WASHINGTON ― The first police officer injured by Donald Trump’s mob on Jan. 6, 2021, and a documentary filmmaker who captured footage of the U.S. Capitol assault’s key participants will be the lead-off witnesses Thursday night in the first public hearing by the House select committee investigating the attack.
Caroline Edwards of the U.S. Capitol Police force suffered a “traumatic brain injury,” according to the House Jan. 6 committee, but continued patrolling the Capitol’s west plaza. Her injuries nearly a year and a half later continue to prevent her from returning to work, the committee said in a statement.
Also testifying is Nick Quested, a British filmmaker who was documenting the movements of the right-wing Proud Boys group ― several of whom were charged with seditious conspiracy Monday for ginning up the attack for the purpose of preventing the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to 2020 presidential election winner Joe Biden.
Quested filmed “the first moments of violence against U.S. Capitol Police, and the chaos that ensued,” the committee said. He had been following Proud Boys leaders in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and caught on film a parking garage meeting the previous evening between that group’s Enrique Tarrio and the head of another pro-Trump extremist group, the Oath Keepers.
The bipartisan House panel has been working nearly a full year, almost entirely behind closed doors. It has taken statements and depositions from more than a thousand people and gathered more than a hundred thousand pages of documents.
Committee members have said the series of hearings over the next two weeks will lay out how Trump and his allies tried to overturn the results of the presidential election so that he could remain in power.
Committee vice chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, told CBS News on Sunday that the extent of the conspiracy was frightening. “It is extremely broad. It’s extremely well-organized. It’s really chilling,” she said.
Trump, despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and by 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol ― his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to the deaths of five people, including one police officer, the injury of 140 additional officers and the deaths by suicide of four other police officers.
Nevertheless, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and is openly speaking about running for the presidency again in 2024.
