The videos of the attack on the Capitol released by the commission, some for the first time, contain extreme violence.
The raid on the federal US Capitol was the “culmination of a coup attempt”: a year and a half after the bloody events of January 6, 2021, which caused shock around the world, the special committee of inquiry of the House of Representatives appointed the former chairman yesterday, Thursday Donald Trump at the heart of what he calls a “conspiracy” to stay in power.
Benny Thompson, the Democratic leader of the committee, stressed that the attack on the seat of the federal parliament was made with the “encouragement” of the former president.
The presentation of its conclusions, in a time of high ratings, featured videos that had never been broadcast before, as well as testimonies that, according to the committee, prove that a deliberate campaign was carried out to overthrow the result of the November 2020 elections, which the Democratic won. Joe Biden.
The attack of January 6th “Was the culmination of a coup attempt”“We can not hide what happened under the rug” and “the American people deserve to know,” Mr Thompson said.
“Donald Trump was at the center of the conspiracy,” he said. only the Republicans, it protects us all. “
“Our democracy remains in danger,” he said, adding that “the conspiracy to overthrow the will of the people is not over,” he warned.
“January 6 and the lies that led to this uprising put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy in jeopardy. “People are watching what we do here,” Thomson said.
Over the past year, members of the special inquiry committee – seven Democrats, two Republicans – have heard more than 1,000 witnesses, including the former president’s two children, and studied 140,000 documents in an effort to shed light on his actions and gestures. Trump before the attack, during and after.
Former President Trump “called the crowd, stirred up the crowd and lit the fire of this attack,” said Liz Cheney, a black sheep for the tycoon, one of the two members of the GOP committee. “President Trump believed that his followers in the Capitol, and I will put this in quotation marks, did what they had to do. “He told his associates who begged him to call for the mob to disperse.”
“Those who invaded our Capitol and fought with the police for hours mobilized because of what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, that he was the legitimate president.” “All Americans need to keep in mind that (…) on the morning of January 6 (2021), his intention (…) was to remain President of the United States.”
“War zone”
The video published by the committee, some for the first time, contain extreme violence.
They show the human sea as they rush to Congress, attacking police, calling for “hanging” then-Vice President Mike Pence, while a protester reads megaphone in Mr. Trump’s concentrated posts on Twitter, causing delirium.
“It was not a tour of the Capitol,” Thomson said, as some Republicans claimed.
Among the images of extreme violence was Donald Trump, who described the protesters as “peaceful”, assuring that there was “love in the air” that icy morning.
Carolyn Edwards, the first policewoman to be injured in the attack on Mr. Trump’s supporters at the Capitol, likened what she experienced to a “war zone.” “I slipped in the blood of people”, it was “massacre”, “chaos”.
Documentary filmmaker Nick Quisted, whose team was watching the far-right paramilitary group “Proud Boys” during the attack, admitted that he was shocked by the “anger” of its members.
The special two-hour public hearing of the special committee of inquiry was broadcast live on news television networks, but the Conservative networks simply ignored it – proof, if any, of the polarization of US politics.
Democracy “at stake”
As, a year and a half after the Capitol attack, millions of Mr. Trump supporters (55% of Republicans, according to Ipsos Institute poll and the Reuters news agency) are still convinced that he was rigged in the 2020 election, that his victory was stolen, defying evidence to the contrary.
The key figure, Donald Trump, a few hours before the hearing, praised his fans who were involved in the events of that day: according to him, it was “one of the most important movements in history for America to recover the her majesty “.
The committee reviewed part of the testimony made before it by Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. She revealed that she did not believe her father’s allegations of fraud, but former Justice Minister William Barr.
Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
On the contrary, the head of the Republican parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, considers that its only motive is the political expediency and has the least “legitimacy” in US “history.”
His party does not hide that it will bury its work in summary proceedings if it regains control of Parliament in the November by-elections.
Addressing her party, MP Liz Cheney said: “The day will come when Donald Trump will leave, but your disgrace will remain.”
