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This story is part of the ABC News series „Democracy in Peril,“ which examines the inflection point the country faces after the Jan. 6 attacks and ahead of the 2022 election.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is meeting again Thursday for what may be its final hearing before releasing a comprehensive report later this year.
The panel will focus on Trump’s „state of mind“ leading up to and after the attack, committee aides said, and will illustrate the former president’s „centrality“ in a plot to overturn the 2020 election.
Lawmakers spent six weeks this summer revealing in dramatic detail the findings of its year-long probe in eight televised sessions, two of which were held in prime time.
In its last public hearing on July 21, lawmakers laid out — moment-by-moment — the 187 minutes between Trump’s rally at the Ellipse and his finally, grudgingly telling his violent supporters to „go home.‘
Witness after witness testified how he told his supporters to march on the Capitol after being told some were armed — and then, back at the White House, watched the attack unfold on TV from his dining room, doing nothing, refusing pleas from top aides to call off the mob.
„President Trump didn’t fail to act, he chose not to act,“ GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger said, arguing Trump wanted the assault to succeed as the last desperate act in his plot to overturn the election. „A supreme violation of his oath of office,“ Kinzinger said, and „a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation.“
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, posed a central question for Americans with Trump now talking about a 2024 run for the White House: Given everything we’ve heard, she said, „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?“
Even the day after Jan. 6 — despite all that had happened — the committee showed outtakes of Trump struggling to tape a statement to the nation, refusing to say the words „this election is now over.“
Overall, witnesses to appear before the panel have spanned from local election officials to White House insiders like Cassidy Hutchinson, who in bombshell testimony described how she was told an irate Trump was so eager to join his supporters at the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse that he tried to grab the steering wheel in the presidential SUV.
Trump and his Republican allies have sought to discredit her, other witnesses and the panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans. Trump called the hearings a „disgraceful performance“ and the committee members „con people.“
Committee members have worked to counter the recent arguments made by Trump and his supporters that he was manipulated by people outside the administration — such as election lawyers John Eastman or Sidney Powell — and that he was not responsible for what transpired.
„This, of course, is nonsense,“ Cheney said at the seventh hearing. „President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child.“
Here are highlights of what we’ve learned so far:
Trump was repeatedly told he lost the election, witnesses testified
Using taped depositions from Trump officials at the time — including Attorney General Bill Barr, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump’s daughter Ivanka — the panel argued the former president was „well aware“ that he lost the election yet still moved forward with an illegal plot to stay in office.
Barr said he told Trump many times there was no fraud sufficient to overturn the results.
At one point, Barr testified, when Trump was pushing a baseless conspiracy about Dominion voting machines, he said, „I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality.“
Despite this, Trump continued to raise money for his post-election strategy. But according to the committee, little of the $250 million raised by Trump for his court battles actually went to his legal defense.
Four days after the electors across the country met to make Biden the president-elect, witnesses testified about a chaotic meeting took place on Dec.
