WASHINGTON (AP) — Turns out, Jan. 6 was more than just the day when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.
It was the culmination, but also the start, of an enduring challenge for American democracy.
The House committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021 has shown how the deadly Capitol attack was sparked months earlier on Election Night 2020, when the incumbent president, Donald Trump, refused to admit he was trailing Joe Biden, and instead spewed false claims of voter fraud and declared himself the winner.
The defeated president spent the next eight weeks orchestrating an unprecedented attempt to overturn the election results and summoned supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 to finish the job.
And even after the blood, mayhem and deaths at the Capitol, Trump still refused on Jan. 7 to say the words that all those around him knew needed to be said: the presidential election was over.
The Jan. 6 committee cannot charge anyone with crimes, but it has produced a public record for history, one that's still being written. It is showing how the insurrection at the Capitol is testing the resiliency of the nation’s democracy.
As Trump contemplates another White House run, he has denounced the proceedings as “so many lies and misrepresentations.”
Rep. Liz Cheney, a fellow Republican who is vice chair of the panel, said the case against her party's president is being made not by Trump's political enemies, but rather his own friends, campaign officials, people who worked for him and his own family.
“They have come forward and they have told the American people the truth,” Cheney said.
Here’s what we know from eight summer hearings of the House Jan. 6 committee.
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