Jan. 6 committee holds first prime-time hearing

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.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s then-chief of staff, Marc Short, acknowledged to the Jan. 6 committee during closed-door testimony that his former boss knew former President Donald Trump lost the election and determined his “fidelity to the Constitution was more important that his fidelity to President Trump,” according to previously unseen video played during tonight's hearing.

“I think the vice president was proud of his four years of service and he felt like much had been accomplished during those four years. And I think he was proud to have stood beside the President for all that had been done.  But I think he ultimately knew that his fidelity to the Constitution was his first and foremost oath, and that’s – that’s what he articulated publicly and I think that’s what he felt,” Short said in the short video clip.

Short was then asked if Pence’s “fidelity to the Constitution was more important that his fidelity to President Trump and his desire …”

He responded: “The oath he took, yes.”

Short quietly testified before the committee behind closed doors in January after receiving a subpoena and his interview marked the most significant sign to date that Pence's team was cooperating with the probe.

GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said that Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and "multiple other Republican congressmen" sought pardons from then-President Donald Trump after Jan. 6, 2021.

Perry didn't speak at the pro-Trump rally on Jan. 6, 2021, but was a key player in multiple aspects of Trump's effort to undermine the 2020 election — and the committee has sought his testimony.

CNN previously reported that Reps. Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar were among some Republicans who feared their legal exposure and sought clemency. 

They were ultimately not pardoned, nor were charged Jan. 6 insurrection defendants who also lobbied for pardons.

Top advisers around Trump, including his family, told Trump not to pardon himself, his family or any GOP lawmakers prospectively.

At least four Trump aides testified to the Jan. 6 House select committee that they told former President Trump or his former chief of staff Mark Meadows that he lost the 2020 election and there wasn’t widespread voter fraud, according to portions of their depositions that were revealed Thursday at the panel’s first major public hearing.

The officials included Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller, the Trump campaign’s general counsel Matt Morgan, and another Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon.

According to a clip of Barr’s testimony, played during Thursday’s hearing, Barr said: “I repeatedly told the President in no uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud, you know, that would have affected the outcome of the election. And frankly, a year and a half later, I still haven’t seen anything to change my mind on that.”

Barr also said the conspiracy theories that Trump embraced about Dominion voting machines rigging the election were “complete nonsense,” and that he advised Trump that it was “crazy stuff.”

And Cannon testified that he told Meadows by “mid-to-late November” that the campaigns came up empty when it tried to find widespread fraud in key states that Trump lost. Cannon said Meadows responded to his assessment by saying, "so there’s no there there.” (Despite that acknowledgement, Meadows continued aiding Trump's efforts to push false voter fraud claims.)

This was the first time that it became publicly known that Morgan and Cannon met with the committee behind closed doors, and shows that the panel got some cooperation from Trump campaign operatives, even though other senior Trump advisers have resisted the subpoenas and refused to provide documents.

Many of these witnesses sat for lengthy interviews, but the committee showed only selective excerpts during Thursday’s primetime hearing, and has not yet released full transcripts of their depositions.

The House select committee played a clip of recorded testimony from ex-Trump adviser Jason Miller stating that then-President Donald Trump was told by the campaign's lead data aide "in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose."

A former senior adviser to Trump, Miller was involved in the former President's 2016 and 2020 White House bids.

CNN previously reported that, days after the election, his campaign's top data adviser told Trump in "blunt terms" that he was headed towards defeat, according to an account Miller gave the committee, which was disclosed in deposition excerpts filed with the court.

Miller himself gave Trump his opinion — in "several" conversations — that "specific to election day fraud and irregularities, there were not enough to overturn the election," according to his account to the committee.