The House select committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot on Thursday broadcast a dramatic montage of video clips from Jan. 6, 2021 — beaming to a national TV audience the jarring scenes from 17 months ago.
The opening hour of the committee’s first primetime hearing concluded with the 11-minute video, some of which were played during last year’s Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump for allegedly inciting the riot.
However, other footage appeared to be shown for the first time.
The apparently new material featured videos of police officers on the frontlines of clashes, including an officer’s exclamation at the size of a thousands-strong mob.
“We can’t hold this, we’re going to get too many f—–g people. Look at this f—–g vantage point, man. We’re f—-d,” a cop is recorded saying to a colleague amid the confrontations.
In another apparently new clip, staff are observed fleeing from the office of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
The most violent images, including of police officers being attacked, were thematically similar to footage that was heavily circulated at the time.
That footage included a clash at an entrance to the west side of the Capitol most famously used by presidents on their inauguration day — where rioters shoved police while shouting “heave-ho” — as well as scenes of rioters rushing through the basement level of the Capitol toward officers.
Some footage was previously played during congressional proceedings, including the moment the first windows were smashed by a rioter and surveillance camera footage of rioters then breaching the building through those windows.
Networks carrying the hearing live included CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox Business Network, offering the Democrat-led committee an opportunity to revive public interest in the events of that day.
The second primetime hour featured testimony from documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who trailed members of the far-right Proud Boys group as they stormed the building, and from US Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a brain injury after being knocked unconscious when her head hit a flight of steps during a struggle.
Despite her injury, Edwards said she returned to the police line to help fight back the crowd during “hours of hand-to-hand combat.”
“What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I’d seen out of the movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground, you know, they were bleeding, they were throwing up,” Edwards said.
“I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”
Edwards said she also was working with Officer Brian Sicknick, 42, who died of a stroke one day after the riot, when he collapsed.
“All of a sudden I see movement to the left of me and I turned and it was Officer Sicknick with his head in his hands and he was ghostly pale, which I figured at that point that he had been sprayed and I was concerned. My, you know, cop alarm bells went off, because if you get sprayed with pepper spray, you’re going to turn red. He turned, um, just about as pale as this sheet of paper,” she said. “So I looked back to see what hit him, what happened, and that’s when I got sprayed in the eyes as well. I was taken to be decontaminated by another officer but I didn’t get the chance because we were then tear-gassed.”
Earlier Thursday in Los Angeles, President Biden told reporters that he believed the hearing would show a “flagrant violation of the Constitution.”
“A lot of Americans are going to be seeing for the first time some of the detail that occurred,” Biden said.
Republican leaders preemptively slammed the committee as a “sham” — pointing out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected a slate of GOP members nominated by McCarthy and allowed only two anti-Trump Republican members, Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), both of whom voted to impeach Trump.
“This is a political show trial. This is something from a third world country,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a close Trump ally, said on a GOP press call Tuesday.
Cheney said during her opening remarks that the Justice Department is still investigating the events preceding the riot, which she blamed on Trump. She said a Dec. 19 tweet by the 45th president urging supporters to gather in DC on Jan. 6 was a “pivotal” moment.
“This tweet initiated a chain of events. The tweet led to the planning for what occurred on January 6, including by the Proud Boys, who ultimately led the invasion of the Capitol and the violence on that day,” she said.
An analysis of video by the Wall Street Journal found that Proud Boys members were involved in early clashes with police that helped collapse a security perimeter around the Capitol while Trump was still speaking near the White House.
Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, laid out a variety of allegations that she said would be supported by evidence during subsequent hearings.
“You will hear that President Trump was yelling and ‘really angry’ at advisers who told him he needed to be doing something more,” Cheney said, “and — aware of the rioters’ chants to hang Mike Pence — the president responded with this sentiment quote: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea.’ Mike Pence quote ‘deserves it.’”
Trump had pressured Pence to refuse to certify swing-state electors for President-elect Joe Biden, which he refused to do, saying he didn’t have the authority.
“You will hear about members of the Trump Cabinet discussing the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment and replacing the president of the United States,” Cheney further claimed.
Cheney also said that the committee would describe how Perry, who refused to comply with a subpoena, “contacted the White House in the weeks after Jan. 6 to seek a potential pardon. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles and attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”
Moments before the riot, Republican lawmakers lodged objections to electors from certain swing states based on technical disagreements with election administration. But those objections were fated to lose in the Democratic-led House.
The Justice Department has criminally charged more than 800 people on a wide range of counts for taking part in the riot. Some beat police officers, ransacked offices, stole government property — including Pelosi’s lectern — and used fire extinguishers scattered throughout the historic building to spray or bludgeon authorities.
Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, 36, was fatally shot by a police officer while attempting to climb through a busted-out window into the House Speaker’s Lobby. Three other Trump supporters died of medical emergencies during the riot. Four cops and at least two accused rioters later died by suicide.
Thursday’s public hearing was the first of six scheduled to take place over the coming weeks. The second and third hearings have been set for Monday and Wednesday, both at 10 a.m.
The committee hopes to wrap up its work and issue a final report before the November midterm elections. Republicans are heavily favored to take back the House of Representatives in the fall and have said they will shut down the committee if its work is not completed by the time they take the majority.
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said recently that “the main purpose of the Jan. 6 committee is to make recommendations as to policy changes that will prevent any further close calls with violent and lawless attacks on our government. So we have to look at fortifying our defenses against both inside political coup attempts and violent insurrectionary challenges to the government.”
