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Jan. 10, 2026 16:39-18:06 - CSPAN
01:26:57
House Democrats Hold Meeting on Fifth Anniversary of Jan. 6 Attack, Part 1
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo Source
Participants
Main
b
bennie thompson
rep/d 12:06
b
brendan ballou
09:40
hakeem jeffries
rep/d 05:32
jamie raskin
rep/d 11:58
m
mary mccord
08:26
Appearances
d
deborah ross
rep/d 01:57
eric swalwell
rep/d 03:32
joaquin castro
rep/d 02:19
l
lou correa
rep/d 01:56
m
madeleine dean
rep/d 02:58
pramila jayapal
rep/d 01:29
s
steve cohen
d 01:52
s
sydney kamlager-dove
rep/d 02:49
w
winston pingeon
04:32
Clips
donald j trump
admin 00:09
george w bush
r 00:04

Speaker Time Text
House Democrats Honor Capitol Attack Victims 00:03:12
unidentified
of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼
Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
eric swalwell ▲ ● ▼
American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
unidentified
House Democrats held a hearing to highlight the fifth anniversary of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol following President Trump's loss in the 2020 election.
During the course of the hours-long hearing, several people spoke, including a former Capitol police officer and a participant in the attack who refused President Trump's pardon.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
I'd like to call our hearing to order.
In the beginning, we'd like to pay tribute to a colleague that we've learned who's passed, Congressman Doug Lamarfa.
And we're sorry for his passing.
And I'm sure the leader will have some comments in his opening statement.
We'll now hear from Leader Jeffries to open this hearing.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼
Thank the distinguished chairman for his leadership and for convening us this morning on this very solemn, important occasion.
Before we begin, in light of the passing of Congressman Doug Lamarfog, great member of Congress from the great state of California, we'd just like to ask for a moment of silence.
Thank you And thank you all for your presence here today on this solemn anniversary.
Five years ago today, a violent mob incited by Donald Trump attacked the Capitol as part of a concerted effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and halt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history.
Brave Law Enforcement Bravely Endured 00:03:30
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼
This bloodthirsty, treacherous mob brutally assaulted police officers and seriously injured more than 140 brave men and women of law enforcement.
Many have suffered lasting physical and psychological damage.
Several tragically lost their lives.
Because of the extraordinary bravery of the U.S. Capitol Police, other law enforcement officials, and the resolve of the Congress to return that night, this unprecedented attack on our country and on our democracy failed.
Over the last five years, instead of holding those responsible for the attack accountable, Donald Trump and far-right extremists in Congress have repeatedly attempted to rewrite history and whitewash the horrific events of January 6th.
We will not let that happen.
On the first day in office of his second term, instead of fulfilling his promise to lower the high cost of living on day one, Donald Trump pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers while storming the United States Capitol.
The criminals and thugs that Donald Trump pardoned have flooded communities across the country, unleashing violence and mayhem.
The crimes committed by those rioters before and after the violent insurrection include child sexual assault, production of child pornography,
possession of child pornography, rape, conspiracy to murder FBI agents, kidnapping, sexual assault, aggravated robbery,
reckless homicide, driving under the influence causing death, illegal possession of firearms, domestic violence by strangulation, burglary, vandalism, grand theft, stalking, violation of protection orders, threatening public officials, and drug trafficking.
It's been a Trump-inspired crime spree.
Why won't Republicans in Congress condemn this dangerous behavior, an ongoing threat to public safety?
January 6th Shameful Riot 00:04:44
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼
They refuse to serve as a check and balance on an increasingly out-of-control executive branch, preferring to be nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda.
The January 6th violent attack on the Capitol that took place five years ago today was shameful then, it is shameful now, and it will be shameful always and forever.
We must continue to learn from what happened on January 6 in order to make sure that it never happens again.
We must protect our free and fair elections.
We must protect the peaceful transfer of power.
We must protect the preeminence of the rule of law.
And we must protect the eternal commitment to a democratic America, which remains the last best hope on earth.
It's now my honor to yield to the distinguished gentleman from the great state of Mississippi, the once and future chair of the Homeland Security Committee and the Chairman Emeritus of the January 6th Select Committee, Congressman Benny Thompson.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much, Leader Jeffries.
And before I start with my opening comments, let me note, as we've already indicated, the passing of our colleague, Congressman Doug Lamarfa, our thoughts are with his family and staff at this sad time.
Good morning, and welcome to all who joined us.
I want to extend an especially warm welcome and thanks to the brave members of law enforcement who are joining us today.
They protected us, they protected the Capitol, and they protected the democratic process.
We can be here today because they were here then.
Thank you.
I'm also honored to rejoin my colleagues on the January 6th Select Committee, both on this panel and among our witnesses.
Five years ago today, an armed mob of thousands incited by President Donald Trump attacked, breached, and laid siege to the United States Capitol.
They did so as Congress was carrying out one of its most fundamental constitutional duties, counting electoral votes, certifying a presidential election, and facilitating the peaceful transfer of power.
What unfolded that day was both brutal and calculated.
Officers were stabbed with metal fence stakes and bludgeoned with flagpoles.
They were crushed in doorways until their ribs were broken.
Eyes were gouged.
At least one officer was dragged into the mob, beaten, tased, and left for dead.
Others suffered lasting damage from concussions and traumatic brain injuries.
In the days and weeks that followed, five police officers died due to the physical or psychological trauma they endured protecting Congress and the Constitution.
The years may have muffled the screams we heard, and the horrible images of that day may have faded.
So as we mark this grim anniversary, it's important that we remember exactly what happened.
January 6th was not a regular tourist visit.
It was not a day of love.
It was a bloody riot that pushed our democracy to the breaking point.
To bring us back to that day, we're going to play a short video reminding us that for a little over three hours, five years ago, this sacred temple of our democracy where we are sitting today was transformed into a war zone.
I warn those watching that this video contains violence and strong language.
Bit We Won't Stand 00:08:20
unidentified
D.C. is a motherfucking war zone.
Did you 12 up to help maintain the lines?
Yeah.
It's a bit that we won't stand.
We've won the line.
1033.
I think 1035 has been the campaign.
He's in place and we've lost the order.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Some people want to rewrite the history of January 6th, to ignore what we saw with our own eyes.
Some people want us to forget the lessons of that day, to pretend that we have overcome the threats facing our democracy and the rule of law.
We will not allow that to happen.
We gather to continue to uphold our oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to defend against the lawlessness of that day and the lawlessness we continue to see today.
We gather because, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., human progress is neither automatic or inevitable.
Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle.
The tireless exertion and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Five years ago, police told us to move the lapel pens that identify us as members of Congress so we would be less likely to be attacked by the mob that was desecrating our Capitol.
I did not take my pen off then and I'm still wearing it today because the work we do mattered then and continues to matter today.
The rule of law and our oaths continue to matter, especially as we see Donald Trump pardon those who were charged or convicted in the January 6th attack, engage the military abroad while passing Congress, tears down the White House, shut a whole government agencies, order mass goons to round up and deport U.S. citizens,
and unlawfully put his name on a memorial to a better man.
The bipartisan January 6th Select Committee, which I was privileged to lead, was charged with uncovering the facts, circumstances, and causes of what happened on that awful day and to ensure it never happens again.
It was one part of ensuring our constitutional republic could withstand President Trump's repeated attacks, and it offers lessons for today.
One such lesson was seeing how important it was for officials, most of them Republicans, to put their country over their party.
They remembered their oath was to the Constitution and not to one man.
And we need to remember that lesson today, because five years on, the danger has not dissipated.
President Trump still refuses to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election.
Many who promoted or litigated his big lie have been rewarded with powerful positions.
Dozens of nonpartisan career prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases have been summarily fired.
State election officials who stood up to the Trump pressure campaign have been faced with threats and retaliation.
The Department of Justice has become an instrument for retribution.
The message is clear.
Uphold the rule of law and you will be punished.
Only loyalty to one man will be rewarded.
Violence in service of Trump is above the law.
Remembering January 6th is not an exercise in partisanship.
It's an obligation to those who have sacrificed for this country and all those who will in the future.
Democracy depends on the courage of those who will defend it and on our willingness to hold accountable those who wish to destroy it.
Today's forum is another step toward the goal of justice, another way of honoring our oath, another way of showing that our constitutional republic is bigger and stronger than its enemies or one man.
This morning, we'll hear from some of those courageous defenders of American democracy.
I look forward to their testimony and to the hard work of preserving the truth, upholding the rule of law, and giving us a roadmap to ensure what happened five years ago never happens again.
Now, I'm happy to recognize my former Select Committee colleague and the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Maryland, Jamie Raskin.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
Thank you kindly, Chairman Thompson.
Welcome to all of our witnesses.
Welcome to all of the members who joined us.
William Faulkner once said, the past isn't dead.
It isn't even past.
But Speaker Johnson would love to kill the past, indeed the very recent past.
Republicans today are observing this solemn anniversary by doing exactly nothing.
They've even refused to hang up the plaque which a bipartisan congressional majority voted to put up to honor the officers who defended the Capitol and the peaceful transfer of power and the vice president on J-6.
So it's been five years since January 6th.
It's been three years since that plaque was supposed to be put up, but they still haven't put it up.
It took them 24 hours to put up a new plaque allegedly changing the name of the Kennedy Center to the Trump Kennedy Center.
24 hours.
And that was illegal.
That's like graffiti that was put up on the Kennedy Center building.
They have a legal requirement to put it up, and I call on Speaker Johnson to put it up today.
It's gathering dust in a closet somewhere.
Thank you, Leader Jeffries.
Thank you, Chairman Thompson, for not surrendering to the Orwellian project of forgetting, but rather insisting that we remember.
Long after we are all gone, future generations will speak the names of Hodges and Dunn, Gannell and Fanon, Sicknick and Pyngin.
Pardons and Their Legacy 00:15:47
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
They will be remembered as the great patriots that they are.
And the people who smashed them in the face with Confederate battle flags and Trump flags, the people who tried to destroy our constitutional order, will be remembered as fascist traitors to their own country.
So, we must remember three rings of sedition that took place on J-6: the realm of the coup, the realm of the insurrection, and the realm of the mob violence.
The coup was anchored in months of the big lie.
Trump claimed to have won an election.
He lost by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232 in Electoral College.
He needed to get MAGA followers to simply disregard reality and facts and dismiss more than 60 federal and state court decisions that had rejected every claim of electoral fraud and corruption that they advanced in courtrooms across the land.
This was critical because the president understood that lies would be the fuel for violence.
As Voltaire said, anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Well, the coup depended also on coercive pressure campaigns, trying to force state election officials to just find me 11,780 votes.
Coercive pressure campaigns to get DOJ to endorse the false claims.
Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.
The recruitment of counterfeit electors.
The plot to bully Pence into rejecting electoral college votes from swing states and either just declare Trump president or kick the whole thing into a contingent election in the House.
So that was the coup part of the operation.
The second layer out, the realm of the insurrection, was the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the three percenters, the mustle.
And these were the white supremacist violent groups, white Christian nationalist groups that had trained for weeks or months to get ready, staging confrontations at state capitals as dress rehearsals for what was to happen.
The Proud Boys came to D.C. twice in the lead up to J-6 and provoked brawls with anyone that they would describe as Antifa.
They organized in military fashion and they were dead set on attacking the police, storming the Capitol, and stopping the steal.
So as ferocious and violent as the organized insurrectionists of maybe 600 or 700 were, they could not have succeeded without that third tier of sedition, the mob itself, the mob riot.
After Trump convinced the organizers to change the date of their rally from January 20th, Inauguration Day, to January 6th, the electoral count day, he then went on social media to recruit tens of thousands of mob extras to back up the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who would get the fight against the police started.
And you know, Trump kicked it off with the famous tweet saying, be there, we'll be wild, which set the MAGA Twitterverse on fire.
Well, it all culminated, of course, with his speech on the ellipse where he said, you got to go and fight and fight like hell, and if you don't, you won't have a country anymore.
So the attempted coup, the insurrection, the mob violence converged and exploded on J-6th.
Today, we analyze the shocking resurgence of political violence in this century, its relationship to propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, and the threat that it poses to American constitutional government.
We honor the heroes who helped us to defeat this attack on our democracy.
We also recognize today that the political violence unleashed by Trump did not end on J-6th.
On his first day back in office last year, he pardoned nearly 1,600 of the rioters and insurrectionists, including hundreds who violated police officers, including several in this room.
Those pardons were raw spoils shared indiscriminately without regard to their actual offenses, their criminal sentences, their prior records, their contrition, their repentance, or their reform and rehabilitation.
They were essentially a payoff to Trump's private militia, which is now ready to stand back and stand by again for future engagements.
We could play this video.
unidentified
I believe that by Donald Trump pardoning me, he's going to be pardoning good men.
As one of Donald Trump's first acts back in office, approximately 1,500 for a pardon.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Full pardon.
unidentified
He pardoned criminals who attacked the Capitol on January 6th.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
So this is January 6th.
unidentified
And these are the hostages.
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Convicts who beat and batter police officers.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Full pardon.
unidentified
We've lost their lives.
Happy Get back.
These are the criminals he released back into our communities.
Home invaders, burglars, sex offenders.
People who continued plotting violence against their political opponents, set free by Donald Trump to terrorize their neighbors.
We hope they come out tonight, frankly.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
They pose a serious threat to public safety.
As we show in a report released by House Judiciary Dems this week, at least 33 pardoned insurrectionists have since committed additional crimes since January 6th, including child sexual assault, terroristic threats, domestic violence, and conspiracy to murder FBI agents.
And yet, Trump indiscriminately pardoned all of them.
When you reward and normalize criminal behavior, of course, you invite more of it.
And the president didn't just free his rioters for doing his dirty work.
He punished law enforcement for doing their jobs, purging hundreds of career FBI agents and prosecutors just because they worked on J-6.
He installed actual participants in the attack in the Department of Justice itself.
The new U.S. pardon attorney, Ed Martin, tweeted from the Capitol grounds on this day five years ago and described the mayhem as Mardi Gras in D.C. His senior counselor at the Department of Justice, Jared Wise, is another J-6 defendant captured on body camera footage yelling, kill him, kill him, five different times as police were being attacked right next to him.
These leaders at the Department of Justice today have never once regretted their participation in this nightmare.
With election deniers and J-6 conspiracists, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel at the top of the DOJ, it's like the Joker and the penguin have taken over Gotham City.
So I close with the thought that it is still January 6th in America, and it will be until the forces of strong nonviolent democracy prevail.
We are still in the fight of our lives, my friends.
And now I want to introduce our witnesses for the first panel.
First, we have Officer Winston Pynjin, who is a former Capitol Police officer who defended the Capitol and all of us on J-6, 2021.
He was stationed on the West Front, the scene of the most brutal violence that day.
He was punched in the face, knocked on his back, and had his baton ripped from his hands by rioters.
The men who attacked him have been pardoned and celebrated as heroes.
Next, we have Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., who spent two years prosecuting J-6 rioters and resigned three days after Trump pardoned them.
Mr. Ballou has described Trump's pardons as part of an authoritarian playbook.
Next, we have Mary McCord, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law School, who spent nearly 20 years as a federal prosecutor and rose to become an acting assistant AG for national security.
She was among the first to sound the alarm in 2020 that Trump's lies were whipping his Dyard MAGA supporters into a frenzy.
Her warnings were prescient.
Finally, we have Pamela Hemphill, who has traveled to us from Idaho.
She is a 72-year-old Idaho woman, formerly known as the MAGA Granny, who, unlike nearly all the other 1,600 J-6 defendants, formally rejected President Trump's pardon.
Ms. Hemphill was once a true believer who pushed past police lines because she believed in Trump's lies.
She pleaded guilty and served her time and has steadfastly pushed back against attempts by Donald Trump and his allies to rewrite and whitewash the history of what happened on January 6th.
I'm so eager to hear from all four of our witnesses and I'm thrilled that you decided to join us today.
Thank you for being here.
And Mr. Pynjin, we can go ahead and start with you.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much, Mr. Raskin.
I will now recognize our witnesses each for three minutes to provide summaries of their testimony.
Their full written remarks will be submitted for the record.
Officer Prison, you're recognized.
winston pingeon ▲ ● ▼
Thank you all for the opportunity to testify and be here today.
I was just a kid who had a dream of becoming a police officer and was lucky enough that it came true here with the Capitol Police.
Five years ago today, I was called a traitor, violently assaulted in the line of duty, punched in the face, pepper sprayed, and thought I'm going to die here on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
My name is Winston Penjaw, and I was an officer with the Capitol Police for over five years.
I do not speak on behalf of all officers nor the department, which I left 10 months later, but I believe my experience is not unique as one of many who showed up to work on January 6th, like I did every day, ready to protect and serve the Congress, the congressional community, and the Capitol itself.
Serving as an officer was the honor of my life, especially with the ceremonial unit honoring the inauguration of President Biden, as well as the lying in state ceremonies of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Officer Brian Sicknick, and Officer William Evans.
I would be remiss to not mention honoring the life and service of Officer Howie Liebingood, who sadly took his own life just days after January 6th, 2021.
On that day, I was assigned to the civil disturbance unit, the Hardgear Riot Team, on the West Front as thousands descended upon the Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue.
Before I knew it, we were completely overrun, and what started with mere insults turned into being brutally attacked.
This should serve as no surprise to anyone.
The evidence of violence is obvious and extensive.
Hundreds of police officers, my friends, fought valiantly to defend the Capitol and our democratic process that day.
From the West Front to inside the Capitol, the mob said to me, President Trump sent us, and we don't want to hurt you, but we will.
While I suffered immensely on and because of January 6th, I do not wish to dwell on my own pain and want to be clear: this is not about me or any one person here today.
The events of that day are bigger than any of us.
What happened that day is wrong.
It should go without saying.
Pardoning criminals who severely beat me and my fellow officers that day is completely unacceptable.
We cannot accept violent felons being pardoned and released back into our neighborhoods without consequence.
That is not justice.
Violence is never acceptable.
It must be unequivocally condemned by the President and our fellow Americans, not selectively ignored or pardoned.
I implore America to not forget what happened on January 6th.
We must refuse to accept the normalization of violence.
In this deeply divided time, I believe the vast majority of Americans have so much more in common than what separates us.
And finally, to all the officers who continue to show up day in and day out in service to Congress and to our nation, thank you.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much.
We'll now recognize Mr. Blau.
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
My name is Brennan Ballou, and for two years, I was on the team that prosecuted rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6th.
I should make clear that I was a very small part of a very large team, but because I'm in a position to speak publicly, I will.
Let me start not with January 6th, but with January 20th, 2025, when President Trump pardoned over 1,500 rioters.
Now, here I confess my own ignorance.
I believed, if nothing else, then out of pure political self-interest, President Trump would not pardon those rioters who attacked and tried to kill police officers.
I was wrong.
In fact, the president pardoned rioters who attacked officers with pipes, flagpoles, bear spray, and whips, who dragged officers into the crowd, tased them, and tried to gouge out their eyes.
He even pardoned rioters who had previously been convicted, as you noted, of manslaughter and charged with production of child pornography.
And when his first pardon was insufficient, he repardoned one defendant on an unrelated gun charge to set him free.
After the pardons, like several of my colleagues, I chose to resign from the Justice Department.
But since then, President Trump has continued to try to rewrite the history of January 6th.
He's fired or demoted career FBI agents and prosecutors, my former colleagues who investigate and prosecuted rioters.
He appointed an election denier, Ed Martin, to be interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and appointed a literal rioter, Jared Weiss, to a senior Department of Justice job.
His appointees have tried to erase the public records of the attack on government websites and to create a false equivalence have used many of the same charging statutes used against rioters against the president's political opponents, Congresswoman Lamonica McKiver, for instance, and protesters in Los Angeles and D.C.
And I'll note that many of those charges have since been reduced or dropped entirely.
Why has the president continued to focus on erasing the history of January 6?
Preserving the Past for a Better Future 00:06:47
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
I believe it's because he knows that if he can convince Americans to forget the attack on the Capitol, then he can convince us to attack any attack on democracy, no matter how violent.
And if that happens, if January 6 is forgotten, or worse yet, excused as legitimate political discourse, then January 6th and attacks like it, more violent, will certainly happen again.
So what can be done?
To protect the future of our democracy, we have to preserve our past.
Memorials like this event matter, and so do symbols.
As some of you have noted, in 2022, Congress passed a law to install a plaque to honor the officers who defended the Capitol that day and required that it be installed within a year.
That deadline was nearly three years ago, and though the plaque has been made, the Speaker of the House reportedly refuses to install it.
Two officers, Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, who are here today, both of whom protected the Capitol on January 6th, have sued to have the memorial installed, and we will soon see if the Speaker and his subordinate offices will be compelled to follow the law.
But we can do more than lawsuits.
For people who want to honor the memory of January 6th, there is much that they can do.
Keep talking about the day.
Keep writing about it.
Develop school curricula.
Archive the history of the attack.
Have your local government annually memorialize the history of the attack.
The fight over the past is ultimately a fight over the future, and there is a role for all of us to play.
In a world where so many politicians' political careers depend on forgetting, simply remembering the past is an act of resistance.
Thank you.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much.
Professor McColl, you're recognized.
mary mccord ▲ ● ▼
Thank you for inviting me to speak about political violence today.
To learn from January 6th, we must understand both that mis and disinformation are the primary drivers of political violence and that political violence is not limited to physical attacks, including killings, but also includes the threats, intimidation, and harassment that squelch civic participation and undermine the functioning of our Democratic Republic.
In the years leading up to January 6th, conspiracy theories emboldened extremists.
The Great Replacement Theory, which posits a conspiracy to replace majority white populations with non-white immigrants, was behind the deadly Unite the Right rally and multiple mass shootings.
Conspiracies about Democrats taking away Americans' freedoms were behind attacks on state houses during the pandemic.
And by Election Day 2020, President Trump's election fraud conspiracy was well-seated in the populace so that by January 6th, the thousands of people he had summoned to the Capitol were ready and willing to act when he called for them to fight like hell.
President Trump's pardons cannot erase what happened on January 6th.
His revisionist history is based on more falsehoods, that January 6th was a peaceful protest, that the January 6th defendants were politically persecuted, and that Trump himself was the victim of a weaponized Department of Justice made up of evil people.
Add to this the baseless claims of non-citizen voting and pervasive violent crime by immigrants, and the risk of political violence increases despite polls that show that most Americans are firmly against it.
Political violence does not have to be physical to cause great damage.
Threats against election officials have resulted in the highest recorded rate of turnover in the past quarter century.
Elected officials at every level have decided not to run for re-election after threats to themselves and their families.
And new research shows that roughly 5.5 million Americans may have not voted in 2024 because of fears of violence.
Executive actions in the last year have created a culture of fear and intimidation.
The blacklisting of law firms has chilled lawyers from representing people and causes the president opposes.
The demands for prosecution of the president's perceived enemies signals that those who challenge him will be punished.
The targeting of media organizations risks burying stories about government overreach and failing to fact-check false and misleading statements by government officials.
And NSPM 7, the one-sided presidential proclamation directing the federal government to go after those the president characterizes as espousing anti-Americanism, has impacted the crucial work of nonprofits fearful of being subjected to baseless investigations and audits.
And there is state-sponsored physical violence as well.
ICE and CBP have physically assaulted individuals suspected of being undocumented, as well as protesters, university students, and clergy members, all to instill fear in immigrant communities and to chill First Amendment protected protest.
And the federalization and deployment of the National Guard into so-called blue cities attempts to normalize the militarization of the country.
We cannot afford to ignore the false narratives that this administration seeks to rely on to suppress voting rights and public protest.
Congress must use its authorities to combat disinformation and political violence, whether by private actors or government officials, and Americans must refuse to be silenced or chilled from civic participation.
Thank you.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much for your testimony.
Ms. Hemphill, you're recognized.
unidentified
Thank you.
My name is Pam Hemphill.
I'm a mother and a grandmother and a cancer survivor and a retired addiction counselor.
I am also a convicted criminal for what I did on January the 6th, 2021.
Thank you for having me back to the Capitol today.
I am deeply grateful for this chance to try to make amends and talk about what happened five years ago.
Once I got away from the mega cult and started educating myself about January the 6th, I knew what I did was wrong.
I pleaded guilty to my crimes because I did the crime.
Rejection Of Pardon 00:15:40
unidentified
I received due process, and the DOJ was not weaponized against me.
When Donald Trump pardoned us, I rejected the pardon.
Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January the 6th.
I am guilty, and I own that guilt.
Five years ago, I traveled from Idaho to D.C. to see Donald Trump speak.
I had fallen for the president's lies, just like many of his supporters.
Local police had woke, I'm sorry, local people had welcomed me into the circle when I was around them.
I heard them saying things like, the Democrats are trying to turn this into a communist country, or the radical left wants to do away with our Constitution.
The gaslighting caused a lot of fear, and I was scared.
With that fear in my heart, I came here on January the 6th.
I went from Trump's speech to the Capitol because I thought Mr. Trump would go to the Capitol with us.
I heard people saying that Trump was going to walk down to the Capitol, so I went.
Well, as you know, Donald Trump never showed, but the rioters did, and the attack began.
The police officers were the heroes.
They protected the Capitol and everyone inside the Capitol, and even people like me.
I was trampled on by the rioters.
And if it weren't for the Capitol Police helping me that day, I might have died.
To the Capitol Police officers sitting, if I may address you for a minute, I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart for being part of the mob that put you and so many officers in danger.
I want the Capitol Police to know how truly grateful I am to them and how deeply sorry I am.
I can't believe people are still disrespecting you and trying to lie about January the 6th.
I will do everything I can to stop the lies about our brave officers like you who protected us during the attack.
Thank you.
Speaking about January the 6th has caused a great risk to my personal safety.
I have been doxxed online, harassed, and physically assaulted.
But I am here and I don't care.
I won't let it stop me.
I can't sit here while Mr. Trump and others are lying.
I also want others who feel like me to know that we must stop the lies being pushed by the public leaders and Trump himself.
Thank you again for having me here.
I am glad for the opportunity to speak to you and answer any of your questions.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much for your testimony.
I'd like to thank our witnesses in total for their powerful testimony.
Officer Prasjong, thank you for your service.
One thing we've heard from the MAGA folks is that January 6th was just a normal tourist visit at the Capitol.
Nothing but some protesters who got too rowdy.
I'd like to begin by asking this panel, based on what you know of January 6th, from being there to prosecuting to studying it, do you agree with that statement?
And what would you say to those who would downplay what happened that day five years ago?
And Officer President, we'll start with you and we'll go down the line.
winston pingeon ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
I would absolutely not agree.
That statement that it was a normal tourist visit is completely false.
I spent over five years at the Capitol dealing with many actual normal tourist day visits, and this was not.
It is offensive to me, and I'm sure to many of my fellow officers to hear it so diminished when we make sacrifices day in and day out and over the years in service to Congress.
And that includes working around the clock, missing holidays and family events.
And to have it be so whitewashed and so diminished is incredibly offensive.
And to those who say that, I wish they would actually listen to what we are saying here today and actually talk to officers like myself who experienced firsthand brutal violence that day.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much.
Mr. Belou?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
For those who question whether January 6th was a day of violence, you know, they should just look at the tape.
This was the most documented crime in American history, and it's obvious what happened there.
In terms of what the experience was like for those who were there, you know, in the course of being part of the teams that investigated and prosecuted rioters, you know, we had the opportunity to talk to many U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department officers.
You know, if you talk to most officers, they're pretty stoic folks.
The number of officers that we had that candidly broke down crying in our office, still processing the horror of that day, is something that's very hard to forget.
And I think that pain is evidence alone of how violent that day was.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Professor.
mary mccord ▲ ● ▼
The video shown this morning makes clear this was not a normal day of peaceful protest.
I've never seen tourists break through windows and come in the second floor or scale the walls of the Capitol in my nearly 40 years in Washington, D.C.
But I would also say this is dangerous because these lies about January 6th caused more conspiracy theories.
The theory that it was a Fed surrection, not an insurrection, and otherwise that it, in other words, that was actually put on by federal government and had federal agents who were actually agitating the protests.
The idea that the new charges against the person who planted, allegedly planted the pipe bombs, is a cover-up for some scheme that a Capitol police officer planted those pipe bombs.
These are dangerous conspiracy theories that will continue to provoke political violence.
And the theory that those who were pardoned are victims and who they are owed something, reparations, other types of rewards for their victimization, seeds even more of that.
So no, Mr. Chairman, I disagree very much with the rhetoric.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much.
Ms. Hempiel?
unidentified
Thank you for the question.
You can't gaslight me.
I was there.
I saw what you did.
I saw the officers being pepper sprayed.
When I was on the steps, I watched one of them fall down and hit his head in his back.
So don't be telling me it wasn't violent.
Don't come to me with that ever again.
I watched you.
I was on the east side, but I saw what you did.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you so much.
I now recognize other members for question as we identified.
Mr. Swalwell, you recognize.
unidentified
Thank you.
eric swalwell ▲ ● ▼
Since the Civil War, the three most important days in American history are December 7, 1941, September 11, and January 6th.
And we don't need the years for the last two because we know what happened.
They aren't dates on the calendar.
They're scar tissue.
And as you just said, Ms. Hemfield, we saw them unfold live and in terrifying detail with our own eyes.
But five years later, Donald Trump has pardoned the insurrectionists.
The steps have been cleaned.
The broken glass has been repaired.
And because the 22nd Amendment says he can't run again, maybe we exhale.
If this country had one word that defined its march higher, it wouldn't be liberty or justice.
It would be next.
Because we have a tendency to just move on so quickly from the tragedies that define us.
We have a tendency to not look back.
But I can't do that.
I'm the son of a cop, the brother of cops, a former prosecutor who stood up in a courtroom defending the idea of the people.
But you don't need a badge on your chest to know that January 6th was a moral crater.
You don't need a law degree on your wall to know that in a country like ours, we don't tolerate violence.
You don't choose the criminal over the constable.
What Trump is attempting to do is to gaslight a nation on an industrial scale.
It's the same playbook the French theorists used after September 11.
They told us there were no planes.
They told us it was holograms, missiles, a controlled demolition.
We didn't buy that nonsense then, and we cannot whitewash history now.
Ms. McCord, I was hoping you'd engage in a hypothetical with me and put aside the politics.
Picture George Bush.
Remember him standing on the pile of twisted steel at ground zero, his arm around a retired firefighter, holding that bullhorn.
He bucked us up.
He gave us a spine when ours was fractured.
Now, imagine if he had been the one to incite the attacks.
Imagine if he had held a rally in Battery Park 10 minutes before impact.
Imagine if he had pointed at the towers and told a seething armed crowd to fight like hell, to stop the steel, and make them do the right thing.
Could January 6th have happened if Donald Trump had not called to assemble the mob?
mary mccord ▲ ● ▼
I think that it could not, Representative Swalwell.
And I think Jack Smith's testimony during his deposition recently makes that very clear.
The evidence amassed about what Donald Trump knew, how many people, Republicans included, had told him there was no fraud in the election that's significant enough to change the results.
His own attorney general had told them that.
He called the crowd knowing that they responded to his dog whistles.
And when he knew there was violence, when he knew that his own vice president was in danger, dire danger, that the mob had erected a gallows and said, hang Mike Pence, he let things continue and continued to let things continue.
And according to Jack Smith's testimony the other day and the indictments, even the night after, the night of January 6th, he was still agitated.
And we know that because five years later, he continues to propound those lies.
I don't think, just for the record, George W. Bush would have ever said anything like that.
Whatever policy disagreements those in this room may have with him, he is a man of integrity who would have never done such a thing.
eric swalwell ▲ ● ▼
Agreed.
And on January 6th, what you just described is what happened.
That's the reality.
It's important that we tackle the future.
More than ever, it's coming at us at a breathtaking speed.
But if we don't acknowledge a past wound, it stays poisoned.
If we don't right these wrongs, we don't just get a repeat of January 6th, we get January 7th and 8th, and the country we are barely holding on to now will slip forever through our fingers.
It doesn't matter who you voted for.
Our job, our civic sacrament, is to reject the comforting lie, even when it comes from our friends, as Pamela Hemphill has told us.
So we remember, we don't look away.
We treat the day with the same reverence, the same sorrow, and the same resolve as the day the towers fell, because the moment we forget is the moment we as a country also fall.
And I yield back.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, gentlemen.
Time has expired.
We now recognize for three minutes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Resk.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Hempil, thank you so much for joining us today.
Pardons are supposed to be reserved for people who are contrite, who are repentant, who have paid their debt to society and are reformed and are no longer dangerous to society.
On those standards, you may be the only one of the J6 insurrectionists who actually deserves a pardon.
And yet they all got pardons and accepted them.
You were granted a pardon as part of the en masse action, but you decided not to take it.
Can you just elaborate a little bit further why you decided not to take the removal of the criminal record?
unidentified
Thank you for the question.
I do not deserve a pardon for what I did on January the 6th.
I deserve to finish my sentence.
I broke the law.
To me, taking a pardon would be a slop in the Capitol Police's face.
It was wrong that day.
And you don't take a pardon for when you broke the law.
No, ever.
Backlash Against Witnesses 00:12:14
unidentified
I'm sorry.
I just got so angry.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
Well, I want to, I was not aware.
We've spoken before on the phone, but I was not aware that you had suffered harassment and that people were attacking you in the wake of your announcement.
I wonder if you would just say a further word about that.
unidentified
attacking me on January the 6th or recently?
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
No, no.
I mean, in the wake of not accepting the pardon, that there was a backlash against you, that you were...
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
They find out you support me, they come after you.
It's that bad.
I don't care.
I'm going to keep speaking out.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
Well, thank you.
And Ms. McCord, but how of the would you describe how the methodology and the history of these pardons differs from the history of pardons generally?
mary mccord ▲ ● ▼
How much time do we have?
So the pardon attorney is an office within the Department of Justice that normally reviews the applications for pardons.
And they look at things like the person's criminal record, their individual characteristics, the things you already mentioned, right?
What is their contrition?
What have they done with their lives since they committed their crimes?
And all of these things are taking into consideration and recommendations are being made to the president.
Here, so far as I can tell, the pardon attorney was completely sidelined, and there was no individualized assessment about the criminal records of those that were going to be pardoned.
Criminal records before January 6th, their indications of dangerousness, whether they had accepted responsibility, it was just en masse.
So it is as far removed from anything that I've ever seen.
The closest is the pardons of draft defectors after Vietnam.
Very, very, very different situation.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you very much.
The gentleman yields back.
Chair recognizes the young lady from Washington for three minutes, Ms. Jaya Paul.
pramila jayapal ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Leader Jeffries, for holding this very important hearing.
Mr. Panjon, I want to just start by saying thank you so much from all of us who were here.
We deeply appreciate your bravery, your sacrifice, and that of all the law enforcement officers who protected us and protected the Capitol that day.
Ms. Hemphel, I want to thank you for your very honest and moving testimony, and I hope that it inspires others across the country to do and say what you have said.
I think it's incredibly important.
And I want to focus my few minutes on the toll on our democracy with Mr. Ballou and Ms. McCord.
When I questioned Jack Smith recently, Special Counsel Jack Smith recently, about the toll on our democracy if we do not hold those who try to steal an election accountable, he described it as catastrophic.
Mr. Ballou, can you talk about the effects of these pardons not only on January 6th defendants' actions going forward, but on Trump supporters more generally?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, I think that there are two concerns here with the January 6th pardons specifically.
You know, with the mass pardons of January 6th rioters, particularly the violent ones, I think the clear message here, probably the intent and certainly the effect of the pardons, was to empower a group of people who were loyal to the president, willing to enact violence in his name, but quite literally beyond the reach of the law.
Immediately after the pardons came out, you know, a number of rioters made statements saying that they were going to get retribution or revenge.
Some said that they were going to immediately buy guns.
It's clear what the effect of being told that the law doesn't apply to them is having on these rioters.
But I also think that the January 6th pardons fit into a broader narrative of what's going on with this administration: that if people are sufficiently loyal and willing to support the president, either in words or financially, they will be put beyond the reach of the law.
You know, you look at the extraordinary donations, for instance, to the Trump inaugural committee, people giving a million dollars to have their SEC or CFPB investigations dropped or their criminal prosecutions dropped, I think it means that, quite literally, for a certain group of people right now in America, the law does not apply to them.
pramila jayapal ▲ ● ▼
Ms. McCord, I want to ask you what this does for public safety.
I'm deeply concerned that the total lack of accountability here puts our country at risk of another January 6th or something much, much worse.
Do you believe that we can deter future insurrections like what happened five years ago when the president has pardoned all of these people?
mary mccord ▲ ● ▼
I think that the damage to sort of the even-handed administration of justice is really very strong.
And people can think rationally right now that if what they do is at the behest of someone like Donald Trump who has the power to absolve them from the wrongs that they commit, that there is an incentive to continue to commit those wrongs.
And we are in a dangerous place right now where Mr. Trump still has three more years left of his term and is even talking about things like a third term, which of course would violate the Constitution.
So these are all seeding these narratives already now that I think could prompt additional acts of violence.
I don't think this Capitol could be attacked the way it was before because of what has happened since January 6th, but that does not mean that there can't be other similar acts of violence elsewhere.
pramila jayapal ▲ ● ▼
Thank you all so much.
I yield back with the state.
unidentified
Thank you.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Gentleladers' time has expired.
Chair recognizes the gentleman from California for three minutes, Mr. Correa.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I also want to thank our witnesses for your bravery for being here today, testify to make sure we don't forget January 6th.
If I can turn to Ms. Hemphill, ma'am, thank you also for being here.
If I can ask you some very quick questions: Do you believe in God?
unidentified
Thank you for the question.
Absolutely.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Are you a God-fearing person?
unidentified
Yes.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Why did you come to Washington on January 6th?
unidentified
I believe that the election had been stolen.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
So you believe the lies that the 2020 election had been stolen?
unidentified
Absolutely.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Were you involved in politics before that?
unidentified
No.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
So you're not a person involved in this process?
unidentified
No, sir.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
You pled guilty to a crime committed on January 6th.
Why did you plead guilty?
unidentified
Because I was guilty.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
You came to fight to stop steal, and you pled guilty.
Did you realize that the 2020 election was not stolen?
unidentified
At the time, I pledged guilty.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Did you serve time in jail?
unidentified
Yes, 60 days in prison.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
And you refused Donald Trump's pardon.
Why?
unidentified
Because it was a lie.
January 6th was an insurrection.
I broke the law.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Police officers were being assaulted that day, were getting beat up.
I know I was there.
I watched.
I felt it.
Yet these police officers also came to your rescue?
unidentified
Yeah, the crowd had knocked me down in front of another officer and stepped on my head, pulled my shoulder, cut my knee, and broke my glasses.
I was not breathing.
If it hadn't been for the Capitol police officers, I would have died.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
So these same police officers that were assaulted also saved your life, despite you being one of the rioters?
unidentified
They saved those inside the Capitol and even rioters like myself.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
What would you say to people watching this today about what's going on in the country?
What would you say to them today about whitewashing, about forgetting what happened January 6th?
unidentified
It's wrong.
I point the finger everything to Trump.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
So it really happened.
This was an assault on our democracy on our Capitol.
unidentified
Absolutely orchestrated by Trump.
lou correa ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you very much.
Gentlemen's time has expired.
We now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen, for three minutes.
steve cohen ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your heading up this panel, which Speaker Meredith Pelosi appointed, which needed to be done, and it was important, and this day is important too, because we should never forget this day.
This life, Pearl Harbor, is a day that will live in infamy.
An attack on our country by a man who had been president and was again president.
Mr. Blue, as I understand it, you resigned from your position with the Justice Department.
How many years had you worked at justice?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Six years.
steve cohen ▲ ● ▼
And why did you resign?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Well, it became clear what the president was going to do to the Department of Justice, and then it was a question about whether you could be most effective at resisting sort of the illegal actions or at least unjustified actions that the president seemed to be pursuing, whether you could do so most effectively inside or outside of government.
It became clear to me that, given that this administration was so willing to fire people that opposed it, that there was very little point, as I saw it, the staying in government, and instead I would be most effective outside.
steve cohen ▲ ● ▼
Many of the people in the Justice Department who engaged in the prosecutions were fired or dismissed.
What damage has that done to the Department of Justice?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
It's extraordinary in two ways.
The first is just on the level of expertise, that there were senior-level prosecutors, ones who were running the Capitol Siege section, the team that prosecuted rioters, who were demoted to entry-level jobs, borderline clerical jobs.
You simply lost the muscle memory of experienced prosecutors in the office because of those demotions and firings.
I think at a broader level, independent of the expertise, the Department is hemorrhaging credibility with judges, with juries, and with grand juries.
And the only tool that the Department of Justice has is its credibility, the ability to convince people to accept its position.
And it is rapidly losing that power.
steve cohen ▲ ● ▼
The president has gone after quite a few people, people on this panel who were on the January 6th Committee, Mr. Schiff, who's here, Senator Schiff.
He's been targeted for the same kind of situations as the former FBI director and the New York prosecutor.
Grand juries refused to indict a couple of people there.
How, I know that this expression, ham sandwich.
How rare is it that a grand jury stands up to the government and says, no, we will not indict?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
You know, and these are approximate statistics, but I think for the most recent year that data was available, it was something on the order of six no-bills out of 130,000 attempted indictments.
So, you know, at the DC U.S. Attorney's Office where this has happened, I think at least a half dozen times, you're talking about, you know, six to 130th to the sixth power, so extremely rare.
steve cohen ▲ ● ▼
Well, it's good that the citizenry that serve on the grand juries have got more understanding and more backbone than some of our Republican, most of our Republican colleagues, unfortunately.
Capitol Courage 00:15:46
steve cohen ▲ ● ▼
We must never forget this day, and I won't.
I was in the gallery.
I was concerned.
Capitol Police came up in the gallery, locked the doors, had their guns ready, helped me with my gas hood, which I couldn't put on, and all this inexperience, and got out of there.
But I was certainly frightened, and I don't think I had post-traumatic stress disorder, but I've thought about it a lot.
And when I sit in my house now and watch television, I lower a shade next to me at night so nobody can see in.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
Gentlemen's time.
unidentified
Thank you.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
The gentleman's time has expired.
Thank you so much.
Chair now recognizes a gentlelady from North Carolina, Ms. Ross.
deborah ross ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much to Leader Jeffries and to you, Mr. Chairman, and the folks who served on the January 6th committee for making sure that we never, ever, ever forget.
And I think if we didn't have this president and this speaker, this hearing wouldn't be just a Democratic hearing.
We would be remembering together the collective trauma that this country has gone through.
Mr. Ballou, I want to talk a little bit about how the pardons and some of the effects of the pardons have re-traumatized victims.
One of the things that we don't talk about with the pardons is that the fact that the insurrectionists who were convicted owed $3 million in restitution to Capitol police officers and others who they had injured on that day.
And only about 15% of that amount, $400,000, was paid before President Trump liquidated the rest of the restitution owed with his pardon spree.
Can you talk about how that restitution was an important part of the work that you and others did in your prosecutions?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
So, you know, January 6th was an attack on individuals.
It was also an attack on, quite literally, the Capitol itself.
The architect of the Capitol, I think, estimated that there was $29 million in damages to the building itself.
And that's separate from the restitution that you're talking about to individual officers.
You know, that is a life-saving amount of money for people, many of whom, you know, are no longer working, many of whom are no longer able to work.
And so the fact that they may not be able to collect on this means that quite literally they might not be able to heal.
unidentified
Okay.
deborah ross ▲ ● ▼
And what does it say that the president instead now wants to provide some kind of restitution to the insurrectionists who caused this pain, these injuries, and has left people uncompensated?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Well, I think this fits to the broader concern that the pardons of the rioters are going to empower people that are loyal to the president but beyond the reach of the law.
If they are given money, which it seems like the president is trying to do, you know, the Proud Boys are seeking $150 million in damages.
The Department of Justice is currently opposing that, but we don't know how that's going to play out.
We're going to have a situation very similar to what we've seen in other countries, where you have essentially militias or paramilitary forces that are loyal to an administration but unaccountable to anyone or any institution.
deborah ross ▲ ● ▼
And paid with our tax dollars.
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Precisely.
deborah ross ▲ ● ▼
And I just only have five seconds left, but I'd really like our officer to speak to this issue, too.
Do you know people who haven't been compensated?
winston pingeon ▲ ● ▼
I don't know of any officers who have been received any kind of compensation outside of their normal salary for what they sacrificed on January 6th.
unidentified
Okay.
deborah ross ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, and I yield back.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you very much.
The gentlelady yields back.
Chair recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms. KamlerDove, for three minutes.
sydney kamlager-dove ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And I just want to thank all of you for your courage, for what you did for us on January 6th, and for what each of you continue to do today by speaking out and by showing up.
This is a very emotional room.
It's been very sobering to watch the videos and to hear the testimonies.
I watched it on television and didn't think I was watching something happening in the United States and wondered if every single person inside the Capitol was going to die.
It was terrifying.
And I can only imagine what you're going through as you're recounting what you experienced.
Ms. Hemphill said that she received due process.
Is that true?
unidentified
Thank you for the question.
Absolutely.
sydney kamlager-dove ▲ ● ▼
Yes.
And so, Mr. Balu, you resigned from the Department of Justice.
Would you agree that Ms. Hempphill and many others, all of the other 1,500 cases that were prosecuted, did they all receive due process?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
I think it was the largest prosecution in American history, and it was extraordinary to watch, you know, sort of more senior prosecutors, the care and attention they brought to every case.
sydney kamlager-dove ▲ ● ▼
I would agree with that.
In fact, I think it's probably an example of how due process actually can and should work in this country if only all of us were afforded it.
Mr. Balu, I want to ask you a couple of additional questions.
Let's just say hypothetically that Joe Antifa showed up at the Capitol, upset that this president was doing away with his health care and causing him to spend more money at the grocery store and at the gas station because of the tariffs.
And let's just say that Joe came up and he was so upset that he started bear spraying and pepper spraying and beating up members of the Capitol police because he was so outraged.
Would it be right to call Joe Antifa a patriot?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
No, absolutely.
He committed a crime.
sydney kamlager-dove ▲ ● ▼
And would it be right to arrest him?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
And if I can just briefly say this isn't a hypothetical, you know, the Department of Justice was prosecuting protesters that turn into rioters from the summer of 2020, the very same 12-month period.
And the analysis was, at least the initial analysis, was that those rioters actually received harsher sentences than those from January 6th.
sydney kamlager-dove ▲ ● ▼
That's right.
And yet, this president said that we assaulted the January 6ers, right, the insurrectionists, and that they were illegally detained.
And in fact, sort of us presume that they didn't receive any due process.
I'm so glad that you're sharing with us that it is not a hypothetical that in fact it happened.
And I just also want to share, Mr. Chair, that now we've learned that the Department of Justice is actually and actively deleting records of the January 6th cases, that they are scrubbing references to the January 6th insurrection as a riot, and in fact, have fired prosecutors that worked on all of these cases.
Would you agree to those statements?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
Yes.
sydney kamlager-dove ▲ ● ▼
Thank you for the time.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you very much.
Chair recognized the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Castro, for three minutes.
joaquin castro ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Chairman.
And I want to say thank you to each of you for your courage and for your bravery and your candor today.
I had the opportunity to serve as an impeachment manager to try to convict Donald Trump in the Senate thanks to the appointment of at the time Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
January 6th was an attempted coup.
The mob that showed up was trying to stop Congress from doing its job of accepting the election results of the 2020 presidential election.
And on that day, Donald Trump left everyone in this building for dead.
Our brave police officers, elected officials of both parties, of course, but also our staff who work here in the House and the Senate, the journalists who covered this place, people that are not often discussed, like maintenance workers, cafeteria workers, all of the support staff in these buildings.
Their lives were at stake as well.
And for five years, we've had to listen to Donald Trump and others whitewash that history And pretend as though it was a tourist visit or something peaceful.
That day was a dangerous day, not just for the people in this building, but for our democracy and our country.
So, thank you, each of you, for the roles that you played.
Thank you, Ms. Hemphill, for the grace that you've shown in accepting responsibility for what you did and also acknowledging the truth of that day and that mob.
I wanted to ask you, Mr. Ballou and Ms. McCord, you know, we exist now in a time of social media where misinformation, lies, distortions can become accepted as truth unlike any other time in human history.
And Donald Trump has exploited that, and his hardcore supporters have exploited that.
What work remains in making sure that this never happens again in the United States of America?
mary mccord ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Congressmember.
You know, one of the problems is that social media and technology companies basically bear no responsibility when it comes to the way their platforms are misused, the way that their algorithms amplify extreme content.
And people, unfortunately, studies, many studies have shown: if you do not yourself break out of that loop of more and more extremist content, you will just kept be feeding more and more.
So I think one thing for Congress to take under consideration, and I know it's a very difficult task, is what to do about the Communications Decency Act.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
Sure.
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
And I'll just add very briefly: I think one of the best antidotes to that is the people who were at the Capitol that day speaking out, obviously members like yourselves, but the Capitol police officers, including officers Dunn and Hodges, who are here today, I think have shown enormous personal courage.
joaquin castro ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
I yield back, John.
unidentified
My name is Adam Biller.
I am Blood, the Canadian Registration Defendant.
jamie raskin ▲ ● ▼
And I'd like to respectfully ask: why is this committee only proposed to Democrats?
unidentified
Why is it.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Well, I'm glad you asked.
Because no Republicans participated.
You're not part of the thing.
You're welcome to be here as a spectator.
Thank you very much.
Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Dean.
madeleine dean ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank our leadership for convening us here in this basement room, crowded in here, because I guess the Republican majority didn't want to see this in a bigger, more open space.
As Jamie Raskin said in the beginning, it is still January 6th in America, and that is why we are here, to make sure that we continue to shine a light on the grievous errors of that day and those who perpetrated it, particularly Mr. Trump.
I believe that his pardons on the very first day of his second administration was an attempt to pardon himself for all of history.
Just wash it away.
I didn't do anything wrong.
It was a party and they were patriots.
I want to tell you, Ms. Hemphill, Sophocles emphasized that to make a mistake is human.
But real wisdom comes when you recognize your mistake and you correct it.
You're an extraordinary role model.
I think about you.
You said you're a mom and a grandmom.
What a role model you are for your grandchildren.
To give them that sense of I am human, I made a mistake, and I'm going to correct it publicly.
That's hard to do privately in your own home.
I know it.
I'm human.
I have a hard time admitting mistakes sometimes.
I just want to tell you your humility, your courage, I pray that it is contagious.
May it take over this country.
And I thank you for it.
Ms. McCord, thank you for your clarity, your guidance.
Keep speaking.
Keep guiding us.
And together, we're going to make a difference.
Officer Finchen, thank you so much for your work.
How difficult was it for you to leave the service?
winston pingeon ▲ ● ▼
It was very difficult because I loved my job.
I loved being an officer and I'm so thankful for my years that I had here.
I didn't leave only because of January 6th, but it did certainly play a factor.
And I think quite possibly had January 6th not happened, I would still be an officer here today.
madeleine dean ▲ ● ▼
And I thank you and all the officers.
We have seen the faces of so many of you, but every single officer needs to be recognized and thanked, whether they were on duty, off duty.
I know so many of you and your great people.
And finally, I too was here on January the 6th up in the gallery.
And Mr. Ballou, I totally share with you the idea that symbols matter.
I've actually met with the architect of the Capitol twice and asked that an installation be preserved for all of history.
I recognize that's not going to be installed anytime soon under this administration or under this Speaker of the House who won't even put up a plaque.
But I really call upon this House, the Capitol, the architect of the Capitol, and I actually wrote a letter and asked what artifacts did you preserve?
The broken glass, the shards, everything that you preserved.
I never got an answer to that letter, but I call again.
What do you think about that notion that we need to preserve this history?
brendan ballou ▲ ● ▼
It's absolutely the only way that this isn't going to happen again.
madeleine dean ▲ ● ▼
I thank you.
bennie thompson ▲ ● ▼
Thank you very much.
Chair now recognized our last person, Ms. Ballant from Vermont.
unidentified
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witness for being here today.
I'd like to most wholeheartedly thank Ms. Hempil for your courage in speaking out.
By being here today, you are showing more bravery than so many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that still refuse to admit what happened on January 6th.
And I'm grateful that you're here.
Wow. They Grabbed My Arm 00:02:52
unidentified
You talked in your opening statement about what you witnessed that day, about the violence.
You said, nobody's going to gaslight me.
I was there.
I saw what happened.
You talked about how you yourself were injured.
And I just want to have you say it again.
Who helped you when you were injured?
Who helped you when you were feeling despair, Ms. Hemp?
Thank you for the question.
The Capitol Police.
Wow.
They grabbed my arm and they were all yelling to get tell people to get off of me.
And then another one came over and I was not breathing.
They pulled me up and they put me up on the steps and another female officer came over and she was helping me and I couldn't talk to her and I couldn't get up because I couldn't breathe.
But she was so kind and so loving and I thought here I'm one of the rioters.
So that's why I can't thank them enough for what they did for me that day.
So despite your actions, they were still there for you.
Yes.
It's extraordinary, isn't it?
It's amazing.
They are amazing.
Yeah, they are.
They are.
And we're grateful for them every single day when we walk into this building.
Absolutely.
And they deserve more than that.
They do.
They deserve so much more than what they have been given by their government.
And I want to touch for a moment on the fact that you, by being here and by speaking out and by denying the pardon, you are showing everyday courage.
And I keep coming back, and I just wrote it down again for myself.
Mark Twain said, courage is resistance to fear.
It's not mastery of fear.
It's not absence of fear.
And so you talked about your own fear, right, and coming forward and that you've been doxxed and you've been harassed and you've been threatened.
And yet you still stand so solidly in your conviction that what you did was wrong and that you want to speak out.
You want to use this moment to right the wrong and to rewrite history.
Can you just talk for a moment about how you found that courage?
Because I want other people to find that courage.
I find that courage through a God of my own understanding because sometimes I don't have it.
So I ask him to give me that courage and he does.
He stands with me in front of me and beside me.
But this was about the Capitol Police officers.
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