Jan 6 hearings ratings – live: Trump fury after Ivanka ‘jugular attack’ as Cheney says allies begged for ‘coup’ pardons

Rep Liz Cheney, vice-chair of the select committee investigating the 6 January attack on Congress, unleashed on her own party during the panel’s first hearing on Thursday.

“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,” Ms Cheney said.

She was referring to a number of Republican lawmakers who sought pardons from President Trump over the 6 January violence.

Andrew Feinberg has more:

Fox News host Sean Hannity had a surprising analysis of Thursday’s primetime hearing hosted by the select committee investigating January 6 after it ended.

“This is now about a security failure of incredible magnitude and they don’t even seem to want to talk about it. The one person that looks good is Donald Trump,” said Mr Hannity during a discussion with right-wing journalist John Solomon.

Mr Hannity’s own text messages to the White House and others in the former president’s orbit before, during, and after the riot have become evidence that the committee is using to form its narrative.

Thursday’s January 6 House select committee hearing opened with bombshell video footage that showed his daugher Ivanka Trump explaining that she knew the election was not stolen.

Ms Trump explaining how she accepted Attorney General Bill Barr’s assertion that the election had been fair and free of fraud.

“I respected AG Barr, and accepted what he was saying,” Ms Trump told the committee in her recorded testimony.

Former president Donald Trump hit out at the January 6 committee following its first public hearing on Thursday evening and repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election.

“So the Unselect Committee of political HACKS refuses to play any of the many positive witnesses and statements, refuses to talk of the Election Fraud and Irregularities that took place on a massive scale, and decided to use a documentary maker from Fake News ABC to spin only negative footage. Our Country is in such trouble!” he wrote in a statement posted on his social media network Truth Social.

Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards who was seriously injured during the 6 January riot said during Thursday’s hearing that her “blood, sweat and tears” were shed defending US lawmakers during the attack last year.

“I, whose literal blood, sweat and tears were shed that day defending the building that I spent countless holidays and weekends working in.”

Video footage of Brian Sicknick, the police officer who would die a day after the Capitol riot, was played on Thursday shortly before the committee adjourned for the night.

In the video, a uniformed officer identified as Mr Sicknick is seen holding his face in pain after apparently being attacked with pepper spray. The actual attack itself is not clearly visible.

“He was ghostly pale,” Officer Caroline Edwards, a member of US Capitol Police described during the hearing.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that the network was not going to show the proceedings of the January 6 House select committee hearing like other networks as “the whole thing is insulting”.

He also dismissed last year’s Capitol riot as “minor” and promised to show the viewers the “honest truth” instead.

“We’re not playing along with the January 6 show trial hearing,” he said.“The whole thing is insulting. They are lying, and we’re not going to help them do it.”

Some of the Capitol police officers present on the day of the January 6 Capitol attack could be seen crying and emotional as the committee showed a shocking compilation of bodycam footage and documentary video on Thursday during the first primetime hearing into the attack on Congress.

In the video, set up by committee chair Bennie Thompson, members of US Capitol Police are heard desperately calling for reinforcements as they are viciously attacked by a massive mob of Trump supporters who are seen smashing windows, striking officers, and wrestling with metal barricades.

Three Capitol rioters appeared in court just hours before the January 6 House select committee hearing and pleaded mercy before federal judges deciding their punishment for participating in the assault.

The three included Michael Daughtry, a gun store owner and former police officer arrested roughly a week after the attack on Capitol Hill and father son duo William M. Sywak and William J. Sywak.

“I made one mistake in my life and I have immediately took responsibility for it,” Daughtry was quoted as saying by ABC.

“I apologize to the court for my indiscretion. But does a person not get to make at least one mistake in their entire life?”

“I’m embarrassed,” the younger Sywak was quoted as saying by Buffalo News.

“I’m very remorseful for what I did,” he said.

“It’s not right that so many police officers were injured.”Of the 820 individuals arrested and charged in connection with last year’s 6 January Capitol insurrection, 300 have pleaded guilty to an array of charges.

Donald Trump Jr has dubbed the January 6 House select committee hearing “sham partisan bull****” in a statement on Twitter after proceedings ended on Thursday.

Accusing the Democrats of “distracting” Americans, he said: “Democrats hate America and they hate you!”