Jan. 6 committee holds first prime-time hearing

Jason Miller, Donald Trump’s campaign spokesperson, is claiming he was taken out of context during tonight’s Jan. 6 hearing.

During the hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney played a clip of Miller:

Miller is now reacting on twitter, saying that Cheney did not play the rest of the clip in which Trump disagreed with Oczkowski and believed that Oczkowski was not looking at the prospect of “legal challenges” going Trump’s way:

"Here’s what came next in my testimony, which Liz Cheney failed to play:

Q: Okay. And what was the President's reaction then when Matt said to him, 'Hey, we've looked at the numbers, you're going to lose'? A: I think it's safe to say he disagreed with Matt's analysis," Miller wrote in a Twitter thread.

Remember: Despite this belief, the Trump campaign has lost almost every legal challenge regarding election fraud.

The Jan. 6 committee hearing is back after taking a short break.

The panel will now hear testimony from two witnesses: documentarian Nick Quested, who has filmed members of the Proud Boys, and Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was injured after an altercation involving members of the Proud Boys.

The Jan. 6 committee showed never-before-seen footage of people rushing out of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office during the early stages of the riot.

The clip was included in a montage of some of the most violent moments from the riot, including Trump supporters attacking police officers and smashing windows.

In the days after the insurrection, McCarthy said former President Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack.

But over time, he cozied back up to Trump. Asked by CNN at a news conference earlier today about Trump’s culpability, McCarthy said, “everybody in the country bears some responsibility.” 

Former President Trump's final White House counsel Pat Cipollone repeatedly threatened to quit, the committee revealed, citing testimony from Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner. 

"The White House Counsel was so concerned about potentially lawless activity, he threatened to resign, multiple times," Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said at the hearing.

“That is exceedingly rare and exceedingly serious. It requires immediate attention, especially when the entire team threatens to resign. However, in the Trump White House, it was not exceedingly rare and it was not treated seriously.”

It is not known whether Cipollone will testify to the House select committee. 

Kushner, in his testimony, also said he believed those threatening to quit could have been "whining." 

The committee didn’t provide further detail about the near-resignations on Thursday.

The incident echoed a significant moment central to the Russia investigation in the first half of Trump's presidency. Special counsel Robert Mueller documented how then-White House Counsel Don McGahn prepared to quit rather than shut down the investigation at Trump's order, and Mueller found the incident met the legal threshold for obstruction of justice, though Trump was not charged. 

Right now, the committee is playing video footage that has not yet been released. The video shows the day of Jan. 6, 2021 in chronological order, starting in the morning before the Capitol is breached.

The video includes timestamps and audio of officers responding to crowds storming the building.

"We need backup," a voice said as violent scenes play out.

The clips show rioters breaking windows and pushing through barricades. Some people are specifically identified as Proud Boys by captions written on the screen.

"Hold the line! Hold the line!" officers yell as they physically clash with rioters at about 2 p.m. ET, according to the video.

"I need support," an officer says over body camera footage of another officer getting pushed by crowds. "We lost the line," the officer continues.

Watch the full video here.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot is starting to present their findings to the public. They have been looking into what happened before and after the insurrection, interviewing witnesses and going through messages.

But, Thursday's presentation is just the first of many. There are several other hearings scheduled for the rest of June, including three next week.

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said there are a few things Americans should keep in mind as the committee releases these initial findings.

First, the investigation is still ongoing. "What we make public here will not be the complete set of information we will ultimately disclose," Cheney said.

Secondly, Cheney said the Department of Justice is currently working with cooperating witnesses. She added that the department has only released some of the information it has uncovered from "encrypted communications and other sources."

While the committee cannot bring legal charges against former President Donald Trump, its central mission has been to uncover the full scope of Trump's unprecedented attempt to stop the transfer of power.

Cheney also outlined what topics are likely to come up at the upcoming hearings:

Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan 6. committee, revealed new video from the committee’s interview with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley saying then-Vice President Mike Pence was the one who ordered National Guard troops to respond to the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, but that he was told by the White House to say it was former President Trump.

“He was very animated, very direct, very firm to Secretary Miller. Get the military down here, get the guard down here. Put down this situation, et cetera,” he added, referring to Pence.

Milley also described his interactions with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows that day, drawing a stark contrast between those conversations with Pence.

“He said: We have to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative, you know, that the President is still in charge and that things are steady or stable, or words to that effect,” Milley says in the video, referring to what Meadows told him.

“I immediately interpreted that as politics. Politics. Politics. Red flag for me, personally. No action. But I remember it distinctly,” he added.

CNN previously reported that Pence, not Trump, facilitated the mobilization of National Guard troops to respond to the riot.

The video of Milley’s testimony, who remains the top US military officer now in the Biden administration, speaks to how the committee will seek to highlight what Trump was doing, and not doing, as the violence was spiraling out of control – something CNN has previously reported will be an area of focus during the public hearings.

GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, had a critical message to members of her own party who, in her words, defend what is "indefensible."

Cheney herself has faced a major backlash from fellow Republicans for becoming a prominent critic of Trump and his lies over the election outcome.

Last year, Cheney lost her post in House Republican leadership after publicly rejecting for months Trump's lie that he won the 2020 presidential election.

The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 will hold a hearing next week exploring how former President Donald Trump “corruptly” planned to replace acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen “so the US Justice Department would spread his false stolen election claims,” according to Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney.

In her opening statement, Cheney said that Trump offered Jeff Clark, the acting attorney general of the civil division, the job of acting attorney general, and wanted him to send a letter to battleground states saying that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.” 

After the letter was circulated around the Justice Department, the plan drew fierce blowback from top officials, including then-acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue.

In audio aired on Thursday night, Donoghue testified that he told Clark, “What you are proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.”

Rosen and Donoghue have been invited by the committee to publicly testify in its hearings. Clark has refused to testify.

The House committee’s effort follows a months-long investigation by the Senate Judiciary committee, which released a report last year on how Trump and Clark sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.