewers during Thursday’s prime-time block. July tends to be the lowest-rated month in television. The riot: On Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. The eighth hearing focused on Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection has held a series of high-profile hearings throughout the summer: Find Day 8′s highlights and analysis. Fox News Media opted to instead air the hearing on the lesser-watched channel Fox Business. Nearly 17.7 million television viewers tuned in Thursday to the second prime-time hearing in the House select committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Nielsen rating service announced Friday. The number, which encompasses 10 broadcast and cable networks, represents a slight drop from the more than 20 million people who watched the first prime-time hearing in June.

How cable TV news covered the 'season finale' of January 6 hearings: 'Frankly infuriating'. Bill Goodykoontz. Arizona Republic.

“Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?” she said. How does anyone watch this and not come to the conclusion that this was all planned? It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service to our democracy.” “It is a stain on our history. Carlson mostly avoided talking about the hearing, other than noting all the other networks were showing it. “No one wants to watch it. “An evening of testimony that was frankly infuriating,” Tapper said. But there were two things that really stood out among the many. The shameless, irresponsible yet hugely popular lineup of Tucker Carlson, Hannity and Laura Ingraham once again either ignored or belittled the hearings. “Now why are they doing that?” he said. All that happening and the president refused to act to stop the violence.” It’s amazing.”

A letter to a beloved relative, who still doesn't understand that Trump attempted a coup.

But please know that I am not trying to tell you you’re wrong or a bad person—or that I will quit caring for you if you and I disagree. We also learned that after three hours passed and Trump finally recorded a video telling rioters to go home, Trump said to a staffer, “ Mike Pence let me down.” That’s right, his takeaway wasn’t that it’s wrong to try to overturn an election, or that the violence that day was horrible. I hope you will consider this information when it comes time to select a Republican nominee in 2024. I know you wouldn’t put up with that in your family. We also got to see outtakes from a video that Trump recorded the day after the riot. I hope you know that I remain a conservative. Although, unlike Trump, Gore eventually did concede the election and gave a poignant speech where he called George W. Bush the “President-elect,” adding “I call on all Americans—I particularly urge all who stood with us—to unite behind our next president.” I know you are a fan of Sean Hannity (though let's be honest, Tucker’s your favorite). Well, we also learned that during the riot, he texted Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to have Trump put out a statement and “ask people to peacefully leave the Capitol.” Hours would pass before that happened. If he were alive, I can only imagine what he would think of the videos showing rioters beating cops with flagpoles. Some Republicans have pretended that what happened that day looked like a tourist visit. The president’s own son, Donald Trump, Jr., also text messaged Meadows, urging him to have his dad “ condemn this shit. Remember that nice young lady I used to appear alongside on CNN before she became Trump’s press secretary?

During its July 21, 2022, hearing, the Jan. 6 House select committee showed video outtakes of former President Donald Trump rehearsing a speech the day after ...

He notes, for example, that the District of Columbia’s attorney general already investigated Mr. Trump for insurrection and never brought charges. He says it could now be “quite easily proven” that the former president defrauded the American people and obstructed a congressional proceeding. While only two of the committee’s nine members are Republicans, and both are outspoken critics of Mr. Trump, nearly all of the testimony was given by Republicans who had supported or worked for the former president. Some of the most attention-grabbing details of the eight hearings came from Ms. Hutchinson, the White House aide, who testified that Mr. Trump was told some of the protesters were armed but had nevertheless asked the Secret Service to let them into his rally, saying they weren’t there to hurt him. Last night, the Jan. 6 House select committee wrapped up the last of eight summer hearings, in which they sought to demonstrate that former President Donald Trump bears responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He pressured the Department of Justice to find evidence of fraud, and when Attorney General Bill Barr said there was none on a scale to overturn the election, the president turned to state election officials, who likewise did not find any such evidence. The committee filled in new details within that narrative arc, bringing Republican lawyers, state election officials, and state legislators to testify in person, as well as former White House officials. “The committee has contributed a great deal in making details and accounts public,” says Professor Turley. “These are very disturbing and at times breathtaking accounts. “He is preying on their patriotism,” said Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, in her closing statement of the prime-time hearing. But new details could serve to sharpen a case against the former president. “These are very disturbing and at times breathtaking accounts,” says Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who has been critical of the committee’s lack of GOP-appointed members and robust questioning. But new details could serve to sharpen a case against the former president.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Through eight hearings, 20 live witnesses and dozens of hours of recorded testimony, the House Jan. 6 panel has focused its case squarely ...

The committee showed never-before-seen outtakes of a speech Trump released on Jan. 7 in which he condemned the violence and promised an orderly transition of power. In the coming hours, he would step on the stage and tell them to “fight like hell.” Hutchinson also described Trump’s anger after security officials told him he couldn’t go to the U.S. Capitol with his supporters after he had told them he would. “I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the president say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t effing care that they have weapons,’” Hutchinson said. They showed that Trump was sitting at a dining room table near the Oval Office, watching Fox News coverage of the violence. They can march to the Capitol from here.’” Barr said he thought Trump had become “detached from reality” if he really believed his own theories and said there was “never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.” “The vice president didn’t want to take any chance” that the world would see him leaving the Capitol, Jacob said. Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s House speaker, told the committee how Trump asked him directly to appoint alternate electors falsely stating that he had won the state of Arizona and not Biden. The conversation came after Trump had pressured his vice president for weeks to try and somehow object or delay as he presided over Biden’s certification. She suffered a traumatic head injury that day as some of the first protesters barreled through the flimsy bike rack barriers that she and other officers were trying to hold. Culling material from more than 1,000 witnesses, lawmakers have shown that officials inside the government fought Trump’s schemes at every turn, calling them “nuts” and “unhinged.”