Jan. 6 committee holds seventh hearing

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol just wrapped up its seventh public hearing. 

The committee focused on the role of extremist groups and how the violent mob came together. The hearing explored the Trump administration’s connections to these groups, such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, ahead of the riot.

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, and Stephen Ayres, who participated in the insurrection, testified. The hearing also featured clips from the deposition of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

Here are the key takeaways:

Read more takeaways here.

The House select committee said Tuesday it has evidence that Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, shipped thousands of dollars worth of tactical gear to a Jan. 6 rally planner in Virginia before the attack. 

The details of the shipment have not previously been alleged, though the Justice Department has claimed that Rhodes allegedly bought an AR-platform rifle and other firearms equipment, including sights, mounts, triggers, slings, and other firearms attachments and equipment on his way to Washington, DC. 

The committee did not identify the rally organizer, nor did they specify what kind of tactical gear Rhodes allegedly sent. 

Rhodes’ attorney denied the allegation to CNN, saying there has been no evidence that Rhodes shipped tactical gear to anybody before or after the riot. 

Rhodes has been charged with seditious conspiracy by the Justice Department and has pleaded not guilty.  

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testified for eight hours in front of the House Jan. 6 Committee on Friday in a closed-door interview. Here are some key moments of his testimony played at the committee’s seventh hearing on Tuesday.

He did not think there was sufficient evidence of election fraud: In his testimony, Cipollone said he agreed with former Attorney General Bill Barr, who concluded there was insufficient evidence of election fraud. He recounted former chief of staff Mark Meadows saying in November 2020 that then-President Trump should have conceded, to which he said he agreed. Jason Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump, told the committee that Cipollone called John Eastman’s theory to overturn the election “nutty.” Cipollone did not refute this statement.

He was verbally attacked during the Dec. 18, 2020 meeting at the White House. Cipollone told the committee he walked into the Dec.18 meeting attended by Trump, former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, none of which, he said, he was “happy to see.”

The meeting, which lasted six hours, was described as “unhinged” by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson after hearing screaming coming from the West Wing. Ideas circulated about overturning the election including Flynn’s suggestion to invoke martial law and inspection of voting machines.

“I don’t think any of these people were providing the President with good advice,” Cipollone told the committee.

After asking where the evidence was for claims of voter fraud, Cipollone said that he and Meadows were verbally attacked for questioning where the evidence for Trump’s falsely claimed victory came from. Cipollone told the committee the group responded with “general disregard for wanting to back up claims with facts.”

In addition to floating claims of voter fraud and plots to overturn the election, Cipollone described his opposition to Trump’s suggestion of naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud in the 2020 election. “I was vehemently opposed — I didn’t think she should be appointed to anything,” Cipollone told the committee during his closed-door interview, according to a video clip from that meeting played Tuesday.

He thought it was a “terrible idea” for the President to follow a plan to seize election machines: A proposal for the federal government to seize election machines was “a terrible idea,” Cipollone told the committee.

Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said former President Donald Trump attempted to contact a witness who has not yet been publicly identified.

“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Cheney saidat the end of the House select committee hearing on Tuesday. “That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call, and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice.”

As notable as Cheney’s revelation is, she also raises the possibility that the incident could prompt interest from Justice Department prosecutors.

This is the first time the committee has explicitly described providing information to the Justice Department that they discovered during their probe. 

However, it’s not the first public suggestion of witness tampering the committee has made. Previously, the committee noted two incidents where their star witness Cassidy Hutchinson received messages about being loyal to Donald Trump. It should be noted that making a call isn’t witness tampering in and of itself.

Those, however, weren’t from Trump himself — and Trump’s personal involvement raises the stakes if the message was intended to impact a witness’ testimony.

Cheney didn’t disclose the substance of it.

It’s still not clear how the committee communicated the information to the Justice Department, and whether it could be considered a criminal referral.

The Justice Department hasn’t responded to CNN’s request for comment.

Capitol rioter Stephen Ayres shook hands with officers who defended the US Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection after Tuesday’s hearing.

Ayres could be seen shaking hands with former DC Metropolitan Police Officers Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges and US Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino A. Gonell.

The House Jan. 6 select committee’s seventh hearing just wrapped up.  

Committee vice-chair Liz Cheney said the next public hearing will zero in on what former President Donald Trump and his team were doing on Jan. 6, 2021, and specifically while the insurrection was going on.

“For multiple hours, Donald Trump refused to intervene to stop it. He would not instruct the mob to leave or condemn the violence. He would not order them to evacuate the Capitol and disperse,” Cheney said.

She said the committee will also show that members of Congress and his own staff pleaded with the former President to help. Cheney said the hearing will walk through the events of Jan. 6 “minute by minute.”

The committee’s next hearing will be next week. It will be aired live on CNN and a livestream will be featured on CNN.com without requiring a login. CNN’s special coverage of the hearing will stream live on the CNN app, and live coverage with updates will be on CNN.com and cnnespanol.cnn.com. 

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said in closing remarks at today’s hearing that “American carnage” is former President Trump’s “true legacy” in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

“American carnage, that’s Donald Trump’s true legacy. His desire to overthrow the people’s election and seize the presidency interrupted the counting of Electoral College votes for the first time in American history, nearly toppled the Constitutional order, and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people,” Raskin said.

“The Watergate break in was like a Cub Scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions,” Raskin said.

Raskin was making reference to a now-famous line from a speech Trump gave in which he invoked the concept of “American carnage.”

US Capitol Police sergeant Aquilino Gonell has been forced to quit policing due to injuries sustained during the Jan. 6 attack, Rep. Jamie Raskin said during today’s hearing.

Gonell was in the audience for today’s hearing and grew emotional as Raskin described how the police officer’s injuries that day ended his career.

“Last month, on June 28, a team of doctors told him that permanent injuries he has suffered to his left shoulder and right foot now make it impossible for him to continue as a police officer. He must leave policing for good and figure out the rest of his life,” Raskin said.

According to Raskin, Gonell, who is an Iraq War veteran and testified to the committee after the Jan. 6 attack, told them that “nothing he ever saw in combat in Iraq prepared him for the insurrection, where he was savagely beaten, punched, pushed, kicked, stomped, and sprayed with chemical irritants along with other officers. By members of a mob carrying hammers, knives, batons, and police shields taken by force. And wielding the American flag against police officers as a dangerous weapon.”

A former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, an extremist group, says it is “exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen.”

Jason Van Tatenhove said the potential for more violence “has been there from the start,” adding that he is worried about the next election. He said as tragic as it is that some people were killed during the insurrection, including law enforcement officers, “the potential was so much more.”

“All we have to look at is the iconic images of that day with the gallows set up for Mike Pence. For the Vice President of the United States,” Van Tatenhove said.

Looking ahead, he said he doesn’t know what the next election might bring, but he is worried that if former President Donald Trump runs again in 2024, he will try to “whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and deceit.”

“What else is he going to do if he gets elected again? All bets are off at that point,” he added, saying that he is worried about the world his daughters and granddaughter will inherit if people are not held accountable.

Former Oath Keepers spokesperson Jason Van Tatenhove says he fears for the next election cycle. Hear him explain why:

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Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson and self-described “propagandist” for the Oath Keepers, told the committee Tuesday how the group was a dangerous militia driven by violence.

“I spent a few years with the Oath Keepers and I can tell you that they may not like to call themselves a militia but they are,” Van Tatenhove told the committee.

Leaders of the Oath Keepers have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their alleged actions on Jan. 6. According to prosecutors, the group established a “quick reaction force” in Virginia for Jan. 6, stocked with firearms and ammunition, in case members in DC needed back up that day. Two Oath Keeper groups tactically breached the Capitol that day, prosecutors say, with some members looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inside.

“I think we saw a glimpse of what the vision of the Oath Keepers is on Jan. 6,” Van Tatenhove said. “It doesn’t necessary include the rule of law…it includes violence. It includes trying to get their way through lies, through deceit, through intimidation and through the perpetration of violence.”

During his testimony, Van Tatenhove told the committee that the group, driven by their leader Stewart Rhodes, would run military training exercises and that “there were courses in that community that went over explosive training.” 

“I think we’ve gotten exceedingly luck that more bloodshed did not happen” on Jan. 6, Van Tatenhove said. “The potential was so much more.”

Asked why he broke off with the group, Van Tatenhove said that at one point Oath Keepers started talking about how the Holocaust wasn’t real. “That was it for me, I just could not abide,” he said.

Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy said that former President Donald Trump made “last-minute edits” to his Jan. 6, 2021 speech from the Ellipse while listening to a rally attended by far-right extremists held near the White House on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021.

“Based on documents we have received from the National Archives, including multiple draft of the Presidents’ speech, as well as from witness testimony, we understand how that speech devolved into a call to action and call to fight,” Murphy said.

Murphy said that Trump edited his speech to include language that he later tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, including, “we don’t want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore. We also added, together we will stop the steal.”

Murphy said that Trump continued edits to his speech early into the morning of Jan. 6, 2021 and held a 25-minutes phone call with this chief speech writer and senior adviser Stephen Miller.

“Following his call with Mr. Miller, President Trump inserted, for the first time, a line in his speech that said, ‘And we will see whether Mike Pence enters history as a truly great and courageous leader. All he has to do is refer the illegally submitted electoral votes back to the states that were given false and fraudulent information where they want to recertify.’ No prior versions of the speech had referenced Vice President Pence or his role during the joint session on Jan. 6,” Murphy noted.

She said, “These last-minute edits by President Trump to his speech were part of the President’s pressure campaign against his own vice president.”

Murphy said that Miller removed the lines about Pence after having a conversation with White House lawyer Eric Herschmann who objected to the President’s edits, according to testimony from Miller.

Miller recalled Hershmann saying “something to the effect of thinking that it would be counterproductive, I think he thought, to – to discuss the matter publicly.”

Murphy said that the speech writers were advised to add the Pence lines back into the speech after a “heated” phone call Trump had with Pence at 11:20 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Murphy said.

Trump speechwriter Vincent Haley also recalled in committee deposition that a “tough sentence about the Vice President” was added. When Trump gave the speech, it included several more references to Pence, according to the committee’s presentation.

“I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOS and the stupid people that he’s listening to,” Trump said in one of the ad-libbed lines played by the committee.

In another improvised line, Trump called on his supporters to give “weak” Republicans “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

The committee also played dueling testimonies showcasing differing accounts of Ivanka Trump’s decision to attend the rally at the ellipse.

In her deposition, as played during the hearing, Ivanka Trump denied that she attended the rally in the hopes of cooling down her father because he was still overheated from his call with Pence.

However, Julie Radford, an aide to Ivanka Trump, told the committee that Ivanka “felt like she might be able to help calm the situation down, at least before he went onto stage.”

“She shared that he had called the Vice President a not — an expletive word,” Radford told the committee. “I think that bothered her. And I think she could tell based on the conversations and what was going on in the office that he was angry and upset and people were providing misinformation.”

CNN’s Tierney Sne contributed to this report.

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, described the group as a “dangerous militia.”

“They may not like to call themselves a militia, but they are. They’re a violent militia,” he said during testimony at the House select committee’s seventh public hearing.

Van Tatenhove, who spent several years with the group, said rather than use words, the best representative of “what the Oath Keepers are happened Jan. 6” during the insurrection at the US Capitol and the way they used a “stacked military formation going up the stairs.”

He said he noticed the group getting more radical over time, drifting “further and further right — into the alt-right world, into White nationalists and even straight-up racists and it came to a point where I could no longer continue to work for them.”

“The Oath Keepers are a dangerous militia,” Van Tatenhove said, adding people get swept up in the lies and rhetoric of the group and its leader, Stewart Rhodes.

He said the moment when he decided to leave the group was when he heard members talking about how the Holocaust was not real at a grocery store.

“That was for me something I could not abide,” he said.

Jan. 6 rioter Stephen Ayres told the committee that after illegally entering the Capitol he decided to leave “basically when President Trump put his tweet out” asking his supporters to go home.

“We literally left right after that come out,” Ayres said. He added, “To me, if he would have done that earlier in the day … maybe we wouldn’t have been in that bad of a situation.”

Ayres said earlier in his testimony that he believed that Trump would be marching to the Capitol with his supporters.

“I think everybody thought he would be coming down. He said in his speech…it was kind of like he was going to be there with us… I believed it,” he said.

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale texted Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson on Jan. 6, 2021, that the former president was “asking for civil war,” according to text messages obtained by the Jan. 6 committee.

During today’s hearing, Rep. Stephanie Murphy read excerpts from the text exchange between Parscale and Pierson.

Parscale wrote: “this is about trump’s pushing for uncertainty…A sitting president asking for civil war…This week I feel guilty for helping him win.” 

Pierson responded, “you did what you felt right at the time. And therefore it was right.”

Parscale responded, “yeah, but a woman is dead” and “yeah, if I was trump and I knew my rhetoric killed someone.”

Pierson replied: “it wasn’t rhetoric.” 

Parscale wrote back, “Katrina. Yes it was.”

Several of former President Donald Trump’s aides described to the committee how former President Trump gathered his staff in the Oval Office on Jan. 5, 2021, to listen to his supporters rallying near the White House, according to video depositions the committee played on Tuesday.

“He had the door of the Oval opened to the Rose Garden, because you could hear the crowd already assembled outside on the Ellipse, and they were playing music, and it was so loud that you could feel it shaking in the Oval,” said former Trump deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews in a video deposition.

The description marks the second insider account in Tuesday’s hearing of a troubling Oval Office meeting between the former president and his aides. The hearing also revealed new details about the now infamous Dec. 18 meeting where Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn floated wild suggestions about overturning the election.

Shealah Craighead, Trump’s chief White House photographer, told the committee Trump was talking about going to the Capitol. It’s not clear whether it was a reference to Jan. 6, though his supporters were gathered at Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington the evening of Jan. 5.

“The President was making notes, talking then about, ‘We should go up to the Capitol. What’s the best route to go to the Capitol?’” Craighead said in a deposition.

The aides said that Trump was in a good mood on the evening of Jan. 5 and excited for what was to come the next day. “He was in a very good mood. And I say that because he had not been in a good mood for weeks up to that. And then it seemed like he was in a fantastic mood that evening,” Matthews said.

Judd Deere, another Trump press aide, told the panel that Trump said of the crowd: “They were fired up. They were angry. They feel like the election’s been stolen, that the election was rigged.”

“He continued to reference being able to hear them outside,” Deere added.

A former Twitter employee who worked on the team responsible for platform and content moderation policies said he tried to warn more people at the company of the potential violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

They said the night before the insurrection on Jan. 5, 2021, they said they were on “pins and needles.”

“For months I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if nothing, if we made no intervention into what I saw occurring, people were going to die,” the former employee said in an anonymous deposition with the committee.

He said he realized that no intervention from the company was coming and former President Trump went unchecked.

“We were at the whims and the mercy of a violent crowd that was locked and loaded,” they said.

Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone praised former Vice President Mike Pence for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and for resisting the pressure campaign by Trump allies seeking to enlist him in their effort to overturn the election results.

In one video clip shown by the committee, Cipollone said, “I think the vice president did the right thing. I think he did the courageous thing. I have a great deal of respect for Vice President Pence.”

In a separate video clip, Cipollone said that, in his view, Pence “didn’t have the legal authority to do anything except what he did,” during the joint session of Congress convened to count and confirm the electoral votes.

Cipollone even went so far as to say that he believed the vice president deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“I think he did a great service to this country. And I think I suggested to somebody that he should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his actions,” Cipollone told the committee.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor a civilian can receive, for special contributions to the culture or security of the United States or world peace.

Allies of former President Donald Trump, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, worked and communicated with leaders of far-right extremist groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said during Tuesday’s hearing.

“In the weeks leading up to the attack, leaders in both The Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers worked with Trump allies. One such ally was Lt. General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and one of the participants in the unhinged meeting at the White House on Dec. 18,” Raskin said.

Raskin noted that Flynn had connections to the Oath Keepers, and showed a Dec. 12, 2020 picture of Flynn with fellow Trump ally and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne being guarded by indicted Oath Keeper Roberto Minuta. “Another view of this scene shows Oath Keepers’ leader Stewart Rhodes in the picture as well,” he said.

Raskin also zeroed in on Stone’s connections to the far-right organizations.

“Another central figure with ties to this network of extremist groups was Roger Stone, a political consultant and longtime confidant of President Trump,” he said.

According to the committee, Stone also used encrypted chats to communicate with the leaders of both groups.

In a chat highlighted by the committee, entitled “Friends of Stone,” Stone communicated with Rhodes, Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander about various pro-Trump rallies. Two of the rallies discussed in the “Friends of Stone” chat – on Dec. 12 and Jan. 6 – broke out in violence at the hands of extremists.

Both Flynn and Stone were pardoned by Trump in the weeks between the election on Nov. 3, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, Raskin added.

An attorney for Stone insisted that the Trump political adviser never participated in the group chat with Rhodes, Tarrio and Alexander.

“Mr. Stone was included in the group chat by whoever established it at the time,” said Grant Smith, an attorney for Stone. “Mr. Stone did not participate in any discussions in the chat and has no recollection of ever posting anything in the chat. If there had been postings by Mr. Stone, the Committee would have included them in the evidence presented. Mr. Stone engaged in only legally protected, First Amendment activities.” 

Stone has insisted he did nothing wrong in the run-up to Jan. 6. However, when he was subpoenaed by the House select committee, he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Oath Keepers counsel Kellye SoRelle, who was also a volunteer lawyer for the Trump campaign, told the Jan. 6 committee that Stone, Alexander and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones brought extremists “of different stripes and views together” as they tried to organize “stop the steal” rallies.

“Those are the ones that became the center point for everything,” she said.

CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.

On Jan. 2, 2021, Katrina Pierson, former spokesperson for Trump’s 2016 campaign who helped organize the rally on Jan. 6, texted former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about the upcoming rally, telling him that “things have gotten crazy.”

Meadows called her back a few minutes later, and Pierson told the Jan. 6 House select committee that she told him “there were a bunch of entities coming in,” adding “some were very suspect.”

When asked what she meant specifically by “suspect,” she said:

“I did briefly go over some of the concerns that I had raised to everybody with Alex Jones or Ali Alexander and some of the rhetoric that they were doing” at other events, she said.

Alexander and Jones helped plan a “Stop the Steal” rally at the Georgia state capitol.

Jan. 2 was also the day that Meadows had told former aide Cassidy Hutchinson that the rally “might get real, real bad,” according to Hutchinson’s testimony.

Pierson, who helped organize the rally on Jan. 6, told another organizer that Trump “likes the crazies” as she expressed concerns about potential speakers, according to text messages obtained by the House select committee.

Pierson, who sent the text on Dec. 30, 2020, confirmed to the committee in a deposition that she was talking about Trump. 

“Yes, I was talking about President Trump. He loved people who viciously defended him in public,” Pierson said, according to the video deposition played during Tuesday’s hearing.

Before recording a Jan. 5 podcast in which he predicted that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon spoke to Trump, according to White House phone logs obtained by the Jan. 6 committee. The logs also show that Bannon and Trump spoke again that evening.

The first Jan. 5 call started at 8:57 a.m. from Bannon’s cell phone and lasted 11 minutes, according to the committee’s presentation.  

Bannon also told his podcast listeners that day that it was “all converging” on a “point of attack tomorrow.” 

After recording the evening episode, Bannon had a six-minute phone call with Trump that started at 9:46 p.m., according to the phone logs featured at Tuesday’s hearing. 

Then-President Donald Trump planned days ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, to tell his supporters to march to the US Capitol from his rally on the National Mall, according to an unsent tweet intended for Trump’s account.

“I will be making a Big Speech at 10AM on January 6th at the Ellipse (South of the White House). Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!” the draft tweet says. 

The document recording the draft tweet, obtained by the House Select Committee via the National Archives, which inherited Trump White House documents, includes a stamp saying: “President has seen.”

The committee on Tuesday used the tweet’s existence to show how Trump and his advisers were interested in sending crowds to Capitol Hill. Lawyers for Trump since the January 6 attack have tried to argue his encouraging supporters to walk to the Capitol was political speech, and that he was not in control of the crowd nor responsible for the riot at the Capitol.

“The evidence confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the President,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a House Select committee member, said at the hearing Tuesday.

A text message from a rally organizer also appears to confirm Trump planned days in advance about his rally moving to Capitol Hill. The message, from Kylie Jane Kremer to right-wing figure and businessman Mike Lindell, outlines that the President would have his rally march to another stage outside the Supreme Court building, which is behind the Capitol.

“It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly,’” Kremer wrote, the House committee showed on Tuesday.

Another organizer, Ali Alexander, also indicated on Jan. 5 that he expected Trump to “order” his supporters to march.

Former President Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020, tweet calling his supporters to the capital on Jan. 6 united violent groups, according to Donell Harvin, the former chief of homeland security for Washington, DC.

“These nonaligned groups were aligning,” he told the Jan. 6 House select committee.

“All the red flags went up at that point. When you have armed militia collaborating with white supremacy groups collaborating with conspiracy theory groups online, all towards the common goal, you started seeing what we call in terrorism a blended ideology,” Harvin said.

“And that’s a very, very bad sign,” he added.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is back after taking a short break. 

Here’s who is expected to testify:

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, laid out the foundation for the panel’s seventh public hearing, saying evidence will show how former President Donald Trump “summoned a mob” in a “last-ditch effort” to overturn the 2020 election.

Thompson said by Dec. 14, 2020, Joe Biden had been elected President but, “by that point, many of Donald Trump supporters were already convinced that the election had been stolen because that’s what Donald Trump had been telling them.”

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol “met our expectations,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee.

Clips from Cipollone’s testimony last week have been played during the hearing.

If you’re just reading in, here are some of the key moments from the hearing so far:

A former Twitter employee who worked on the team responsible for platform and content moderation policies throughout 2020 and 2021 said they were concerned that former President Trump seemed to be talking directly to extremist organizations on Twitter and “giving them directives.”

They testified that they were worried Trump would use the platform to incite violence.

“If the former president Donald Trump or any other user on Twitter, he would’ve been permanently suspended a very long time ago,” the former employee said, speaking anonymously.

Despite concerns, the employee said Trump remained on Twitter unchecked.

“It felt as if a mob was being organized and they were gathering together their weaponry and their logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight,” they said.

On Dec. 19, the former President tweeted encouragement for his supporters to travel to Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021. This tweet marked a turning point in the chatter, the former Twitter employee said.

Before the Dec. 19 tweet, the organization among extremist groups was “nonspecific but very clear,” but after, the former employee said it became clear that people were willing to fight for the cause.

“It became clear not only with these individuals ready and willing, but the leader of their cause was asking them to join him in this cause and fighting for this cause in DC on Jan. 6 as well,” the employee said.

They also said they were “shocked” by the responses to Trump’s tweets.

“I very much believe that Donald Trump posted his tweet on December 19 was essentially staking a flag in DC on Jan. 6 for his supporters to come and rally,” adding they were concerned about this gathering becoming violent.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said that former President Donald Trump eventually turned away from his advisers at the White House after an “unhinged” meeting in December 2020 with Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani and tweeted out an invitation, where he falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen and urged his supporters to come to Washington, DC, on Jan., 6, 2021 to protest.

“President Trump turned away both from his outside advisers, most outlandish and un-workable schemes and his White House counsel’s advice to swallow hard and accept the reality of his loss. Instead, Donald Trump issued a tweet that would galvanize his followers, unleash a political firestorm, and change the course of our history as a country,” Raskin said.

He continued, “Trump’s purpose was to mobilize a crowd and how do you mobilize a crowd in 2020? With millions of followers on Twitter, President Trump knew exactly how to do it. At 1:42 a.m. on December 19, 2020, shortly after the last participants left the unhinged meeting, Trump sent out the tweet with his explosive invitation.”

The tweet, Raskin said, repeated the election fraud lie and claimed it was “statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election.” The tweet then went on to call for a “big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Former President Trump’s December tweet urging his followers to come to Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021 for a “wild” and “big” protest attracted some of his most extreme supporters, including followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and was greeted online by White supremacists and other proponents of violence, according to witness interviews and exhibits released by the House select committee on Tuesday.

Jim Watkins, the administrator of 8kun, an online forum that is the home of the QAnon conspiracy, told the House panel that he decided to go to Washington on Jan. 6 after Trump’s tweet on Dec. 19. 

“When the President of the United States announced that he was going to have a rally. Then I bought a ticket and went,” testified Watkins.

The House panel showed in its hearing Tuesday how some of Trump’s followers took to social media with violent online rhetoric; One online commenter called for the “DAY OF THE ROPE!” and for a “WHITE REVOLUTION.”

“I’m ready to die for my beliefs,” posted someone on the anonymous forum 4chan on Jan. 5, 2021. “Are you ready to die police?”

The committee also deposed Jody Willams, former owner of the racist and anti-Semitic site TheDonald.win.

“After it was announced that he was going to be there on the 6th to talk, yes, then anything else was kind of shut out and there was just going to be on the 6th,” Williams said.

A commenter on the site posted that they would “bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels.” Another poster encouraged people to bring “body armor, knuckles, shields, bats, pepper spray, whatever it takes.”

See how Trump’s tweet ignited far-right calls to flood the Capitol:

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The Jan. 6 committee is taking a short break. 

Many other Trump White House officials shared the view that once the litigation on alleged voting fraud ended and the Electoral College met, the election was over, including Ivanka Trump and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, according to Jan. 6 committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney.

When the litigation concluded “was when I began to plan for life after the administration,” McEnany said in her taped testimony to the committee.

When Ivanka Trump was asked if the conclusion of the Electoral College vote affected her planning in terms of the end to the Trump administration, she said, “I think so. I think it was my sentiment probably prior as well.”

In a “heated and profane clash” on Dec. 18, 2020, at the White House, there was a meeting that lasted over six hours. The select committee spoke to six of the participants, “as well as staffers who could hear the screaming from outside the Oval Office,” according to Rep. Jamie Raskin.

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he walked into a meeting with attorney Sidney Powell — who repeatedly pushed baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election — former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Overstock founder Patrick Byrne.

Cipollone expressed his displeasure with seeing them in the White House in video footage from the committee.

Derek Lyons, former White House staff secretary, said the meeting was tense.

“At times, there were people shutting out each other, throwing insults at each other. It wasn’t just people sitting around on a couch chitchatting,” he said.  

Powell told the committee that Cipollone and former senior adviser Eric Herschmann were “showing contempt and disdain” for Trump.

Cipollone told the committee they were verbally attacking him.

“We were pushing back and we’re asking one simple question as a general matter: Where is the evidence?” he said.

In response to baseless claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that voting machines were being manipulated by foreign powers in the 2020 election, former Attorney General Bill Barr called those allegations “complete nonsense,” according to his video testimony played during today’s hearing.

“I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn’t count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it which was complete nonsense and it was being laid out there and I told them that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that. And it was doing a grave disservice to the country,” Barr said. 

Trump’s former White House counsel Pat Cipollone agreed with Barr and the Department of Justice, the committee said. During his interview last week, Cipollone told the committee “I supported that” conclusion by Barr that there was no election fraud. 

Another clip of Barr’s testimony played today by the committee revealed that Trump asked Barr to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.

“My recollection is the President said something like, well, some people say we could get, you know, to the bottom of this if the department sees the machines. It was a typical way of raising a point,” Barr said.

The former AG said he responded: “Absolutely not, there is no probable cause and I’m not going to seize any machines.” 

Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin said that even after Barr’s refusal, Trump and his allies continued to push this plot to seize voting machines, including drafting an executive order that would appoint attorney Sidney Powell as a special counsel with the power to seize machines. At the time, Powell was “making outlandish claims about Venezuelan and Chinese interference in the election,” Raskin said.  

Asked about the potential appointment of Powell, Cipollone said in his interview with the committee, “I don’t think Sidney Powell would say that I thought it was a good idea to appoint her to special counsel. I was vehemently opposed. I didn’t think she should be appointed to anything.”

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin cited emails from Rudy Giuliani’s legal team, which shows that they did not have sufficient evidence of widespread voter fraud ahead of Jan. 6, 2021.

“Even Rudy Giuliani’s own legal team admitted that they did not have any real evidence of fraud sufficient to change the election results,” Raskin said.

Raskin then cited an email from Giuliani’s lead investigator Bernie Kerik to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows from Dec. 28, 2020 which stated, “We can do all the investigations we want later, but if the president plans on winning, it’s the legislators that have to be moved and this will do just that.”

Raskin added that in November 2021, Kerik’s lawyer later wrote to the select committee the following, “It was impossible for Mr. Kerik and his team to determine conclusively whether there was widespread fraud or whether that widespread fraud would have altered the outcome of the election.”

Several officials, including those who were working on the Trump campaign, said they never saw evidence that backed up Rudy Giuliani’s claims that there was election fraud.

When asked what evidence the campaign had seen from Giuliani’s team, Jason Miller, a former senior advisor to Trump, told the committee it was “very general.”

“There were some very, very general documents as far as… say for example, here are the handful of dead people ins several different states. Here are explanations on a couple of the legal challenges, as far as saying that the rules were changed in an unconstitutional manner,” he said in a taped deposition.

“To say that it was thin is probably an understatement,” Miller added.

Justin Clark, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, said he never saw evidence from Giuliani of the election fraud he was claiming.

Committee investigator: You never came to learn or understand that Mayor Giuliani had produced evidence of election fraud. Is that fair?
Clark: That’s fair. 

Rep. Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, previously testified that Giuliani made a point that they had a lot of theories, but no evidence.

Rep. Adam Schiff: At some point, did one of them make a comment that they didn’t have evidence but they have a lot of theories?
Bowers: That was Mr. Giuliani.

Donald Trump-connected lawyer Sidney Powell’s idea of having the federal government seize state voting machines was “a terrible idea,” former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 riots on the US Capitol.

“To have the federal government seize voting machines? It’s a terrible idea for the country. That is not how we do things in the United States. There’s no legal authority to do that,” he told the committee.

Cipollone added that once former Attorney General Bill Barr had reached a conclusion that there was insufficient evidence of election fraud to change the outcome of the election, he supported it.

Watch former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony before the January 6th committee:

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Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in the first aired footage of the 8-hour interview he had with members of the Jan. 6 select committee, said he agreed with other Trump officials that there was not sufficient evidence of election fraud.

Cipollone specifically testified that he believed former President Donald Trump should’ve conceded the election.

“I was the White House counsel. Some of those decisions were political. … If your questions is did I believe he should concede the election at a point in time? Yes I did,” he said in video footage shown in the hearing.

He said his thoughts were “in line” with that of what Sen. Mitch McConnell first said about accepting the results of the election on the Senate floor.

GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, said former President Donald Trump and his allies deceived the American public about widespread election fraud, when they “lacked actual evidence.”

“As you watch our hearing today, I would urge you to keep your eye on two specific points. First, you will see evidence that Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani knew that they lacked actual evidence of widespread fraud, sufficient to prove that the election was actually stolen. They knew it. But they went ahead with Jan. 6 anyway,” Cheney said during her opening statement. “And second, consider how millions of Americans were persuaded to believe what Donald Trump’s closest advisers in his administration did not,” she said.

Cheney continued, “These Americans did not have access to the truth like Donald Trump did. They put their faith and their trust in Donald Trump. They wanted to believe in him. They wanted to fight for their country. And he deceived them. For millions of Americans that may be painful to accept but it is true.”

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Jan. 6 committee member, referenced a meeting that took place on Friday, Dec. 18, 2020, at the White House that he says has been called “unhinged,” “not normal,” and “the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.”

Raskin said that a team of outside advisers to Trump visited him in the White House on that date. “The outside lawyers who had been involved in dozens of failed lawsuits had lots of theories supporting the big lie, but no evidence to support it. As we will see, however, they brought to the White House a draft executive order that they had prepared for President Trump to further his ends. Specifically, they proposed the immediate mass seizure of state election machines by the US military,” the Maryland Democrat said.

Raskin said that the meeting ended after midnight “with apparent rejection of that idea.”

“In the wee hours of Dec. 19, dissatisfied with his options, Donald Trump decided to call for a “large and wild crowd” on Wednesday, Jan. 6 — the day when Congress would meet to certify the electoral votes,” he said.

Former Trump administration Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia told the House Select Committee that he urged then-President Donald Trump to concede around Dec. 14, 2020, when the Electoral College affirmed Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

“I might have called on the 13th — we spoke I believe on the 14th — in which I conveyed to him that I thought that it was time for him to acknowledge that President Biden had prevailed in the election,” Scalia told the panel in a video deposition played at Tuesday’s hearing.

“But I communicated to the President that when that legal process is exhausted and when the electors have voted, that’s the point at which that outcome needs to be accepted,” Scalia continued. “I told him I did believe, yes, that once those legal processes were run, if fraud had not been established that had affected the outcome of the election that unfortunately I believed what had to be done was concede the outcome.”

The Electoral College meeting on Dec. 14 was significant because that signaled that the Trump campaign’s legal challenges had run their course and the election had been affirmed for Biden, even as the Trump campaign tried to put forward fake electors in key states. 

The committee said that it was also the moment when Trump and his allies turned their attention to Jan. 6 and the congressional certification of the election. 

Scalia’s testimony is the latest instance where the committee has shown how Trump’s advisers rejected his claims that the election was stolen, and how the former President ignored their arguments and continued to try to overturn the election result. 

Scalia, the son of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, served as Trump’s labor secretary from 2019 to 2021.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a member of the Jan. 6 select committee, said that one of former President Trump’s tweets in the lead-up to the Capitol attack was a “call to action and in some cases, as a call to arms for many of President Trump’s most loyal supporters.”

On Dec. 19, 2020, Trump tweeted encouragement for his supporters to travel to Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021. “Be there, will be wild,” it read, according to Murphy.

“It’s clear the President intended the assembled crowd on the Jan. 6 to serve his goal. And as you have already seen and as you will see again today, some of those who are coming had specific plans. The President’s goal it was to stay in power for a second term despite losing the election. The assembled crowd was one of the tools to achieve that goal,” Murphy continued.

Many of the Trump supporters who flocked to Washington on Jan. 6, including many who breached the Capitol, have said that this tweet motivated them to make the trip, according to court filings from some of the 800-plus criminal cases related to the insurrection. Members of far-right extremist groups also drew inspiration from Trump’s tweets, according to court filings.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, laid out the foundation for the panel’s seventh public hearing, saying evidence will show how former President “Trump summoned a mob” in a “last-ditch effort” to overturn the 2020 election.

Thompson said by Dec. 14, 2020, Joe Biden had been elected President but, “by that point, many of Donald Trump supporters were already convinced that the election had been stolen because that’s what Donald Trump had been telling them.”

He said the former President should have tried to defuse the anger.

“He went the opposite way. He seized on the anger he had already stoked among his most loyal supporters and as they approach the line, he didn’t wave them off, he urged them on,” Thompson said.

“Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington, DC, and ultimately spurred that mob to wage a violent attack on our democracy,” he added.

Rep. Liz Cheney, Jan. 6 committee vice chair, said in her opening statement that they have “seen a change in how witnesses and lawyers in the Trump orbit approached this committee.”

“Initially, their strategy and some cases appeared to be to deny and delay. Today, there appears to be a general recognition that the committee has established key facts, including that virtually everyone close to President Trump, his Justice Department officials, his White House advisors, his White House counsel, his campaign, all told him the 2020 election was not stolen.” 

Cheney continued, saying that the new strategy of Trump’s allies in defending him appears to be that Trump was “manipulated by others outside the administration” like attorneys John Eastman or Sidney Powell or Rep. Scott Perry.

“The strategy is to blame people his advisers called, quote, the crazies, for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense,” Cheney said, adding that Trump is a 76-year-old man and “not an impressionable child.” 

“Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American,” Cheney said.

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol “met our expectations,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee.

A dozen clips from Cipollone’s testimony last week are expected to be seen at the hearing.

While it is rare for all the Jan. 6 select committee members to participate in a deposition, every member was present at different parts of Cipollone’s deposition. A source described their participation as active and engaged, and every member was present for most of the interview.

This underscores how the committee views Cipollone’s role as significant and that it will likely be a key part in today’s hearings and others going forward. 

Cipollone invoked executive privilege in his closed-door interview Friday with the committee despite the panel’s attempts to pose questions that would not have required such a response, according to a person familiar with the interview.

When Jan. 6 select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson was asked if he expects former White House strategist Steve Bannon to testify, Thompson told CNN, “not yet.”

He said that Bannon has to comply with all elements in the subpoena first. 

“In order for us to consider, he has agreed to comply with the items in the subpoena,” Thompson said.

Asked if he expected Ginni Thomas — the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — to testify before the committee in a deposition, Thompson said, “not at this point.”

He also said the nearly eight hours of former President Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s private testimony was sufficient and they don’t plan to bring him in as a live witness, saying it’s “probably all we need.”

The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has begun its seventh hearing. 

The panel is expected to present evidence that shows former President Donald Trump’s “efforts to assemble that mob on the mall” and connections between the Trump White House and various extremist groups at the rally that preceded the attack on the US Capitol, according to committee member Rep. Adam Schiff.

While it is rare for all the Jan. 6 select committee members to participate in a deposition, every member was present at different parts of the deposition of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. A source described their participation as active and engaged, and every member was present for most of the interview.

This underscores how the committee views Cipollone’s role as significant and that it will likely be a key part in today’s hearings and others going forward. 

The lengthy depositions conducted by the committee are, for the most part, run by the committee’s investigative team. Members of the committee are welcome to participate when they’d like, and they often pop in and out as their schedule allows. 

Committee members have an opportunity to join virtually whenever they are able. 

In the lead-up to today’s Jan. 6, 2021, hearing, members of the committee said the presentation will zero in on connections between then-President Donald Trump’s administration and groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

Here are some of the key figures that could come up in the committee’s hearing:

Joe Biggs

Biggs, a Proud Boys leader from Florida and former InfoWars correspondent, assumed a top leadership role within the Proud Boys after the Jan. 4 arrest of Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio, according to the Justice Department. Biggs allegedly led the Proud Boys in a march to and around the Capitol building and was present at the initial breach of Capitol grounds.

Biggs faces nine federal charges including seditious conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty.

Kelly Meggs

Meggs is a leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers and is one of several members charged with seditious conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty. Text messages from around Jan. 6 show that Meggs discussed the possibility of using the Proud Boys as a “force multiplier” on Jan. 6 with other Oath Keepers and that he was in touch with former Trump adviser Roger Stone about providing security during the Stop the Steal rally.

Meggs allegedly led the infamous first “stack” of Oath Keepers up the steps and into the Capitol building on Jan. 6, according to the Justice Department. Once inside, Meggs allegedly went searching for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Ethan Nordean

Nordean, a Proud Boys leader from Washington state, also assumed a top leadership role in the absence of Tarrio. Nordean, along with Biggs, led a large group of Proud Boys in a march from the Washington Monument to the Capitol.

Nordean faces nine federal charges including seditious conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty.

Dominic Pezzola

Pezzola, a Rochester Proud Boys member, is accused of smashing a window with a stolen police officer’s riot shield, precipitating the first breach of the Capitol building.

He was allegedly one of the first rioters inside and was at the front of the group who chased Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up the stairs.

Pezzola faces 10 federal charges including seditious conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty.

Stewart Rhodes

Rhodes, an Army veteran and graduate of Yale law school, founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 and has led the far-right organization ever since. Rhodes was at the Capitol on January 6 but is not alleged to have entered the building, though phone records show he allegedly communicated with members who did go inside the Capitol and with members staged at an armed “quick reaction force” just outside Washington, DC.

Rhodes was also a member of a “VIP” Signal chat alongside Roger Stone, Ali Alexander, Alex Jones and other key Trump allies, according to people familiar with Signal messages that prosecutors have obtained.

Rhodes, along with nine other members of the Oath Keepers, is set to go to trial in September on charges of seditious conspiracy. He is currently being held in a federal detention facility near Washington, DC. Rhodes has pleaded not guilty to all criminal charges stemming from Jan. 6.

Read about more names that might come up here.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is set to lay out its findings during another public hearing. When and how the events occurred that day have been a key part of the committee’s probe. 

Supporters of then-President Trump breached the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, engulfing the building in chaos after Trump urged his supporters to protest against the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes to certify President Biden’s win. 

Here’s how key events unfolded throughout the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump’s speech: 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement earlier on the evening of Jan. 6 that congressional leadership wanted to continue with the joint session that night. 

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor that the “United States Senate will not be intimidated. We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats.” 

It took until deep in the early hours of Thursday morning (Jan. 7, 2021), but Congress eventually counted and certified Biden’s election win. 

See a minute-by-minute timeline of events here. 

The Jan. 6 select committee is prepared to unpack the very specific role that former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn played in efforts to undermine the 2020 election — and how Flynn was one of the loudest voices in Trump’s ear pushing him to continue his claims the election was stolen. 

Flynn, who Trump pardoned on Dec. 1, 2020, was a key figure in the Dec. 18 meeting that the committee believes served as a prelude to Trump’s call to bring his supporters to Washington.

Flynn was among those pushing Trump to convince the Department of Justice to seize voting machines in swing states. He also peddled wild conspiracies about foreign election interference and was present in the Willard Hotel war room leading up to Jan. 6, 2021.

Flynn spoke to the committee, and portions of his deposition are expected today. He has already been featured in past hearings, mostly pleading the Fifth — including when specifically asked if he believed in a peaceful transfer of power. 

Flynn has direct ties to the extremist groups featured today, as some members of those groups served as his personal security in the week of Jan. 6. He also is connected to Ivan Raiklin, who the committee has already introduced as someone who has encouraged members of the Trump team to play the “Pence Card” — meaning pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence to stand in the way of the election certification. Raiklin at one time served as Flynn’s attorney. 

More details on the role of House GOP members are expected to be revealed today.

The committee plans to mention a Dec. 21, 2020, White House meeting with several members of Congress including Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris and others, according to a source familiar with the matter.

This meeting will shed new light on the timeline of events leading up to the insurrection. It occurred after the Dec. 18 White House meeting where plots to overturn the election will be discussed — as well as a Dec. 19 tweet from President Trump urging his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6.

Several of those GOP members have been subpoenaed by the committee but have fought those subpoenas, while some of them are alleged to have sought pardons from Trump as well.

Members of the House select committee have been investigating what happened before, after and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — and now they are presenting what they discovered to the public. 

The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans. It was formed after efforts to create an independent 9/11-style commission failed. 

Rep. Liz Cheney is one of two Republicans on the panel appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled all five of his selections because Pelosi would not accept two of his picks. In July 2021, Pelosi invited GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to join the committee, making him the second GOP lawmaker to sit on the committee. 

Here’s who is on the panel — and key things to know about them: 

Democrats: 

Republicans 

The Jan. 6 committee will jump back and forth during today’s hearing between what Trump world was doing leading up to and on January 6, 2021, and what the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups were doing. 

The committee will show “communication” more than “coordination” between the two worlds — meaning there was no directive on what to do and how to act on Jan. 6 from anyone in Trump world that they found.

They have also found no evidence President Trump was working with the Proud Boys, for example, but there were connections and links between Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and these groups.

Additionally, today we will see up to a dozen clips from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony last week. Overall, while he was careful not to disclose his direct conversations with Trump, he was forthcoming about what his own thoughts and opinions were at the time, which are apparently revealing. It suggests what the President was told, and what he was doing and not doing on Jan. 6 during those 187 minutes.

Sources familiar with the planning for today’s Jan. 6 select committee hearing told CNN that the committee and Capitol Police have taken extra, enhanced steps to secure the hearing room, the witnesses and the members themselves. 

Members were briefed yesterday afternoon about the additional security precautions, which includes having additional Capitol Police officers assigned to each member in and around the hearing room today. 

The select committee also kept a close hold on the names of potential witnesses for fear of their safety — noting that some of them have direct ties to the domestic extremist groups that will be featured in today’s hearing.

The committee and its members are aware that they will be revealing detailed information about these normally secretive groups. These groups are known for their penchant toward violence, and there is a real concern about the safety of those involved. 

The committee has been very cautious about security from their inception and have shown examples of threats directed at members, staff and witnesses. 

The Jan. 6 committee has obtained encrypted messages from members of right-wing extremist groups and will be showing some interactions between Trump allies and the groups, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

The source declined to specify which Trump allies are at issue, but aides said yesterday that the hearing will examine the roles of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.

The committee also plans to show a fair amount of video from its deposition with former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, including his description of the Dec. 18 meeting at the White House where efforts to overturn the election were discussed, the source said.

There will also be discussion about specific GOP members of Congress, the source added.

The Jan. 6 committee’s most recent sixth hearing on June 28 featured testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Hutchinson had cooperated extensively with the investigation, having sat for four closed-door depositions. She revealed how then-President Donald Trump and his inner circle were warned about the potential for violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and how Trump wanted to join the throngs of his supporters at the US Capitol.

The testimony bolstered the narrative that the committee has been driving toward over the last few weeks: That Trump incited and supported the insurrection as part of a desperate power grab to steal a second term, and that many of his top advisers thought his schemes were illegal.

Here are takeaways from Hutchinson’s key testimony:

Read more takeaways from the sixth hearing here.

The broad outlines of former President Donald Trump’s incitement of the US Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and his efforts to undo the 2020 election he lost were evident to anyone following his since-unplugged Twitter feed.

But the House committee investigating the lead-up to the incursion has filled in essential details with its six hearings to date.

The panel has heard live testimony from election officials, lawyers and other White House insiders, as well as recorded depositions from key players like former attorney general William Barr and members of the Trump family.

Here are some of the most important things we’ve learned so far.

Rioters thought they were taking cues from Trump

The committee’s first hearing in June took video from Trump and from rioters, testimony from injured Capitol Police officers and recorded interviews with members of his administration, including his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to show how determined and dangerous the riot was. It closed with a montage of rioters saying they specifically thought they were doing Trump’s bidding.

Trump’s conspiracy theories shook the Department of Justice

The taped testimony of former Attorney General William Barr, featured prominently in the second hearing, made clear that Trump had been told his belief that the election was stolen from him was wrong.

Barr ultimately resigned, which left a vacuum at the Justice Department. Remaining leaders there banded together, a focus of the fifth hearing, and considered a mass resignation as Trump sought out an ally, the environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark, to get federal law enforcement on his side. In this case the government held against the would-be coup.

Pence was key to the plot

After Trump lost the election, his only hope to remain in power was for his vice president, Mike Pence, to reject the election results in certain states during the counting of electoral votes. Trump turned on his vice president when Pence refused to buy into the illegal plan, pushed by the attorney John Eastman.

Protesters who stormed the Capitol got as close as 40 feet from Pence.

The third hearing featured testimony from former Pence attorney Greg Jacob, who described Eastman’s pressure campaign, which continued even after the Jan. 6 riot.

Trump and his allies pressured election officials and workers

The fourth hearing documented that he had pressured officials in both Georgia and Arizona and that he was personally involved, according to multiple witnesses, in an effort to create slates of fake electors in key battleground states he lost.

Former Georgia election workers Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman testified about how they were specifically targeted by Trump’s team to push false allegations of voter fraud. The pair worked the 2020 presidential election and were named 18 times by Trump in the call made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he urged him to “find” votes to overturn the election.

Trump wanted to take part in the march on the Capitol and Secret Service may have stopped him

The most recent hearing, the sixth, added on short notice this week, featured blockbuster testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. While it was based largely on hearsay — things other former aides and a White House valet had told her — the allegations are incredible.

The most vivid of Hutchinson’s statements was about Trump, angrily realizing he would not be taken to the Capitol on Jan. 6, trying to grab the wheel of the presidential vehicle from a Secret Service agent. He wanted to lead the protesters. These are the same protesters who would ultimately storm in, threatening his vice president’s life.

Her descriptions of ketchup flung on the White House wall, dishes thrown on the ground in fits of rage, speak to the emotions coursing through Trump as he faced losing power. This perhaps helps explain why it may have been so difficult for people inside the White House to influence him.

The investigation is not over

The committee’s public hearings in June began with the feeling of a preplanned show stage-managed for the effect of indisputably proving that a conspiracy to overturn the election had occurred. But it’s becoming clear the committee is learning new things and following leads.

“Bombshell” testimony by Hutchinson led the committee to issue a subpoena to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. The White House lawyer could confirm many of the allegations uncovered in the hearings. But he was also the White House lawyer, a position usually shielded from congressional testimony.

Cipollone notably defended Trump in the former President’s first impeachment trial but was, according to multiple witnesses, among the White House aides encouraging him to accept the election results and disputing the crackpot legal theory that Vice President Mike Pence could simply throw out election results from certain states.

Keep reading here.

The Jan. 6 committee plans to show at its hearing Tuesday how right-wing extremist groups, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, prepared to attack the US Capitol in the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021 – and their ties to Donald Trump associates, including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, according to committee aides. 

The aides said that the hearing would also scrutinize Trump’s actions, including the Oval Office meeting held in December 2020 to discuss the prospect of seizing voting machines or appointing a special counsel to investigate supposed voter fraud, as well as the tweet Trump sent afterward encouraging people to come to Washington, DC, on Jan. 6.

The hearing will show the “impact” that the Trump tweet had on the lead-up to Jan. 6, the aides said, saying it was as “pivotal moment that spurred a chain of events, including pre-planning by Proud Boys.” 

The aides said that the hearing would seek to draw connections between the various pressure campaigns Trump undertook to try to overturn the 2020 election and how “all the elements came together” and erupted into violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The connections between Trump associates and the extremist groups have shown up in the Justice Department’s cases against members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, including some members providing “security” to Stone, for instance. Stone also has close ties to prominent members of the Proud Boys, going back years.

Neither Stone nor Flynn has been charged with a crime connected to Jan. 6.

The committee’s hearing, which will be led jointly by Democratic Reps. Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, also plans to examine the Q-Anon movement, aides said.

In addition, the Jan. 6 panel plans to look at how members of Congress were involved in Trump’s pressure campaign leading up to Jan. 6, specifically related to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

The aides declined to say which witnesses would testify at Tuesday’s hearing, citing security concerns. CNN has reported that Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson and self-described “propagandist” for the alt-right group the Oath Keepers, is expected to testify on Tuesday.

The committee takes center stage in Washington again this week with its Tuesday televised hearing amid indications it will seek to make a direct connection between former President Trump and the far-right extremists who helped rioters smash their way into the halls of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

As it enters the probable endgame of its investigation, the committee is gathering momentum and whipping up a serious debate over a question with staggering implications: should an ex-President of the United States be charged for alleged crimes against the Constitution that occurred when he was in office?

What the committee has revealed

Through witnesses who were around Trump, hauls of text messages, interviews with key players and even family members of the ex-President, the committee has built a damning case about his insurrectionist behavior.

What all this means so far

Read the full analysis here.

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson and self-described “propagandist” for the Oath Keepers, is expected to testify on Tuesday, a source familiar with the hearing plans confirmed to CNN on Sunday.

Van Tatenhove told Colorado TV station KDVR of his invitation last week. The hearing is expected to zero in on how the violent mob came together and the role of extremist groups in the deadly insurrection.

Van Tatenhove told KDVR he was never a member of the group but described himself as a former “employee.” He didn’t work for them for very long but claims to have insight into the organization’s inner workings.

“I did get a lot of inside access,” Van Tatenhove told KDVR.

Tuesday’s hearing will be led by Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Stephanie Murphy of Florida, CNN has learned.

If the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has taught us anything, it’s that our understanding of that day is far from settled.

While much of the country watched the insurrection in real-time one and a half years ago on live television, the panel’s public hearings have delivered critical context to the circumstances around it.

Members of the panel previewed on Sunday their next public hearing, on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET, which will zero in on how the violent mob came together and the role of extremist groups in the deadly insurrection. The hearing will be led by Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Stephanie Murphy of Florida, CNN has learned.

Connecting the dots. “We are going to be connecting the dots during these hearings between these groups and those who were trying — in government circles — to overturn the election. So, we do think that this story is unfolding in a way that is very serious and quite credible,” Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California said of Tuesday’s hearing and another that hasn’t been scheduled in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

Extreme encouragement. Murphy told NBC on Sunday that the panel could present evidence that members of Congress encouraged extremist groups to come to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, echoing then-President Donald Trump’s tweet in December 2020 that January 6 would “be wild.” She called that tweet a “siren call” for those groups.

Trump’s tweets. Raskin told CBS that Tuesday’s hearing will reveal the “fundamental importance of a meeting that took place in the White House on December the 18th,” after which Trump sent out the tweet asking his supporters to come to DC on January 6.

Read more about Tuesday’s hearing here.