Trump actions during Capitol riot focus of committee’s eighth Jan 6 hearing – live

Rep Liz Cheney says “the dam has begun to break”, suggesting that more evidence is rolling in.

Chair Bennie Thompson confirms that more hearings will take place in September.

He adds: “There needs to be accountability — accountability under the law.”

“There must be stiff consequences for those responsible,” he concludes.

Committee vice chair Liz Cheney calls the hearing to order and we are first shown a video message from Chair Bennie Thompson who continues to isolate following a positive Covid-19 test.

He says that Donald Trump tried to destroy democracy and commanded the mob to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell”.

Over the last month and a half, the select committee has told the story of a president who did everything in his power to overturn an election. He lied, he bullied, he betrayed his oath. He tried to destroy our democratic institutions. He summoned a mob to Washington on January 6, when he knew that the assembled mob was heavily armed and angry. He commanded the mob to go to the Capitol, and he emphatically commanded the heavily armed mall to fight like hell for the weeks between November’s election and January 6, Donald Trump was a force to be reckoned with. He throws off the factuality and legality of correct sober advice of his knowledgeable and sensible advisors. Instead, he recklessly blazed a path of lawlessness and corruption, the cost of which democracy be damned.

And then he stopped for 187 minutes on January 6, this man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved not by his age, not by his allies, not by the violent chance or rioters, or the desperate pleas of those facing down the riot. And more tellingly, Donald Trump ignored and disregarded the desperate pleas of his own family, including Ivanka and Don Jr. Even though he was the only person in the world who could call off the mob, he sent to the Capitol. He could not be moved to rise from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the White House hallway into the press briefing room, where cameras were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to the armed and violent mob, savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers rebending the Capitol and hunting down the Vice President and various members of Congress, he could not be moved.

NBC News reports that the January 6th Committee will hold more hearings in September.

Citing three sources, Vice Chair Liz Cheney is expected to announce the new public hearings tonight.

The Secret Service’s deletion of January 6-related text messages is now part of an “ongoing criminal investigation”, according to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.

The Secret Service was informed it is being probed and was ordered to end its own internal investigation in a letter obtained by CNN.

“This is to notify you that the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has an ongoing investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the collection and preservation of evidence by the United States Secret Service as it relates to the events of January 6, 2021,” DHS Deputy Inspector General Gladys Ayala wrote in a 20 July letter to Secret Service Director James Murray.

The House Jan. 6 committee is headed back to prime time for its eighth hearing — potentially the final time this summer that lawmakers will lay out evidence about the U.S. Capitol insurrection and President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Thursday’s hearing is expected to focus on what Trump was doing in the White House as the violence unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who is one of two members leading the hearing, said he expects it will “open people’s eyes in a big way.”

This will be the panel’s second hearing in prime time. The first, on June 9, was watched by more than 20 million people.

What to watch for in Thursday’s hearing:

Among the various clips the 6 January committee is showing tonight will be outtakes from a speech Donald Trump recorded on 7 January, when many of his aides impressed upon him the need to condemn the violence the day before.

According to Jamie Raskin, who appeared on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show last night, Mr Trump “displayed extreme difficulty in completing his remarks.

“It’s extremely revealing how exactly he went about making those statements, and we’re going to let everybody see parts of that.”

Mr Raskin has previously promised that today’s hearing will be a “moment of reckoning” for the US.

Johanna Chisholm has more.

The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021 is holding a number of public hearings as it explores the circumstances that led to the shameful events of that day.

The next hearing, the eighth this summer, is set to begin at 8pm EST on Thursday.

ABC, CNN and MSNBC have so far all been focusing their coverage on the hearings and many other outlets have been covering them across their websites and YouTube channels, including The Independent.

The hearings are also being shown live on C-SPAN as well as on the committee’s website.