Who said these notable quotes from the Jan. 6 hearings?
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will have its next — and possibly last — public hearing this week.
We don’t blame you if you can’t remember who said what of significance in the earlier hearings, which aired back in June and July. The committee presented an array of live witnesses and filmed depositions to share its findings with the public — and those were just a slice of the more than 1,000 interviews the panel conducted to find out how President Donald Trump and his allies pushed to overturn the 2020 election results, and how their false claims animated a violent mob.
Want to test your memory of the some of the most revealing quotes before Thursday’s hearing at 1 p.m. Eastern? Take our quiz.
Question 1 of 10
“There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone. But your dishonor will remain.”
Not quite.
Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the committee investigating Jan. 6, took aim at fellow Republicans last month as the hearings kicked off. Once the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, she was ousted from leadership after vocally criticizing Trump and has waged a lonely crusade against him ever since, eventually losing a tough primary fight in Wyoming.
Question 2 of 10
“I can just remember my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. ... I was slipping in people’s blood. ... It was just hours of hand-to-hand combat.”
Not quite.
Edwards, an officer with the Capitol Police, recounted “carnage” on Jan. 6 in live prime-time testimony in June. Detailing her experience in public for the first time, Edwards said she was knocked unconscious in the violence and suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Question 3 of 10
“I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with, he’s become detached from reality.”
Not quite.
In a taped interview played in June, Barr, a former attorney general, said Trump seemed “detached from reality” as he latched onto outlandish, false theories about election fraud. Barr left the Trump administration in December 2020 after his relationship with Trump soured — though he praised Trump at the time for his “many successes and unprecedented achievements.”
Question 4 of 10
“I could have done anything else, but that’s what I decided to do, and now people are lying and spreading rumors and lies and attacking my mom. …. I felt horrible for picking this job and being the one that always wants to help and always there, never missing not one election.”
Not quite.
Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, were both poll workers during the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County. Moss testified that she and her mother went into hiding amid threats and harassment after Rudy Giuliani — then a lawyer for Trump’s campaign — baselessly accused them of helping to rig the results.
Question 5 of 10
“There was ketchup dripping down the wall, and there was a shattered porcelain plate on the floor. The valet had articulated that the president was extremely angry … and had thrown his lunch against the wall.”
What did Cassidy Hutchinson — a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows — say Trump was angry about?
Not quite.
Surprise witness Hutchinson gave some of the hearings’ most explosive testimony, describing in vivid detail how Trump reacted on Dec. 1, 2020, when he learned that Barr had told the Associated Press that officials saw no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Hutchinson also testified that she heard Trump acknowledge that his supporters were armed and she was told by a White House official that Trump lunged at a Secret Service member who resisted commands to bring him to the Capitol.
She added that when then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone noted rioters’ calls to “hang Mike Pence,” her boss, Meadows, replied: “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”
Question 6 of 10
“I think that it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there. … It was late at night, it had been a long day, and what they were proposing, I thought was nuts.”
Not quite.
Ex-Trump adviser Herschmann and others described a wild, profane White House meeting that unfolded shortly before Trump issued his infamous tweet urging supporters to come to D.C. on Jan. 6. Fringe proponents of Trump’s false claims about the election talked their way into the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, witnesses said, and spent hours pitching the president on unprecedented actions to overturn the election while Trump advisers argued that their ideas were untenable.
The visitors included lawyer Sidney Powell; Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser; and Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of an online furniture retailer. Among their recommendations, according to White House advisers’ testimony, was that Trump should sign an executive order instructing the Defense Department to seize voting machines.
Question 7 of 10
“I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. … I didn’t understand how they had gotten in.”
Not quite.
Then-White House counsel Cipollone was also witness to the chaotic Dec. 18, 2020, meeting in which a group of visitors promoting false claims about the election got an audience with Trump, alarming advisers who came running. “I bet Pat Cipollone set a new land-speed record,” said attorney Sidney Powell, one of the people advancing false claims of election fraud.
Question 8 of 10
“Congratulations. You just admitted your first step or act you take as attorney general would be committing a felony. … You’re clearly the right candidate for this job.”
Not quite.
Herschmann said he did not mince words when Jeffrey Clark, then an official at the Justice Department, explained his plan to bolster Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. Clark, an environmental lawyer, wanted Trump to install him as attorney general. He laid out a plan to write to key states claiming that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the 2020 election and urging states to consider sending in slates of electors supporting Trump.
Question 9 of 10
Whose testimony included these words: “bullshit,” “bogus,” “idiotic,” “disturbing,” “crazy stuff,” “a great, grave disservice to the country.”
Not quite.
Barr offered some of the most scathing criticisms of the unsubstantiated election fraud claims advanced by Trump allies.
Question 10 of 10
“I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice president overturn the 2020 election.”
Not quite.
Luttig — a former federal judge who advised Pence that he could not legally do what Trump wanted on Jan. 6 — has warned in a grave written statement that a “stake was driven through the heart of American democracy” that day. He underscored that message in his live testimony.