The panel made clear at its first public hearing Thursday that it would rather let Trump’s own inner circle stitch together the details of the former president’s actions to remain in power — and his inaction as a mob of supporters overran the Capitol. Videos showed Ivanka Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and Trump campaign advisers testify that the former president had really lost the 2020 election, as committee members mostly remained in the background.
“These aren’t partisan voices that are speaking out and saying we don’t like Donald Trump,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), one of dozens of Democratic lawmakers who sat in the audience for the hearing. “This is his own attorney general, the White House counsel, his daughter for Pete’s sake.”…
The panel hinted that there was much more testimony to come. The witness clips they played only amounted to a few minutes in length, serving as more of a table-setter for the five remaining hearings in the next two weeks. The committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), summarized in her opening statement what some of the more explosive clips would show.
“You will hear testimony, live and on video, from more than a half dozen former Trump White House staff, all of whom were in the West Wing of the White House that day,” she said.
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