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Caroline Edwards testifies Jan. 6 chaos was like 'a war scene'

Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards on Thursday equated the riots on Jan. 6, 2021, to a “war scene,” describing slipping in other people’s blood and being in hand-to-hand combat for hours during testimony to the House select committee investigating the insurrection.

“I remember my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I’d seen out of the movies,” she added.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding, they were throwing up… I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage, it was chaos,” Edwards testified to the committee.

“I’m not combat trained, and that day, it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond any law enforcement officer has ever trained for,” Edwards continued. “I just remember that moment of stepping behind the line and seeing the absolute war zone that the West Front had become.”

Edwards was one of two main witnesses who appeared in the hearing room on Thursday night for the first public hearing for the select committee. 

Her testimony, paired with newly released video footage, depicted the graphic violence and mayhem that engulfed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as pro-Trump rioters stormed the complex to try and stop the certification of the 2020 election results.

Edwards suffered a concussion while on duty at the Capitol on Jan. 6. She is believed to have been the first Capitol officer who was injured that day.

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Mick Mulvaney: Jan. 6 footage at hearing 'stunning'

Former Trump White House chief of staff-turned CBS contributor Mick Mulvaney called new video shown by the Jan. 6 House select committee at its prime-time hearing Thursday “powerful” and “stunning.”

“That video was stunning,” Mulvaney said after the panel shared the video. “And more powerful than anything Bennie or Liz said,” he added, referring to opening statements from the panel’s chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and its vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

During Thursday’s hearing, the committee played new video showing staffers on Capitol Hill rushing for exits as the mob overtook the Capitol building.

Mulvaney, a former House Republican from South Carolina who served as then-President Trump’s chief of staff until he was replaced in early 2020, joined CBS as a contributor and political analyst in March. His hiring was reportedly met with some consternation from staffers within the network.

Mulvaney served in various roles during the Trump administration, including as Trump’s envoy to Northern Ireland. He resigned from that position a day after the Capitol riot, citing Trump’s handling of the events that day.

He later said the incident was “different” than previous controversies he dealt with while running the Trump White House.

“I thought it was important for someone who is not establishment, not a ‘never Trumper,’ to say that was wrong,” Mulvaney said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” just days after the attack.

The committee used Thursday’s hearing to begin to lay out its case that Trump worked to overturn the 2020 election results and rile up his supporters to attempt to stop Congress from certifying the election results.

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Sanders wades into Nevada House primary, backing challenger to Dina Titus

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) waded into a Nevada House primary on Thursday, throwing his support behind Amy Vilela, a former Nevada state co-chair to his 2020 presidential bid who is challenging Rep. Dina Titus (D) in the state’s 1st Congressional District, ahead of next week’s primary.

“Today, I am proud to endorse @amy4thepeople for U.S. House in Nevada’s 1st District. When elected, Amy will be a champion for working families, and will fight for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, housing for all, and progressive foreign policy,” Sanders tweeted.

Vilela said she was “thrilled” to have the Vermont senator’s endorsement, adding in a reply to Sanders’s tweet, “I’m more confident than ever that, with his support, we’re well on our way to securing another historic victory for working people in Nevada.”

Though Sanders’s endorsement may not come as a surprise given she served as a national surrogate in his last presidential campaign, he is endorsing the challenger of incumbent Democrat Titus, whose seat has been rated by Cook Political Report as a “toss up.”

Vilela previously ran for the House in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District in 2018, but Rep. Steven Horsford (D) ultimately won the Democratic primary that year.

Titus, who is in her sixth term in the lower chamber, won her latest re-election bid in 2020 with more than 60 percent of the vote. 

The Nevada primary election is set for June 14.

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Jan 6. panel says Scott Perry among multiple GOP lawmakers who wanted Trump pardon

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn) was one of “multiple” GOP lawmakers who asked President Trump for pardons given their roles in seeking to unwind the 2020 election results, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said in its first hearing Thursday night.

Perry’s office forcefully denied the allegation.

Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.), who helped introduce former President Trump to a mid-level Justice Department attorney willing to forward his election fraud claims, was among several seeking pardons due to their roles.

“As you will see, Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,” Cheney said.

Perry spokesman Jay Ostrich denied that Perry sought a pardon from Trump.

“Laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie,” Ostrich told The Hill.

CNN reported in January 2021 that “several” GOP lawmakers who were involved with the rally at the Ellipse in front of the White House that Trump spoke before the Capitol riot sought pardons from Trump. GOP lawmakers who spoke at the rally include Arizona GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).

And according to an October 2021 Rolling Stone report, Gosar floated the idea of “blanket pardons” for some of those organizing the Ellipse rally of Jan. 6. 

The Jan. 6 committee issued subpoenas to Perry, Biggs, and Brooks. In a May letter requesting information from Biggs, the committee said that Biggs was identified by former White House personnel as being part of “an effort by certain House Republicans after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon for activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

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Defiant Tucker Carlson boasts Fox News Channel not carrying Jan. 6 hearing 'propaganda' live

As the first prime-time hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol gaveled in, Fox News host Tucker Carlson opened his show Thursday bragging about his network not carrying the proceedings live on its main cable channel.

“This is the only hour on an American news channel that won’t be covering their propaganda live,” Carlson said of the committee. “They are lying and we are not going to help them do it.”

Every other major television network and cable channel offered continuous special coverage of Thursday’s proceedings, including NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN.

Fox News took heat this week from Democrats and media pundits after it announced it would carry live continuous coverage of Thursday night’s hearing only on Fox Business Channel and its other streaming, digital platforms. It will also make its coverage available to its local affiliates across the country.

But Fox did not on Thursday pre-empt Carlson’s top-rated opinion program, which the host has used over the last several weeks to cast doubt on the committee’s assertions and suggest the controversy over the violent attack on the Capitol has been overblown.

On Thursday night, the committee made the case that Trump and his top allies worked to overturn the 2020 presidential election and incited the mob that stormed the Capitol that day. Carlson called the attack “forgettably minor by recent standards.”

Fox News said this week its primetime anchors would cover Thursday’s hearings “as news warrants.” Carlson played clips from the first hour of the hearing three times, attacking committee members Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) over their statements after doing so.

Carlson’s show took no commercial breaks during Thursday’s show.

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Kushner dismisses Trump legal counsel threat to quit as 'whining'

Former Trump White House senior adviser Jared Kushner dismissed threats from then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his team to resign ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, riots as “whining,” according to testimony aired during Thursday night’s committee hearing. 

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Capitol riots, asked Kushner during a recorded deposition whether he was aware of instances where Cipollone threatened to resign leading up to Jan. 6. 

“I kind of, like I said, my interest at that time was on trying to get as many pardons done,” Kushner testified. “And I know that, you know, him and the team were always saying, ‘Oh we’re going to resign, we’re not going to be here if this happens, if that happens,’ so I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest to you.” 

Cheney argued the threats from Cipollone and his team to step down in light of plans for a Jan. 6 rally outside the White House and claims of a rigged election were a sign of the seriousness of the situation unfolding in the final days of the Trump White House. 

“It requires immediate attention,” Cheney said, adding that instead it was shrugged off by Kushner and others. 

Kushner was one of several former Trump White House officials whose recorded testimony was played during Thursday night’s hearing, when committee members sought to make the case that the Jan. 6 riots were the direct culmination of words and actions by Trump in the months after the 2020 election. 

Former Attorney General William Barr testified that he thought Trump’s claims about a rigged election were “bull—-,” and Ivanka Trump, who is married to Kushner and also served as a senior White House adviser, told the committee that she believed Barr was right. 

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Cheney: Trump 'summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack'

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Thursday laid blame directly on former President Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, saying during the House select committee’s hearing that Trump “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

“Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful president,” Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan. 6 panel, said in her opening statement, which ran longer than 30 minutes.

“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” she added.

The comments came minutes into the panel’s first public hearing as it unveiled findings from its nearly yearlong investigation. The committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews and obtained upwards of 125,000 documents as part of its probe into the Capitol riot.

The hearing is taking place after nearly 11 months of investigating the incident, and just more than 17 months after a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building.

Before the riot began, Trump told a crowd of people at a nearby rally “we’re going to have to fight much harder” shortly before supporters marched to the Capitol.

“We’re going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol — and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them,” Trump said.

“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong,” he added at the rally.

Cheney on Thursday said Trump, over a number of months, “oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.”

She added that the committee would present “evidence of each element of this plan” throughout the panel’s eight public hearings.

In his opening statement , Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the Jan. 6 panel, said Trump “spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy.”

The chairman also claimed that Trump “was at the center” of a “multi-step conspiracy aimed at overturning the Presidential election” and “throwing out the votes of millions of Americans… and replacing the will of the American people with his will to remain in power after his term ended.”

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Zinke clinches GOP nomination for Montana House seat

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is on track to return to the House Representatives.

Zinke is projected to beat out four other Republicans, including his main rival — surgeon Al Olszewski — in the GOP primary for Montana’s 1st Congressional District. The win makes him the heavy favorite to represent the newly created district in Washington next year. 

The primary took place on Tuesday. The Associated Press called the race on Thursday at 7:52 p.m. ET.

Zinke represented Montana’s at-large congressional district from 2015 until 2017, when former President Trump tapped him to lead the Interior Department. 

He resigned as Interior secretary in 2019 amid multiple investigations into his travel and potential conflicts of interest. 

The allegations of wrongdoing have fueled attacks from Zinke’s primary rivals, who have raised questions about his ethics and behavior while serving in public office.

Despite those controversies, Zinke is seeking to return to Washington and he has the support of his former boss. Trump endorsed his congressional bid last month during a tele-rally for Zinke. 

Montana is gaining a new congressional district this year as part of the decennial redistricting process. The state’s newly drawn 1st District, which includes the western portion of the state, is rated as a “likely Republican” seat by The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper.

Under the new lines, Trump would have carried the district in 2020 by 7 points.

Still, Democrats see the district as potentially competitive. Among the candidates seeking the party’s nomination for the 1st District are public health advocate Cora Neumann, attorney Monica Tranel and former state Rep. Tom Winter.

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Senate panel approves Finland, Sweden's bid to join NATO

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday easily passed a resolution pressing NATO to quickly admit Finland and Sweden, a sign of bipartisan agreement in pushing back on Russian aggression. 

The committee in a voice vote approved the measure supporting the two Nordic states’ entrance into the security alliance and urged other NATO members to do the same. There were no objections. 

“The committee’s passage of this resolution is a testament to the bipartisan support for Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and the urgency of strengthening the alliance amidst Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine,” panel ranking member Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said in a statement after the vote.  

“I’ve long said that Sweden’s and Finland’s strong political and military traditions make them a perfect fit for the alliance. I hope the Senate will follow the committee’s lead and move quickly to pass this resolution.”  

NATO has sought to strengthen its alliance against Russia since the Kremlin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, a war that has also threatened nearby member countries.  

The two Nordic countries have also experienced effects from the attack, with Russian jets violating Swedish and Finnish airspace. 

The 30-member organization now hopes to send a message of unity to Russian President Vladimir Putin with the entrance of Finland and Sweden, which up until now have worked alongside NATO but remained strategically separate.  

The two new bids have garnered the full support of the Biden administration and are now set to easily receive the required two-thirds Senate approval. 

Source: TEST FEED1