Today's Insurrection Hearing
The US House select committee investigating the January 6th Insurrection held a hearing this morning with four police officers who were there at the Capitol that fateful day.
Well, that was quite the hearing.
The US House select committee investigating the January 6th Insurrection held a hearing this morning with four police officers, both US Capitol and DC, who were there at the Capitol that fateful day. (Three testified to the personal violence they witnessed or were on the receiving end of, and the fourth, who was African-American, testified about the racism he received.)
I was talking about this with Cliff Schecter, my podcast host (you can hear part of our discussion here), and we both agreed that the hearing was far more powerful than we expected. The details of the day brought nearly all four witnesses to tears, and several members of congress as well.
I expected that the day would be a repetition of the facts we already knew. And while it was, there was something about watching each man tell his story — all still clearly traumatized a good six months later — that made the moment far more riveting and emotional than I had expected.
I’ve posted short video clips of the best moments of the testimony over at my TikTok account. They include:
New video released of the attack. It still makes my blood boil.
Officer Daniel Hodges, the guy who was crushed in the doorway, talks about what happened that day, and how he was told by a Trump supporter: “you will die on your knees.”
Officer Michael Fanone tells about how he was dragged out into the crowd, tasered multiple times to the point where he had a heart attack and brain damage, then they took his weapon and discussed killing him.
Fanone then caught the entire room’s attention during this moment in which he angrily called out Republican members of Congress for defending the insurrectionists.
Officer Aquilino Gonell talks about what he witnessed that day.
Gonell then talks about how emotional he became when he finally went home to his wife at 4am.
Officer Harry Dunn, an African-American, talks about the blatant racism that he and other Black officers were shown by Trump supporters that day.
Dunn compares Trump to a hit-man.
And finally, a really emotional statement by GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the two Republicans on the committee.
In order to steal the thunder from the Insurrection hearing, four far-right Republican members of Congress decided to hold a press conference outside the Department of Justice, calling for the immediate release of all the insurrectionists. Sadly for Marjorie Taylor Green (QAnon nut), Matt Gaetz (under FBI investigation for alleged child sex trafficking), Paul Gosar (racist), and Louie Gohmert (nutjob), the presser didn’t go so well. In fact, it devolved into glorious chaos. I share that video here. It’s truly hilarious. (The Trump trolls on TikTok reported my video as “bullying and harassment,” so TikTok automatically pulled it pending review. They’ll put it back after a real human checks it out, but this is what right-wingers do all the time on TikTok. They organize to suppress content that embarrasess the GOP. Sigh.)
There’s not much more I can say that you won’t better get from the video clips themselves. Each one is a minute or two long, and definitely worth a watch. Overall, it’s difficult to see how we ever get out of this. What happened on January 6th was a deal breaker. It wasn’t just political violence. It was an attempt to assassinate the vice president and members of Congress, or at best, hold them and our democracy hostage. The fact that Republican members of Congress are still defending the terrorists, and doing it with impunity, while the Republican congressional leadership continues to genuflect to the terrorist in chief, means this will happen again. And next time, they might just pull it off.