On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump’s supporters invaded the Capitol after being encouraged by the former U.S. president, who was defeated by Joe Biden a few weeks earlier.
A year and a half after Donald Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a congressional investigative committee released its findings on Friday, June 10. According to this group of elected officials, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, the assault on the headquarters of the U.S. Parliament was the “culmination of an attempted coup” aimed at keeping the former U.S. president in power, just defeated in the presidential election by Democrat Joe Biden.
The investigative committee of the House of Representatives presented on Thursday its first conclusions on the attack of January 6, 2021. Broadcast live on several television channels, this public hearing highlighted the responsibility of the former U.S. president.
“Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy,” said Democratic lawmaker Bennie Thompson, who headed the committee of inquiry. “Our democracy is still at risk. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over,” he warned as millions of Donald Trump supporters remain convinced that the 2020 election would have been tainted by fraud, despite countless evidence to the contrary.
For nearly a year, the commission heard from more than 1,000 witnesses (including two of the former president’s children) and sifted through 140,000 documents to shed light on Donald Trump’s precise actions before, during and after the assault on the Capitol. They concluded that protesters did invade the U.S. Capitol building after “encouragement” from Donald Trump.
Seated under a giant screen, the nine members of the committee sat in a solemn atmosphere, in front of an array of photographers. The hearing was meticulously regulated, led by Bennie Thompson and the committee’s vice chair, Republican Liz Cheney of Wyoming. “January 6 and the lies that led to the insurrection endangered two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy,” Bennie Thomson said, framing the issue of the moment. But it was Liz Cheney who made her mark on the hearing. She has become a pest in the Republican Party, hated by Donald Trump, and for months has been engaged in a crusade to establish the truth about January 6, along with her party’s other elected member of the committee, Adam Kinzinger (Illinois). For the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, this is the defining battle of her political life, one that allows for no weaknesses and no half measures.
Speaking in a tense, relentless, but always controlled voice, Liz Cheney unrolled a veritable indictment against the former leader. “President Trump called the crowd, gathered the crowd and lit the fuse on this attack,” she said. “Over the course of many months,” she continued, “Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to subvert the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.” As a result, the commission, whose work will continue until the fall, has already concluded that the president was at the forefront of the “coup attempt.” After January 6 and the failure of the project, his advisers would have even considered that “he was too dangerous to be left alone”, added Liz Cheney, also indicating that members of the cabinet had then discussed a possible invocation of Article 25 of the Constitution, with a view to impeaching the president.
