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The legislative committee investigating the storming the capitol of January 6, 2021 revealed this Thursday several findings about how former President Donald Trump was at the “center” of this attempted coup and pointed to the possibility that the far-right group Proud Boys had planned the attack in advance.
The committee reached these conclusions after interviewing more than a thousand witnesses and reviewed more than 140,000 documents.
These are the five revelations of the committee investigating the storming the Capitol.
1.- TRUMP WAS IN THE “CENTER”
At the first public hearing of the investigative commission, its president, Bennie Thompson did not hesitate to point to Trump as responsible and said that the Republican was at the “center” of the “conspiracy”as he encouraged his followers to take over the iconic building.
Likewise, the Democrat said that what happened was a “Coup attempt” and a “multi-step conspiracy” to keep the former president in power.
In making these accusations, he relied on the video testimony of the attorney general of Trumphis daughter Ivanka and other allies who pointed out that the then president wanted to encourage a violent reaction under the false pretext of electoral fraud.
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In this file photo taken on January 6, 2021, supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the US Capitol.
2.- THE FAR RIGHT
Another of the conclusions reached by the committee today, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, is that the far-right group Proud Boys it was behind the attack on Congress and, before the assault, between 250 and 300 of its members came to examine the parliamentary headquarters.
Statements by British filmmaker Nick Quested, who captured with his camera the activities of the Proud Boys in the weeks before the attack and that same daywere key to reaching that conclusion.
Quested explained that on January 6 “a couple of hundred” members of that far-right group were hanging around in the vicinity of the parliamentary headquarters.
Parallel to the political investigation, the Justice announced last Monday a new charge for sedition against Enrique Tarrio, president of the far-right group and four other members. Other extremist organizations that are being investigated are: the Three Percenters, the First Amendment Praetorians and the Aryan Nations.
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Rep. Bennie Thompson (L), chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol riots, and Rep. Liz Cheney attend a House Select Committee hearing to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.
3.- IT WAS PENCE AND NOT TRUMP WHO ALERTED THE NATIONAL GUARD
US Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mark Milley was also among the more than 1,000 people the committee interviewed over the months to find out what happened.
In a video, what remains the country’s highest-ranking military officer said that it was then-Vice President Mike Pence who ordered National Guard troops to respond to the attack.
Milley also said that Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told him that day that the vice president should not be seen as taking control and that the narrative had to be that Trump “was still in charge.”
Until this Thursday, the official information, which the White House had given at the time, was that the one who gave the mandate to the National Guard to intervene was Trump and not Pence, that was inside the Capitol and he was the one who had to certify the transfer of power.
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In this file photo taken on January 6, 2021, supporters of Donald Trump clash with police and security forces as they attempt to storm the US Capitol.
4.- A “WAR ZONE”
The audience revived how violent the assault was by publishing a chilling videoin which you could see some of the wildest acts of the mob of supporters of the former president and with statements from survivors.
Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, one of the first officers injured by the protesters, described the takeover as a “war zone” where she “slipped on people’s blood.”
“Never in my wildest dream did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, that I would find myself in the middle of a battle,” said Edwards, who, despite suffering a brain injury on Jan. 6, continued to patrol the surroundings of the parliamentary headquarters preventing many demonstrators from entering.
In her statement, she also said that she was not “trained for combat”, but that day she had to face hours of “hand-to-hand combat”.
5.- FOX AND THE “CIRCUS”
The hearing, which was held in prime time, was broadcast live on all US networks with the exception of the conservative Fox.
For her part, the communications director of the Republican National Committee, Danielle Álvarez, considered in a statement today that Americans want Congress to focus on “more pressing crises”, among which she cited record gasoline prices or inflation. , and “not in a political circus”.