WASHINGTON -

“Former President Donald Trump is a rogue, temperamental and dangerous character. He did not listen to anyone who disagreed with him on his story claiming to win the 2020 election, and so he bears full responsibility for what happened,” was the focus of the first public hearing of the Commission of Inquiry on January 6 / January 2021, which examines the causes, repercussions, and consequences of the storming of the Congress by supporters of the former president, in an attempt to obstruct the official ratification of the Senate and House of Representatives of the results of the 2020 presidential election that President Joe Biden won.

The Committee of Inquiry, which is supervised by the House of Representatives and consists of seven Democratic members and two Republican members, will broadcast another 5 public sessions, and it will issue its final report during the month of September.

The investigation committee conducted more than 100 interviews with a number of witnesses, and viewed more than 140,000 documents, including a number of text messages on the phones of a number of officials, in addition to the tweets of the former president.


The first session, which included broadcasting video clips from the testimonies of former officials, intruders, and members of President Trump's family, in conversations conducted over the past weeks and months, focused on the role of former President Trump.

The hearing, which was broadcast live in prime-time evening television and aired by all news networks except Fox News, revealed a direct conspiracy by President Trump to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, as the winning candidate.

Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican member of the committee, said, "President Trump didn't want to stop the riots, he was screaming in the faces of his advisers who were telling him he needed to do more to stop the break-in, and he was watching on TV and realizing the rioters were chanting. The hanging of Mike Pence.

The goal of the investigations .. Trump

The first hearing made clear that former President Donald Trump is the focal point of the commission's investigation.

"Donald Trump was at the center of that conspiracy, and President Trump of the United States motivated a group of enemies of the Constitution to march into the Capitol and sabotage American democracy," said Representative Benny Thompson, chair of the investigation committee.

Cheney also blamed Trump, saying that "those who stormed the Capitol and fought security forces for hours were motivated by what President Trump told them the election had been stolen and that he was the legitimate president."

Trump denied any responsibility for the attack and described the committee members as thugs (Reuters)

Cheney spoke of how President Trump "refused for hours to do what his staff, his family, and many other advisers begged him to immediately instruct his supporters to stop and evacuate the Capitol."

The committee broadcast a clip of Ivanka Trump, the president's eldest daughter and advisor in the White House, with the investigation committee, in which she said she "accepted the statement of former Attorney General William Barr that there was not enough fraud to cancel the election."

Trump attacked Ivanka Trump, saying his daughter was "pressured" in the days after the 2020 election, adding that she did not "study" the election results the way he did.

"Ivanka Trump did not participate in the consideration or examination of the election results. I think she only tried to express her respect for Bill Barr and his position as attorney general," Trump added.

Trump responds

Donald Trump denies any responsibility or wrongdoing related to the attack, and Trump described in a series of tweets on the social networking application "Truth Social" - which Trump launched - that "the January 6 committee selected from political thugs."

The former US president publicly denounced the pre-trial hearing in a statement issued by his "Save America" ​​organization, describing the congressional riots as the "greatest movement" in US history.

Trump also said that "the commission of inquiry is politicized, refuses to present any of the testimonies of the many witnesses who spoke positively, and refuses to talk about election fraud and irregularities that occurred on a large scale."

A video clip from the January 6 attack on the Capitol was shown during a hearing of the commission investigating the attack (Reuters)

Half of America is still on Trump's side

“Sham investigation” and “An anti-Trump show trial,” these phrases were the epitome of Fox News programming, which was the exception to not broadcasting the public hearing, as did the rest of the news networks.

With the start of the session at eight in the evening, the controversial broadcaster Tucker Carlson began broadcasting on Fox, followed by the famous broadcaster Sean Hannity.

Fox's programs included reiterating former President Trump's accounts of these events, and hosted a number of guests who repeated the attack on the investigation committee, and considered it politicized with the aim of eliminating any political ambition of former President Trump, and obstructing his expected candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections.

Fox spoke to guests, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah, and former Trump administration officials such as Cash Patel, the former chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, former White House adviser Stephen Miller, and Reince Priebus, the Trump White House chief of staff, and all the guests questioned the work and credibility of the Committee Investigation.

Opinion polls indicate that more than half of Republicans believe in President Trump's election claims, and that left-wing protesters led the riots and stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

Republican leaders criticized the commission before its work began, describing it as a mirage hunt, and saying it was a distraction from important issues that harm Democrats, such as high gasoline prices and high crime rates.