Did Donald Trump organize the assault on the Capitol with which thousands of his followers tried to annul the 2020 presidential elections by force? America expects to see it on TV starting at eight tonight, East Coast time (two in the morning in Spain) and prime time in the United States.
The House of Representatives committee that has been investigating the events for 11 months promises to show "never-before-seen material" in what will be the first of six televised and live hearings on what is considered the greatest attack on American democracy, perpetrated on January 6, 2021 by a violent mob. President Joe Biden regards Trump as the great "instigator" of the coup.
Under the direction and presidency of Democrat Bennie Thompson and with the ousted Republican Liz Cheney as number two, the session will include a summary of the results obtained by the committee through the thousand interviews it has conducted and the around 100,000 documents it has collected. .
The televised hearings will put Trump "at the center of the coordinated, multi-phased attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and stop the transfer of power to Joe Biden," a committee aide explained. show that January 6 was the result of that attempt" to sabotage the presidential elections, he added.
In some of the scheduled sessions, the second scheduled for Monday morning and the rest in the following days and weeks to be determined, the committee plans to show the recorded statement in which the daughter and former adviser to the former president, Ivanka Trump, reportedly recounted how she requested his father, unsuccessfully, to stop the insurrection.
But the inclusion of that interesting appearance in the televised hearings is still under study and for now it is only "possible", indicated Bennie Thompson; The same goes for the testimony of Ivanka Trump's husband and also former presidential adviser Jared Kushner, described as "very valuable" by members of the committee.
What is certain that viewers will see today, in the first of the televised hearings, is a video with raw and partly unpublished images of the assault on the Capitol, which left five dead that day and another four later.
The participation in the hearing of two key witnesses is also guaranteed: the Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, one of the first agents who, among a total of 150, were injured in the attack: and the documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who for weeks Prior to 6-E he was working on a project about the ultra group Proud Boys and on January 5 he witnessed an important meeting between the leaders of that group and those of the Oath Keepers (Guardians of the oath), both accused of " seditious conspiracy" for their participation in the assault.
The live hearings “will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House and compare it to the Watergate hearings” in 1973, Democratic congressman and committee member Jamie Raskin promised. House caucusmate Steve Cohen added : "Let's see to what extent Trump was involved. He, with his henchmen and his son or sons, ran this show from the moment he lost the election in November 2020."
The comparison of these hearings and those of Watergate is tempting and even inevitable. The problem for the Democrats, who occupy 7 of the 9 seats in the Congressional committee, is that while back then it was the Republicans themselves who ended up convincing their leader, Richard Nixon, to resign, here it is the former president who has convinced most of his people that he has to stay as leader; perhaps return to the presidency and, in any case, continue to wield the theory of electoral fraud even though it is very well proven that it is a huge lie.
To underpin the success of the 6-E show, the investigative committee has hired the master of television and documentaries James Goldston, former president of ABC News.
Democrats and their supporters have organized numerous parties across the country to follow tonight's hearing. Among those planned in Washington, many of them outdoors and with television super screens, the one scheduled for the Robert Taft Memorial and Carillon, next to the Capitol, stands out, where attendees can enjoy a vegetarian dinner and an ice cream Ben
This is America. The show must go on.
