WASHINGTON — As rioters battered police and stormed inside the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump grew angry with advisers pleading with him to do something, Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney said Thursday in the first hearing by the House select committee investigating the attack.
Aware of the rioters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence,” the president responded with this sentiment, Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said: “Well, maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence, quote, ‘deserves it.’ ”
The revelation was just one of the bombshell allegations that Cheney said the committee will corroborate during subsequent hearings to prove a coordinated effort to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election and keep Trump in office.
Cheney said the panel will also reveal evidence that Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and multiple Republican members of Congress sought pardons after Jan. 6 for their roles leading to that day and that the president’s Cabinet secretaries considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
“January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup,” said Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who placed Trump at the center of the effort.
“We can’t sweep what happened under the rug,” Thompson said in his opening remarks. “The American people deserve answers. So I come before you this evening not as a Democrat, but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us: ‘We the People.’ And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people.”
Thompson and others on the panel have stressed that the hearings will not only cover the insurrection at the Capitol a year and a half ago, but also address what can be done to keep similar events from happening again.
“Our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over. There are those in this country who thirst for power but have no love or respect for what makes America great: devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect union,” Thompson said in his opening remarks.
The hearing, which took place in prime time after more than 10 months of investigation behind closed doors, marks the committee’s initial report to the American public, and is expected to be followed by at least five more hearings this month.
The topics the hearings will cover are:
—That Trump was informed multiple times by his campaign staff and Attorney General Bill Barr there was no credible proof of fraud. Cheney showed video of Barr saying he “repeatedly told the president in no uncertain terms I did not see evidence of fraud that would have affected the outcome of the election. And frankly, a year and a half later, I haven’t seen anything to change my mind on that.”
—Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department to claim rampant fraud in the election and his attempt to install someone as attorney general who would. Cheney said Perry was part of that effort.
“Rep. Scott Perry, who was also involved in trying to get Clark appointed as attorney general has refused to testify here. As you will see, Rep. Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after Jan. 6, to seek a presidential pardon. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,” Cheney said.
—The pressure campaign on the states to rescind certified results, including that Trump asked Georgia election officials to find enough votes so he would win the state.
—The pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to reject the votes of certain states or send the results back to the states, including testimony from the judge who helped Pence decide not to cave to the pressure.
—That Trump summoned a violent mob and directed them to the Capitol and then failed to take action, including a minute-by-minute recounting of Trump’s actions during the attack from more than a half-dozen White house staff and administration officials.
House Republicans chose not to officially participate in the committee because Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected two representatives whom House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., recommended to serve on the panel. Pelosi asked Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., to serve so the committee would be bipartisan and have a quorum.
Republicans have criticized the committee on social media and in television interviews, rather than push back on assertions made inside the hearing room. Hours before Thursday’s hearing began, the Republican National Committee called it a “prime-time political circus.”
Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., the highest-ranking Republican on the committee that oversees House functions, has said that if the GOP regains control of the House, one of the party’s first priorities will be to investigate Pelosi and the Jan. 6 committee.
