Jan 6 hearing today: Trump’s WH counsel Pat Cipollone subpoenaed as Liz Cheney earns standing ovation

Almost half of Americans believe that the former president Donald Trump should be criminally charged for his role in the attack on the US capitol last year on 6 January.

According to the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 48 per cent of adults polled to say that the former president should be held accountable and face charges while 32 per cent said he should not be charged.

Other 20 per cent did not have an opinion on the topic.

The poll was conducted before the five public hearings by the House committee but before Tuesday’s surprise hearing featuring former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

US Capitol Police Sgt Aquilino Gonell told HuffPost that Donald Trump is responsible for the injuries he sustained during the attack on Congress.

“Our own president set us up,” he told the outlet. “I just feel betrayed. The president should be doing everything possible to help us and he didn’t do it. He wanted to lead the mob and wanted to lead the crowd himself … he wanted to be a tyrant.”

Speaking about the events on January 6, Sgt Gonell tweeted on Tuesday: “When [Trump] tweeted about Pence, the fighting in the tunnel intensified. We held the line hoping the President would be on our side and send us help. Mike Pence is lucky to be alive, he’s lucky we kept our OATH AND HELD THE LINE. Your boss tried to have you killed. Testify.”

The testimony of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson has exposed the widening rift between the Justice Department and congressional investigators.

Some of the officials of the Justice Department, according to a New York Times report, felt blindsided and were left astonished with the explosive testimony as the panel did not provide them with videos or transcripts of her taped interviews with committee members beforehand.

The surprise hearing came as a parallel investigation is going on by the federal prosecutors to determine the extent of the former president’s involvement in the riots and it will soon converge.

The committee members have also suggested that Attorney General Merrick B Garland is not moving swiftly enough in investigating leads. But Senior Justice Department officials say that committee members’ resistance to turn over transcripts has slowed their progress.

In her speech that drew a standing ovation from a room full of GOP, Liz Cheney said that Republicans have to choose between being loyal to Donald Trump or the constitution.

“We have to choose, because Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and be loyal to the Constitution,” she said. “We must not elect people who are more loyal to themselves, or to power than they are to our Constitution.”

She went on to praise people testifying against Mr Trump, especially young women and White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for her bombshell testimony on Tuesday.

“And I have been incredibly moved by the young women that I have met and that have come forward to testify in the January 6 committee,” she said.

Regarding Ms Hutchinson she said: “Her superiors — men many years older — a number of them are hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity and intimidation. But her bravery and her patriotism yesterday were awesome to behold.”

“Little girls all across this great nation are seeing what it really means to love this country and what it really means to be a patriot.”

“I want to speak to every young girl watching tonight,” the congresswoman concluded. “The power is yours, and so is the responsibility. … These days, for the most part, men are running the world — and it is really not going that well.”

“I want to speak to every young girl watching tonight,” the congresswoman concluded. “The power is yours, and so is the responsibility. … These days, for the most part, men are running the world — and it is really not going that well.”

Liz Cheney called Donald Trump a “domestic threat” of the kind the US has never faced before in her speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday night.

“We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before — and that is a former President who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic,” said Ms Cheney. “And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.”

She began the speech by saying: “My fellow Americans, we stand at the edge of an abyss, and we must pull back.”

“As the full picture is coming into view with the January 6 committee, it has become clear that the efforts Donald Trump oversaw and engaged in were even more chilling and more threatening than we could have imagined,” Ms Cheney said.

Speaking on MSNBC on Wednesday, 2012 Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said that “the January 6 hearings have been incredible television. I think they’re way past Watergate. I think they’re doing really big harm to the President and his party with those swing voters”.

“Half of independent voters think the President did something wrong. You’re seeing Republicans sort of walk away from the president this morning … This kind of civil war inside the Republican Party continues,” he added.