On July 21, 2022, the January 6 House Select Committee held its eighth public hearing regarding the Capitol riot and events associated with January 6, 2021.

The focus of the eighth hearing was on the 187 minutes that passed before then President Trump finally acted to help stop the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Read a full transcript of the eighth hearing here.

Watch the entire eighth hearing and read a full transcript on C-Span here.

While the substance of the hearing and testimony from the two witnesses is highly insightful, I think it's the closing statements from Committee members Adam Kinzinger (Republican-Illinois), Elaine Luria (Democrat-Virginia), and Liz Cheney (Republican-Wyoming) that are most notable.

Excerpts from Kinzinger's closing statement:

For three hours, he [Trump] refused to call off the attack. Donald Trump refused to take the urgent advice he received that day, not from his political opponents or from the liberal media, but from his own family, his own friends, his own staff, and his own advisers...It was his supporters attacking the Capitol and he alone could get through to them, so they pled for him to act, to place his country above himself. Still, he refused to lead and to meet the moment to honor his oath.

Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this. Donald Trump's conduct on January 6th was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation. It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service of our democracy.

...the forces Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away. The militant intolerant ideologies, the militias, the alienation and the disaffection, the weird fantasies and disinformation, they're all still out there ready to go. That's the elephant in the room.

They [laws] mean nothing without public servants dedicated to the rule of law and who are held accountable by a public that believes oath matters — oaths matter more than party tribalism or the cheap thrill of scoring political points. We — the people must demand more of our politicians and ourselves. Oaths matter. Character matters. Truth matters. If we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles, this great experiment of ours, our shining beacon on a hill, will not endure.

It's also worth noting that earlier in the hearing Kinzinger said the following:

President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.

Excerpts from Luria's closing statement:

So in the end, this is not as it may appear, a story of inaction in a time of crisis, but instead it was the final action of Donald Trump's own plan to usurp the will of the American people and remain in power. Not until it was clear that his effort to violently disrupt or delay the counting of the election results had failed did he send his message — a message to his supporters in which he commiserated with their pain and he told them affectionately to go home. That was not the message of condemnation and just punishment for those who broke the law that we expect from a President whose oath and duty is to ensure the laws are faithfully executed. But instead, It was his newest version of Stand Back and Stand By.

I never imagined that that enemy would come from within. Abraham Lincoln who 23 years before the Civil War said, if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. Donald Trump was the author. And we the people, for ourselves and our posterity, should not let Donald Trump be the finisher.

Excerpts from Cheney's closing statement:

The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies, it is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump's own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family. They have come forward and they have told the American people the truth.

What the new Steve Bannon audio demonstrates is that Donald Trump's plan to falsely claim victory in 2020 no matter what the facts actually were was premeditated. Perhaps worse, Donald Trump believed he could convince his voters to buy it whether he had any actual evidence of fraud or not.

There was no evidence of widespread fraud. It didn't matter. Donald Trump was confident he could persuade his supporters to believe whatever he said no matter how outlandish and ultimately that they could be summoned to Washington to help him remain President for another term.

Here's the worst part. Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice.

And on January 6th, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution. He has purposely created the false impression that America is threatened by a foreign force controlling voting machines or that a wave of tens of millions of false ballots were secretly injected into our election system or that ballot workers have secret thumb drives and are stealing elections with them. All complete nonsense. We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

In our hearing tonight, you saw an American President faced with a stark and unmistakable choice between right and wrong. There was no ambiguity. No nuance. Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior. It was indefensible. And every American must consider this, can a President who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

Source:

(July 22, 2022). "Here's every word from the 8th Jan. 6 committee on its investigation". NPR. Retrieved 2022-07-23

(July 21, 2022). "Eighth Hearing on Investigation of January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol". C-Span. Retrieved 2022-07-23

After the hearing, Trump posted the following on his "Truth Social" social media account:

I had an election rigged and stolen from me and our country.

The next day, on July 22, The Wall Street Journal editorial board said:

Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.

Also on July 22, the (conservative) New York Post editorial board published an op-ed entitled "Trump's silence on Jan. 6 is damning". The editorial board states:

There has been much debate over whether Trump's rally speech on Jan. 6, 2021, constituted "incitement." That's somewhat of a red herring. What matters more — and has become crystal clear in recent days — is that Trump didn't lift a finger to stop the violence that followed. And he was the only person who could stop what was happening. He was the only one the crowd was listening to. It was incitement by silence.

To his eternal shame, as appalled aides implored him to publicly call on his followers to go home, he instead further fanned the flames by tweeting: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution." His only focus was to find any means — damn the consequences — to block the peaceful transfer of power. There is no other explanation, just as there is no defense, for his refusal to stop the violence.

It's up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country's chief executive again.

It's also worth noting that during a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona on July 22, two days after the January 6 hearing, Trump said:

We will never give in, we will never yield, we will never, ever, ever back down. As long as we are unified, the tyrants we are against do not stand a chance because we are Americans who kneel to God and no one else.