Ahead of the first prime-time televised hearings on the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack of the U.S. Capitol, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said she believed the assault was a “chilling” and “extremely well-organized” conspiracy carried out by far-right supporters of Donald Trump.
Cheney, who represents Wyoming, serves as vice chair of the House Select January 6th Committee tasked with investigating the dark day in which an angry mob of Trump supporters, white supremacists and far-right militia members stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 as the Congress jointly convened to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election — which Trump lost to Joe Biden.
In a June 5 interview with “Sunday Morning” on CBS, Cheney expressed confidence that the committee’s investigation — involving the review of thousands of documents and hundreds of hours of interviews with witnesses — has unearthed a vast conspiratorial attempt to overturn the election results and damage American democracy.
And Cheney pointed out the threat remains “ongoing” thanks to the inflammatory rhetoric of former President Trump, who continues to peddle The Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election. In fact, a number of Trump loyalists, including Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, have refused to testify before the committee — leading to contempt charges against Bannon and Navarro, among others.
“We’re not at a situation where former President Trump has expressed any sense of remorse about what happened,” Cheney said in her June 5 “Face the Nation” interview. “We are, in fact, at a situation where he continues to use even more extreme language, frankly, than the language that caused the attack.”
Cheney said the investigation unveiled a “multi-pronged effort” by Trump and his supporters to disregard the election results and attempt to deny the peaceful transfer of power. The congresswoman urged Americans to watch the hearings and understand the facts of the Jan. 6, 2021 investigation, noting that democracy itself remains at risk.
“People must pay attention,” she said in the June 5 interview. “People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it.”
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Trump spoke at a so-called “Save America March” attended by thousands of his supporters near the Capitol. During his speech to the crowd, Trump repeated the baseless lies he and his closest supporters had parroted for weeks that the 2020 election, which he lost, had been rigged.
“You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump told the crowd. “Our country has had enough and we will not take it any more.”
Other speakers at the rally helped Trump whip the mob up into a frenzy, with former New York Mayor and current Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani saying, at one point, “Let’s have trial by combat.”
Soon after, the mob converged upon the Capitol and began violently clashing with Capitol police officers. Supporters erected a gallows outside the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” threatening to kill the sitting vice president of the United States who had disobeyed Trump’s request to stop the election certification — even though Pence had no constitutional authority to follow Trump’s request.
Hundreds of mob members smashed their way into the Capitol itself, temporarily halting the certification efforts and sending Pence and Congress members into lockdown for a number of hours.
Five people died in the attack, including a Capitol police officer fatally beaten by the mob on the steps outside the heart of American democracy. Since then, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of attack participants, and the investigation remains ongoing.
The first televised hearing on the Jan. 6, 2021 investigation will take place at 8 p.m. on June 9.
