Graphic video showing police being attacked; bombshell testimony from inside the White House; first-hand accounts of Donald Trump's tactics: so far, the public Capitol riot hearings have produced stunning testimony.
The public hearings are wrapping up, but it's not quite the end — there's still more to come in September.
Here's your re-cap of all the key moments from the eight hearings so far, and more on what's coming next.
Ivanka, Barr and election fraud denied: The first hearing
Almost 20 million Americans tuned in as Donald Trump was accused of a "sprawling, multi-step conspiracy" by the House Select Committee's chairman, Bennie Thompson.
Video testimony from Mr Trump's former attorney-general William Barr and other advisers revealed what they knew:
- Mr Barr said he wasn't on board with the former president's plan to claim election fraud, saying:
- In Ivanka Trump's video testimony, she said she had "accepted" Mr Barr's point on this
- Mr Trump took to his own social media platform after his daughter's testimony aired, saying she had "long since checked out" and hadn't been involved with "looking at" election results
- Another Trump adviser, Jason Miller, told the panel that key campaign staffers told Mr Trump in "clear terms" that he had lost the election
Mr Trump still filed more than 60 election lawsuits, which ultimately, he lost. He's also denying any wrongdoing, dismissing the investigation as a political witch-hunt.
Graphic video was aired for the first time at the June 9 hearing, showing the rioting crowd surging past barriers and breaching the Capitol.
There was shocking testimony from Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after being injured by the rioters. This is what she said:
- Ms Edwards was holding two bike racks together on the frontline, as the mob heaved and pushed her down, hitting her head on concrete
- She said she was "slipping in people's blood" and the "hours of hand-to-hand combat" was beyond law enforcement training, despite her experience handling civil disturbances:
- She added: "It was carnage. It was chaos."
Documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who was embedded with far-right group the Proud Boys on the day, was the first witness to testify.
He told the committee he watched the crowd transform from "protesters, to rioters, to insurrectionists".
Trump 'detached from reality': The second hearing
One January 6 committee member called it "the big lie": Mr Trump's claim of election fraud.
The next hearing, just days later on June 13, revealed more of Mr Barr's testimony including:
- His concern the then-president didn't want to establish the "actual facts" and wanted to believe there was major fraud underway very early, before there was "any potential evidence":
- He said the Department of Justice had examined claims and found they weren't credible or substantial, and he described dealing with an avalanche of "bogus and silly" claims as "like playing Whac-a-Mole"
Mr Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien testified he warned the then-president it was "way too early" to mention victory on election night, despite Mr Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani encouraging it.
In Jared Kushner's video testimony (he's Ivanka Trump's husband and was a Trump adviser), he said he told Mr Trump this advice was "not the approach I would take".
Despite those messages from advisers, the then-president took to the White House press room and said the early results were "a fraud on the American public" and that "frankly, we did win this election."
In the days leading up to this hearing, committee members said they had found enough evidence to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against Mr Trump.
Adam Schiff, a Democrat on the committee, said the Justice Department would make the final call but added: "They need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is."
Pressure on Pence: The third hearing
Advisers said it could "cause riots in the streets", but Mr Trump's last-ditch plan to overturn the election needed one key person on board: then vice-president Mike Pence.
As his legal cases failed, Mr Trump had latched on to an idea to ditch the results, and the third hearing revealed the pressure campaign waged against his vice-president.
So what was the plan?
- Conservative lawyer John Eastman floated the idea Mr Pence could stop the formal vote certification, which was happening on January 6
- He argued Mr Pence had the power to overturn the will of voters by rejecting results from some states if he thought they were illegitimate
- But the Constitution makes it clear the vice-president's role in the January proceedings is largely ceremonial
That pressure campaign intensified in the lead-up to January 6, including an Oval Office meeting where Mr Eastman and Mr Trump pressed Mr Pence to go along with the scheme.
By January 6, Mr Trump falsely told his rally near the White House: "If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election."
In recorded testimony shown at the hearing, one of Mr Trump's lawyers Eric Herschmann recalled his comments when the plan was mentioned: "Are you out of your effing mind?"
"You're going to turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that your theory is, this is how you're going to invalidate their votes?"
Mr Pence didn't testify, but his counsel Greg Jacob did.
Mr Jacob said it was clear to Mr Pence that the founding fathers wouldn't give one person the power to overturn the votes and said he "never budged" from that view.
As rioters broke into the Capitol building, using chants of "hang Mike Pence", the committee heard they came within 40 feet (12 metres) of where he was sheltering.
In a memo obtained by the committee, Mr Jacob said Mr Eastman's plan was "essentially entirely made up," later emailing him as the riot unfolded:
'Disturbing' personal attacks: The fourth hearing
Death threats, being called a paedophile, chilling racism — the next hearing revealed the painful price paid by those caught up in the swirl of election "fraud" claims.
Arizona's House speaker Rusty Bowers said he was pressured to overturn the key state's election results, fielding calls from the former president and his legal team.
In the days and weeks after the calls, he said he was subject to a smear campaign online and "it was disturbing".
"They have had panel trucks with videos of me claiming me to be a paedophile, a pervert and a corrupt politician," Mr Bowers said.
He became emotional as he told of people swarming outside his home. His daughter, who was "gravely ill", was inside. She died in the weeks after the riots.
In the state of Georgia, pressure from Mr Trump was high.
The southern state's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he was told by the then-president to "find" the 11,780 votes that could flip the state.
"They should find those votes. They should absolutely find that. Just over 11,000 votes, that's all we need. They defrauded us out of a win in Georgia, and we're not going to forget it," Mr Trump said on the call.
He claimed thousands of dead people had voted, but Mr Raffensperger said they only found four.
Poll workers were also targeted for abuse.
Wandrea ArShaye "Shaye" Moss was an election worker in Georgia.
Mr Trump, Mr Giuliani and others used a video to claim that she and her mother, Ruby Freeman, were involved in a plot to bring in suitcases of false ballots for Mr Biden.
Trump to DoJ, 'just say it was corrupt': The fifth hearing
Three Trump-era Department of Justice officials testified about the relentless demands from the then-president, and how a mass walkout of top legal officials was narrowly avoided.
Richard Donoghue, the agency's second-in-command at the time, said they were being inundated with an "arsenal of allegations" from Mr Trump, all of them untrue.
In one phone conversation, Mr Donoghue said despite there being no evidence of widespread fraud, Mr Trump asked them to:
After William Barr resigned as attorney-general in December 2020, Jeffrey Rosen stepped into the role, and was promptly told the department hadn't done enough on the election fraud claims.
"Between December 23 and January 3, the president either called me or met with me virtually every day, with one or two exceptions like Christmas Day," Mr Rosen said.
Eventually, Mr Trump did find an alleged ally in the department: Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer.
By January 3, Mr Clark told Mr Rosen that the then-president wanted Mr Clark to take over his job.
Cue a dramatic, Sunday night meeting at the White House, where:
- Mr Rosen testified Mr Trump said: "The one thing we know is you, Rosen, you aren't going to do anything. You don't even agree with the claims of election fraud, and this other guy at least might do something."
- Mr Donoghue and another senior Justice Department official Steven Engel made clear they'd resign if Mr Rosen was fired
- Mr Trump was told the entire leadership team would resign and hundreds of staffers would walk out, and he then backed down
- Mr Donoghue also said Mr Clark couldn't do what the then-president wanted, that he had "never tried a criminal case", adding:
Trump's temper bombshell: The sixth hearing
This surprise addition in late June delivered explosive evidence from inside the White House.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson detailed Mr Trump's temper and aggressive behaviour with his security detail in the lead-up to the violent insurrection.
Ms Hutchinson, who worked for Mr Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, told the committee:
- Mr Trump was "furious" before his fiery January 6 speech because of the extra space taken up by magnetometers screening for weapons (some people were carrying AR-15-style rifles)
- He wanted security to stop screening so more people could get in and the crowd would look larger. She quoted what Mr Trump told her boss Mr Meadows:
- She said she was told by White House security official Tony Ornato that Mr Trump aggressively tried to go to the Capitol after his speech by attempting to grab the steering wheel of a heavily armoured presidential vehicle saying:
- And in December, Mr Trump threw his lunch after attorney-general William Barr told the media there was no fraud on a scale to tip the presidential election. She said the valet told her Mr Trump was "extremely angry" and threw the plate:
Why was this testimony considered so damning?
University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck said Mr Trump's urging to remove metal detectors could be "powerful evidence" he knew of possible violence on the day and was encouraging it.
Trump's tweets and an 'unhinged' meeting: The seventh hearing
On December 18, 2020, Mr Trump's outside advisors — including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn — paid a surprise visit to the White House.
What followed "quickly became the stuff of legend", Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin told the committee.
Mr Raskin said over more than six hours, the two sides of reality versus conspiracy had "traded personal insults, accusations of disloyalty to the president, and even challenges to physically fight".
Ms Hutchinson called on her superiors to intervene in the meeting:
White House lawyers, including Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann, entered the Oval Office and told the president the theories were bogus.
"Where is the evidence?" Mr Cipollone recalled asking, in a video snippet from his recent closed-door interview.
Then, in the early hours of December 19, came the tweet from Mr Trump.
Sent at 1.42am, it read:
"Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
The committee argued those two sentences played a pivotal role in what came next.
We also heard from people who were there on the day.
Stephen Ayres, a Capitol rioter who testified during the hearing, said he had believed the election was being stolen and that Mr Trump was calling his supporters to act.
"I was already worked up and so were most of the people there," he said.
"I think everybody thought he was going to be coming down."
Mr Ayres, who described himself as a "family man", lost his job at a cabinet company in Ohio after being captured on video inside the Capitol on January 6.
And in closing statements, a bombshell was dropped by Republican and committee vice-chair Liz Cheney: she said Mr Trump had tried to call a witness in their investigation, and the Department of Justice has been notified.
The 187 minutes: The eighth hearing
In the final hearing until September, the committee gave the most detailed account yet of what Mr Trump did — and didn't do — for more than three hours while his supporters tried to violently stop the transfer of power.
"He lied, he bullied, he betrayed his oath. He tried to destroy our democratic institutions," committee chair Bennie Thompson said via video.
"And then he stopped for 187 minutes on January 6.
Mr Trump finished his speech at the White House Ellipse at 1.10pm, the first wave of rioters had already breached the barriers surrounding the Capitol.
Despite pleas "from nearly everyone", including White House staff, his family and members of US Congress, he refused to act until 4.17pm when he tweeted a video, calling on them to leave, but going off script to tell the rioters "We love you. You're very special".
What happens next?
It's far from over.
Committee vice-chairwoman Liz Cheney said there would be more hearings in September.
"In the course of these hearings we have heard new evidence, and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward," she said.
The committee can't prosecute anyone, but they can make a "criminal referral". Any charges must come from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Regardless, there'll be more reports (and potential reforms) from the committee ahead of the crucial mid-term elections on November 8.
All eyes are on the DOJ and the question that has hung over all the hearings remains: Will there be enough evidence to convince Attorney-General Merrick Garland to file criminal charges against Mr Trump for his alleged role on January 6?
Mr Garland has previously pledged to hold "all January 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law".
But charges so far have mostly been levelled at Trump officials who refused to cooperate with the committee's investigation.
ABC/wires
