Capitol storming was ‘culmination of attempted coup’, says head of House inquiry

INA-  sources 
The assault on the Capitol was the “culmination of an attempted coup”: a year and a half after this day which marked History, a parliamentary commission of inquiry began Thursday to reveal the exact responsibility of Donald Trump in the attack on January 6, 2021, during highly anticipated hearings.

A man with buffalo horns wandering the halls of the US Congress, elected officials crawling on the ground with gas masks… Protesters stormed the headquarters of Congress after “encouragement” from the former president, a declared Bennie Thompson, the head of the so-called “January 6” commission at the start of a series of hearings supposed to prove the existence of a coordinated campaign to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.

“January 6 was the culmination of a coup attempt,” said Bennie Thompson. “Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy.”

For nearly a year, this group of elected officials – seven Democrats and two Republicans – has heard more than 1,000 witnesses, including two children of the former president, and gone through 140,000 documents to shed light on the facts and gestures of Donald Trump before, during and after this event which shook American democracy.

Text messages, videos and tweets from the former president in support, elected officials began to present the different scenarios envisaged by the former president and his entourage to change the course of the 2020 presidential election, until the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

On this cold winter day, thousands of his supporters gathered in Washington to denounce the result of the 2020 election which had seen the ex-real estate magnate lose. A crowd had stormed the headquarters of the US Congress, sending shock waves around the world.

Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, “the first member of law enforcement to be injured by rioters” on January 6, as well as documentary writer Nick Quested, whose team was following the far-right Proud Boys militia during the assault, will have to testify at this hearing.

Many Americans will find out “for the first time” what really happened on January 6, President Joe Biden said Thursday.
The hearing is broadcast live on many news channels continuously but shunned by the most conservative media, a new illustration of the deep political fault line that divides the United States.

Because a year and a half after the assault on the Capitol, millions of supporters of Donald Trump remain firmly convinced that the 2020 election was marred by fraud. And this despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The main interested party, Donald Trump, once again praised this day Thursday, assuring that the assault on Capitol Hill was the “greatest movement in history to make America great again”.

The parliamentary committee considers its work essential to ensure that one of the darkest episodes in American history is never repeated, despite very real threats.

“Our democracy is still in danger. The plot to counter the will of the people is not over,” warned Bennie Thompson.

The parliamentary inquiry therefore faces a major challenge, that of presenting a story, evidence, capable of capturing the attention of the general public and convincing it of the importance of its revelations.

But the majority of Republicans reject its work, the leader of the conservatives in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, denouncing the commission “the most political and the least legitimate in the history of the United States”.

His party has already promised to bury the work of this commission if it were to take control of the Chamber during the mid-term legislative elections in November.

Times News