The January 6 Committee Is Not Messing Around
The open hearing last week of the committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt plunged viewers back into the brutality and terror of that day. The committee featured footage of insurrectionists beating the law-enforcement officers who attempted to stop them from entering the Capitol, material disturbing enough that YouTube later labeled video of the hearing as “inappropriate for some users.” Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who testified about her injuries at the hands of the rioters, described “slipping in people’s blood.” Within the chamber, lawmakers who had escaped the violence watched the proceedings with tears in their eyes.
The second hearing, yesterday morning, was free from portrayals of violence but no less gripping. Using a combination of live witnesses and video footage from taped depositions, committee members walked through the evidence that President Donald Trump and his campaign knew the Big Lie about election fraud to be exactly that—yet continued to pursue these claims of a stolen election in the run-up to the insurrection. The overall impression was, as Trump’s own attorney general William Barr commented, of a man “detached from reality” and willing to use violence to bring his chosen reality into existence.
