The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the Capitol will reconvene today. Today’s focus is to scrutinize the conspiracy theories that led a group of former president Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the Capitol.
The Democratic chair of the Committee, Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, said that this second hearing will focus on the lies that convinced people to storm the Capitol to try and stop a peaceful transfer of power.
The hearing will investigate the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law, which is when he lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Thompson said.
The select House committee said that the panel will focus on how Trump embraced baseless claims of a stolen election beginning on election night.
On election night, Trump falsely declared victory over Joe Biden. He continued to seize upon those claims in the weeks after.
Trump was repeatedly told on election night, quite frankly and simply, that he did not win. According to some of the testimony heard in the first hearing last week, some of his nearest and dearest, including his own daughter Ivanka Trump, believed Trump’s advisers when they said he did not have the numbers to win. Trump continued to peddle the lie that he did somehow win.
The committee is expected to show how Trump embraced election fraud claims despite being told otherwise by top officials.
Today’s hearing was supposed to rely on live witness testimony from former Trump campaign chief Bill Stepien, but there was breaking news today that Stephen will not be testifying due to a family emergency.
The hearing will see testimony from former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, as well as former US attorney BJay Pak, who resigned when he was told Trump would fire him for not pushing harder that fraud occurred in Georgia.
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