In the prologue, they laid out where they’re going to go, and which night you can tune in for what part. They’re dropping little previews of the juicy depositions (I especially appreciated the way they let Jared show himself to be the callous traitor he is) and other evidence to come. And then they cut to a film, a timeline of sorts, of what went down that day—maybe 10 minutes of how the rioters talked of their plans, how they started to breach the Capitol, how Trump egged them on from the bandstands and then via Twitter, how the police fought for their lives and the lives of members of Congress.

By the end of the ransacking clip, my pulse was racing. I had a bit of a PTSD reaction. Then they dropped the mic and went to a 10-minute recess, allowing room for the TV pundits to express how they, too, were blown away by the storytelling.

Maybe it’ll bog down. Maybe none of it will matter. But one thing is for sure: Lawyers, TV producers, and storytellers of all stripes will be coming back to this first hour for years to come.

I thought about what happened to Reyes, and the 19 children who were torn apart by bullets in their classrooms, as Mitch McConnell demanded that Democrats pass a bill to increase security protections for Supreme Court Justices. You see, police arrested an armed man for threatening Brett Kavanaugh, and McConnell wanted action that very day.

The deaths of 19 children, of course, inspired no such urgency.

Jamelle Bouie tweeted yesterday, as Republicans debated gun legislation, “There is no number of dead elementary schoolers that would get them to budge. They don’t give a shit.” And that’s absolutely right, they don’t give a shit. About anything.

They don’t give a shit about all those dead children, their bodies “pulverized” and “decapitated” by bullets from a legally-owned weapon. They don’t give a shit about stripping women of their personhood and bodily autonomy, or what it means to put someone in prison for having a stillbirth. They don’t give a shit about how incredibly dangerous it is to characterize talking to children about the mere existence of gay people as ‘grooming’, or the rank hypocrisy of expecting teachers to carry guns in the classroom while not trusting them enough to teach children about race or gender.

There is no bottom, no depth Republicans won’t sink to, because they simply don’t care.

That’s why calls for understanding, politeness and civil “debate” are so absurd. There’s no rational conversation possible with a person who could see all those children murdered and argue that what we need is more guns. There’s no debate to be had with a legislator who would liken a book about two moms to child molestation. And there’s nothing nothing useful in being polite to a politicians who would force an 11 year-old rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term.

HAPPENING NOW: DOJ says in court (during a fortitously timed Proud Boys hearing) that it anticipates the Jan. 6 select committee releasing all 1,000 witness transcripts in September, along with its final report.

That could occur during or right around the timing if the Proud Boys trial, which is slated to begin in August, and both sides in the case are concerned about what affect this could have on their timing.

DOJ says it still hasn't received any of the Jan. 6 committee's transcripts despite ongoing talks with the select committee.
And now DOJ gives a clue about why the committee might not want to hand over transcripts: When it gets them, DOJ says it will provide those transcripts to defense attorneys as part of its discovery obligations.

Committee aides sought to temper expectations of any shocking revelations during Thursday’s hearing and instead framed the session as an opening argument.

“[Thursday] night is connecting the dots,” said a second aide. “A lot of this has been reported and bits and pieces of it have been shared. But our aim is to tie all that together in a comprehensive narrative and to show how it’s a pattern that started before the election and went all the way through January 6.”

"I also intend to see that those members of Congress who abetted him — those members of Congress who had groups coming through the capitol that I saw on Jan. 5 for reconnaissance for the next day — those members of Congress who incited the violent crowd, those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy, I'm going see that they're held accountable," Sherrill said in a video she posted to Facebook.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) confirmed Sherrill's report, saying he saw a member of Congress providing a reconnaissance tour the night before the attack.

But Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) all denied giving reconnaissance tours.

But questions remain, including about a late-night tour of the Capitol by then Representative-elect Boebert on Dec. 12, 2020 — late on the night of the first Stop the Steal rally.

Tristen Snell, who prosecuted Trump University for the NY attorney general's office, thinks there had to be inside information from the Republican side of the aisle.

"There are 658 panes of glass in the ground floors of the Capitol. Only a dozen were not reinforced prior to January 6. The insurrectionists knew EXACTLY where those weak points were," he said. "Because they were given advance help — by pro-Trump members of Congress and their staffs.

The hectic events that day followed nearly two weeks of persistent pressure from Trump on the Secret Service to devise a plan for him to join his supporters on a march to the Capitol from the park near the White House where he was leading a massive rally that he predicted would be “wild.”

The agency had rebuffed Trump’s early entreaties, but the rushed effort on Jan. 6 to accommodate the president came as Secret Service personnel heard Trump urge his rally audience of nearly 30,000 people to march to the Capitol while suggesting he would join them. Their mission was clear, he said: pressure “weak” Republicans to refuse to accept the election results that made Joe Biden the next president.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol,” he told the crowd.

Witnesses have told the House Jan. 6 committee that, immediately after Trump made that remark, Secret Service agents contacted D.C. police about blocking intersections, according to the people briefed on the testimony. Police officials declined, as they were stretched thin due to their role monitoring numerous protests and later assisting with a growing mob at the Capitol, the people said. A senior law enforcement official told The Washington Post that the president’s detail leader scuttled the idea as untenable and unsafe.

A D.C. official on Tuesday confirmed the Secret Service sought D.C. police for help with a presidential motorcade on Jan. 6.

“We were asked, and the response was no,” said Dora Taylor-Lowe, a spokeswoman for the D.C. deputy mayor that oversees the police department.