Capitol assault: House inquiry puts Trump ‘at center’ of ‘coup attempt’


A year and a half after this day that marked history, a parliamentary commission of inquiry began Thursday to reveal the exact responsibility of the former American president in the attack of January 6, 2021 against the Capitol.

A man with buffalo horns wandering the halls of the US Congress, elected officials crawling on the ground with gas masks… A year and a half after this day that marked history, a parliamentary commission of inquiry began Thursday June 9 to unveil the exact responsibility of former President Donald Trump in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, during highly anticipated hearings.

Protesters stormed the headquarters of Congress after “encouragement” of the former president, said 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 presidential election of 2020. “January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup”said Bennie Thompson. “Donald Trump was at the center of this plot”.

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 specific actions and gestures of Donald Trump before, during and after this event that rocked 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.

Our democracy is still in danger. The plot to counter the will of the people is not over. »

Bennie Thompson, head of the “January 6” commission

On that cold winter day, thousands of his supporters had gathered in Washington to denounce the result of the 2020 election which had seen the former real estate magnate lose, the same day that American congressmen gathered inside the Capitol to certify the results. A crowd had stormed the building housing the elected officials, causing a global shock wave. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards “the first member of law enforcement to be injured by the rioters” on January 6, as well as a documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, whose team followed the extreme right militia of the “Proud Boys” during the attack, will have to testify during this hearing.

Never-before-seen videos aired Thursday night. They show a crowd attacking the seat of the United States Congress, calling for “hang” Vice President Mike Pence, and a protester reading Donald Trump tweets through a megaphone. The images were broadcast live by many news channels continuously. Many Americans will discover “for the first time” what really happened on January 6, President Joe Biden said on 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 the Capitol was the “Biggest 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 defeat the will of the people is not over.alerted 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, with the leader of the conservatives in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, denouncing the commission “the most political and 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.



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