January 6 Hearings (Still Photo Courtesy of PBS)

The Associated Press reports the House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol laid the blame firmly on Donald Trump Thursday night, saying the assault was hardly spontaneous but an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and startling testimony from Trump’s most inner circle, the January 6th committee provided gripping detail in contending that Trump’s repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory led to the attack and imperiled American democracy

The hearings may not change Americans’ views on the Capitol attack, but the panel’s investigation is intended to stand as its public record. Ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, and with Trump considering another White House run, the committee’s final report aims to account for the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814, and to ensure such an attack never happens again.

Testimony showed Thursday how Trump desperately clung to his own false claims of election fraud, beckoning supporters to the Capitol on January 6 when Congress would certify the results, despite those around him insisting Biden had won the election.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr in videotaped testimony said: “I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen..”

In another videotaped interview, the former president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified to the committee that she respected Barr’s view that there was no election fraud.

Others showed leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys preparing to storm the Capitol to stand up for Trump. One rioter after another told the committee they came to the Capitol because Trump asked them to.

“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s vice chair who took the lead for much of the hearing. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we’re in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”

There was an audible gasp in the hearing room when Cheney read an account that said when Trump was told the Capitol mob was chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged for refusing to block the election results. Trump responded that maybe they were right, that he “deserves it.”

At another point it was disclosed that Republican Representative Scott Perry, a leader of efforts to object to the election results, had sought a pardon from Trump, which would protect him from prosecution.

When asked about the White House lawyers threatening to resign over what was happening in the administration, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner scoffed they were “whining.”

Police officers who had fought off the mob consoled one another as they sat in the committee room reliving the violence they faced on January 6.

The riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of pro-Trump rioters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the Capitol. At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.

Biden, in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas, said many viewers were “going to be seeing for the first time a lot of the detail that occurred.”

Trump, unapologetic, dismissed the investigation anew — and even declared on social media that January 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.”

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: “All. Old. News.”

Emotions are still raw at the Capitol, and security was tight. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.

Against this backdrop, the committee was speaking to a divided America. Most TV networks carried the hearing live, but Fox News Channel did not.

Among those testifying was documentary maker Nick Quested, who filmed the Proud Boys storming the Capitol — along with a pivotal meeting between the group’s then-chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, the night before in a nearby parking garage.

Court documents show that members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were discussing as early as November a need to fight to keep Trump in office. Leaders of both groups and some members have since been indicted on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.

In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.

The panel faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the January 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.

Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ushered the creation of the 1/6 panel through Congress and rejected Republican-appointed lawmakers who had voted on January 6 against certifying the election results, eventually naming seven Democrats and two Republicans.

The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 people for the violence that day, the biggest dragnet in its history.

Congressman Tom Reed (R-Corning, NY 23) talks with regional media to share his thoughts on the impeachment of President Donald Trump while also answering questions from the media.

Tom Reed

Donald Trump

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has been impeached for a second time, now becoming the only U.S. President to hold that dubious distinction.

On Wednesday members of the House sped to a vote on impeachment just a week after president Trump encouraged supporters to “fight like hell” against the November election results, and then a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The impeachment also comes just one week before his term is set to end and President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

Late Wednesday afternoon the House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump, with 10 Republicans joining the vast majority of Democrats in the effort.  During debate on the articles of impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) asked Republicans and Democrats to “search their souls” ahead of the historic afternoon vote.

“We know that we faced enemies to the Constitution. We know that we experienced the insurrections that violated the sanctity of the People’s capitol and attempted to overturn the duly recorded will of the American People. And we know that the President of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion, against our common country. He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love,” Pelosi said.

Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) also spoke and admonished those who participated in the raid, saying violence is never a legitimate form of protest. And while he didn’t support the impeachment effort, he did acknowledge that it was the supporters of the president – and not anyone else – who was to blame for the raid.

“Some say the riots were caused by Antifa. There is absolutely no evidence of that and Conservatives should be the first to say so,” McCarthy said.

Tom Reed

While many members of the House did speak during the lengthy debate on Wednesday, local Congressman Tom Reed (R-Corning) did not. But he did hold a press call with regional media on Wednesday to discuss the matter.

“There have been numerous other issues that I’ve been attending to as we speak and my comments on impeachment have been widely reported and widely known, so I don’t anticipate I will be given floor comments on this issue,” he told Reporters on Wednesday, less than two hours before the impeachment vote took place.

The New York Times published an op/ed by Reed on Tuesday, where he called for the censure of the president, rather than impeachment. He said he was against impeachment because he knew it would be a rushed process with just seven days remaining in the president’s term.

“I think snap impeachment is not the way to go and not substantively the right thing to do in regards to not having an investigation, not respecting due process rights, and not respecting and debating the issues of Constitutional free speech that is involved here. And also the division and anger that is being exacerbated by this snap impeachment can not be underestimated,” Reed said.

The impeachment proceedings came one week after a violent, pro-Trump mob breached the U.S. Capitol, sending lawmakers into hiding and hindering the nation’s long history of peaceful transfers of power.  The riot has also forced a reckoning among some Republicans, who have stood by Trump throughout his presidency and largely allowed him to spread false attacks against the integrity of the 2020 election.

The impeachment in the House now leads to a trial in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to remove the president from office.

Trump has been at this point before. The House impeached him in late 2019 for his pressure campaign on Ukraine and the Senate ultimately voted to acquit after quickly rushing through the trial process without calling any witnesses.  This time, the trial process is expected to be far more extensive with Democrats controlling the Senate.

Even if found guilty, the actual removal of Trump is highly unlikely before the Jan. 20 inauguration of Biden. But some say that the Senate trial – whenever it takes place – is still necessary in order to lay out all the evidence against the President and his alleged involvement in the insurrection and putting it on the public, and historic, record. A guilty verdict could also lead to Trump never being able to hold office again.

Tom Reed

WASHINGTON – Congressman Tom Reed (R-Corning, NY 23) joined several of his Republican colleagues and even some Democrats on Tuesday to introduce a concurrent resolution to “censure the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, for attempting to unlawfully overturn the 2020 Presidential election and for violating his oath of office on January 6th, 2021.”

The Censure measure is being presented as an alternative to House Democrats’ effort to impeach the president for a second time on a single charge of “incitement of insurrection.”

The dueling resolutions are being presented less than one week after President Trump encouraged a mob of loyalists to “Stop the Steal” and “fight like hell” against election results. Soon after his speech, the U.S. Capitol became the target of a deadly siege that left five people dead, including a Capitol Police Officer and four Trump supporters.

While the first impeachment of Trump in 2019 brought no Republican votes in the House, a small number of leaders and other lawmakers are breaking with the party to join Democrats. But a majority of the Party – including Reed – say they won’t vote to impeach.

“If our leaders make the wrong decision in how to hold him accountable, it could damage the integrity of our system of justice, further fan the flames of division, and disillusion millions of Americans ─ all while failing to accomplish anything,” Reed said in an opinion piece published in the New York Times on Tuesday. “Given the tools that lie before Congress, it is clear that pursuing impeachment only days before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated is not the answer.”

Democrat and Republican Members of the U.S. Senate are convinced that the House’s impeachment efforts will almost certainly result in a second acquittal of President Trump, which even some Democrats say would even further divide and inflame tensions in our nation.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) stated, “…it is clear the 25th Amendment will not be invoked and that the Senate will not convict the president after impeachment. A censure resolution is the only way to send a bipartisan, bicameral message without delay to the country and the world that the United States is a nation of laws.”

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) also stated that the House’s current impeachment approach “is so ill-advised for Joe Biden to be coming in, trying to heal the country, trying to be the president of all the people when we are going to be so divided and fighting again.”

According to those who support censure, there are two constitutional purposes of impeachment: 1) removal from office, and 2) barring the future holding of office and the current approach being advanced by House leadership is certain to accomplish neither one of these. As a result, they are pushing instead for censure.

“[Censure] is an important step to hold the President accountable. Congress must make clear that it rejects extremism and condemns the President’s actions,” said Reed. “We will continue to push for Congressional leaders to work with us on investigating the events surrounding this dark period in our history and make sure it never happens again with the public’s trust in our democratic institutions restored.”

Meanwhile, the four-page impeachment resolution relies on Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s election victory, including organizing a White House rally on the same day Congress was to certify Biden’s election. Some of those who attended the rally also participated in the raid on the Capitol following Trump’s speech, and supporters of impeachment say the speech was intended to whip his supporters into a frenzy just as members of congress took up the certification issue.

The House tried first to push Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to intervene, passing a resolution Tuesday night calling on them to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump from office. But Pence made it clear he would not do so. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Pence said it was “time to unite our country as we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Joe Biden.”

The President, meanwhile, insisted on Tuesday that he believes he bears no responsibility for the insurrection carried out by his supporters and has yet to explicitly call on them to refrain from launching another assault on the Capitol.