The events leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, represent more than just the day when Trump loyalists stormed the U.S. Capitol.
In a series of public hearings, the House committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack has laid out the “arc of carnage” that was sparked months earlier on Election Night 2020, when then-President Donald Trump refused to acknowledge he lost, repeatedly made false claims of voter fraud and declared himself the winner.
Here’s what we know from the eight summer hearings of the House Jan. 6 committee, which concluded Thursday night.
A bombshell witness delivers
Cassidy Hutchinson was the undisputed star of the committee’s summer made-for-TV show, delivering several bombshells about Trump, his top aides and supporters.
Backstage at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, the White House aide and assistant to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Trump was told by Secret Service that some of his supporters were armed. He responded by trying to get security officials to remove metal detectors.
“They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f—ing [detectors] away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in,” Hutchinson recalled Trump saying.
Hutchinson revealed that an irate Trump physically accosted a Secret Service agent in a futile effort to be taken to the Capitol, where he hoped to lead the attack.
When Meadows went to see Trump, the president suggested he didn’t want to stop the violence and that Vice President Mike Pence, who’d been targeted by the angry protesters, “deserved it,” Hutchinson related.
Liz Cheney’s tough warning
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., ended the Hutchinson hearing with a bombshell of her own.
The hard-nosed Trump critic revealed that a witness later identified as Hutchinson got a phone call from a Trump insider suggesting that Meadows was “thinking about her.”
Cheney, one of two GOP lawmakers who broke with her party to serve on the panel, sternly warned anyone watching to refrain from tampering with any witness.
A week later, Cheney revealed that Trump himself had recently tried to call a White House “support staffer” out of the blue.
Pence stands firm against Trump
Once a loyal lieutenant to Trump, Pence staunchly resisted his boss’ unrelenting pressure to join his effort to overturn Joe Biden’s election win.
As the rioters stormed through the Capitol and called for him to be hanged, Pence was whisked out of harm’s way, missing the mob by just a few feet. His protective detail relayed messages to their families, fearing they would be killed.
Poignant photographs depicted Pence waiting grimly in a secure basement area for hours.
He refused requests to get into his official vehicle for fear he would be seen fleeing the Capitol with American democracy under attack.
Heroes on the front lines
It was a full year ago that Capitol Police officers testified about their ordeal battling the mob of Trump supporters.
In the committee’s first hearing, four officers from the Capitol Police and Washington, D.C., police told of fighting for their lives against rioters armed with an arsenal of weapons like bear spray and sharpened flagpoles.
187 minutes of inaction and worse
For more than three hours, Trump sat in the Oval Office dining room approvingly watching the bloody attack unfold on Fox News.
The president stubbornly refused to make a single call to law enforcement or the military, witnesses said in the committee’s final hearing on Thursday.
Even after being convinced to call off the attack, Trump couldn’t bring himself to forthrightly condemn the violence or move on from his election lies.
In telling outtakes, Trump flatly refused to say the election was “over” in a video message and didn’t want to stress that the lawbreakers needed to face the music.
‘Lots of theories but no evidence’
A big pillar of Trump’s “Big Lie” was the bully campaign to get state officials in battleground states to falsely proclaim Trump the winner by hook or crook.
Rusty Bowers, the crusty GOP speaker of the Arizona House, was Exhibit A.
“(They) said they had lots of theories but no evidence,” Bowers said.
Trump lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, told him to just pass a measure electing a pro-Trump slate of electors despite Biden’s certified win in the state.
Ivanka breaks from her father
It wasn’t just Republican officials who broke ranks with Trump. His own family sought to get some distance too.
Ex-first daughter Ivanka Trump said she didn’t think the 2020 election was rigged or stolen in taped testimony to the committee.
Her father wasted no time hitting back, claiming that Ivanka didn’t know the whole story because she had long since “checked out” of her White House role as an adviser.
They all wanted pardons
One of the key revelations of the panel is just how many Trump acolytes fear being held accountable for their roles in Trump’s scheme to overturn the election.
Hutchinson said at least six GOP lawmakers asked for get-out-of-jail-free cards, along with Meadows and Rudy Giuliani.
‘Unhinged’ West Wing
Election deniers like Giuliani, lawyer Sydney Powell and ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn were ushered into the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, where they serenaded Trump with a series of half-baked legal theories to justify not peacefully handing over power to Biden.
The meeting quickly went downhill as rival groups of advisers shouted insults at one another. A White House lawyer even challenged Flynn to a fist fight.
“The West Wing is UNHINGED,” Hutchinson texted.
A Department of Justice ‘murder-suicide pact’
Trump’s plan for overturning his election loss involved getting acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen to endorse his bogus claims of voter fraud after Attorney General Bill Barr called them “bulls—” and was ousted.
Trump turned to a midlevel environmental prosecutor called Jeffrey Clarke, who penned a draft letter that falsely claimed the election was tainted with fraud.
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who helped talk Trump out of firing Rosen, called the draft letter a “murder-suicide pact.”
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