The ginger mints show how Donald Trump's desperation and lies became a threat to democracy.
Even as the Justice Department presses ahead with a parallel criminal investigation that it calls the most important in its history, Mints is featured in one of the absurdist but toxic episodes that took place in January.
A dark sea of conspiracy theories was born here.
A mother and daughter shared a treat at an elections center. A person videotaped them and thought the mint the mother gave to the daughter was ausb port. The accusation that the video caught the women using the device was spread by Trump's lawyer.
Trump ran with the lie. The committee was told that he attacked the mother by name, branded her a professional vote scam, and that a group of people showed up at the family home. For the pleasure of eating mints.
In a Georgia summer, the show fed into a web of fabricated stories. The hearings showed how those stories fueled the anger of Trump's supporters across the U.S.
Scenes of the rampage had been burning into the public consciousness long before the committee called its first witness. There could be new information coming from it. It turned out to be quite a lot. More evidence is being gathered as the inquiry continues.
With seven Democrats working with two Republicans on the outs with their party, the committee established a coherent story out of the chaos instead of two partisan ones clawing at each other.
The lead manager of the second Trump impeachment and a committee member said of American carnage. It is Donald Trump's true legacy. In his address, Trump talked about carnage.
In a methodical, even mannerly process rarely seen from Congress, the panel exposed behind-the-scenes machinations laying bare the lengths Trump and his cronies went to keep him in power and the extent to which his inner circle knew his case was fake. People told him that to his face.
The hearings made it clear that Trump was willing to watch the legislative branch of government and democratic processes in state after state consumed in the bonfire of his ego.
He was told that the rioters were going to hang his vice president. According to testimony, the chief of staff related to another aide the president's thoughts on the matter and that he deserved it.
Many of Trump's supporters were told that day had weapons. He didn't say he cared.
He said that they weren't here to hurt him. The mags should be taken away. My people can go to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. It's not likely he said that.
The removal of the metal detector from security lines was one of the things he wanted to do to make his rally bigger.
Ronald Reagan called democracy's "shining city upon a hill" when he said that the White House had a range of criminal options.
Reagan imagined a city built on rocks with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.
As Trump contemplated an executive order to seize voting machines, the bedrock convulsed.
Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, said that the federal government wouldn't be able to take election machines. I don't understand why we have to tell you why that's not good for the country.
11,780 people voted for Trump in Georgia, which is a Republican state. State Republicans were told to make fake electors. When asked to certify the election, hectored Pence to do what he did not have the power to do.
Trump encouraged his supporters to march down to the Capitol, saying he would be joining them.
It's difficult to say no to the boss. It's one thing to say no to the U.S president.
Conservative aides, bureaucrats and loyalists in the states that mattered were able to foil Trump's plan.
The committee was told that the Secret Service wouldn't allow Trump to go to the Capitol.
Four years of supplication and admiring glances by Pence came to an end when Trump pressed his vice president to stop the certification of Biden's election. He didn't say yes.
The Republican election official in Georgia didn't want to cook the results to give Trump the state, so he kept his cool on the phone with the president. The speaker of the Arizona legislature invoked his oath and said no.
The two Justice Department leaders said no to him. Justice Department officials told him in the Oval Office that they would quit and the new man would be left leading a graveyard if he appointed a compliant third.
The president was left with a bunch of outsiders who didn't know what to say to him. There is a person selling pillows.
Rudy Giuliani acknowledged at one point that there was nothing more to Trump's accusations of a rigged election than speculation.
He told the Arizona House speaker there were many theories. We don't have the proof.
The comment was made in the context of trying to get him to appoint fake electors, which he wouldn't do. The FBI ordered a mother to hide and her daughter to be afraid of being out in public because of Giuliani's promotion of the false belief that there was a conspiracy.
The law must be faithfully executed according to the Constitution. It's a crime to fail to do so.
With the summer hearings over, attention now shifts to the Justice Department, where Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed to hold wrongdoers "at any level" accountable, whether present at the Capitol or not.
The agency doesn't conduct its investigations in public, so he didn't make any public statements as to whether the department might prosecute Trump. He considers this one the most important and sweeping it has ever done.
The hearings identified a number of potential crimes for which the ex-president could be tried. A person is corruptly obstructing a proceeding. There was a conspiracy to cause a riot in the U.S. There is even a seditious conspiracy.
It's easy to casually talk about these crimes against a former president and someone who might run again.
As the hearings unfolded, Democrats were surprised to find themselves standing in admiration, if not awe, for the deeply conservative Rep. Liz Cheney, the poker-faced Republican on the committee who, despite her measured words, made clear her icy disdain for Trump.
She didn't like the argument that Trump was manipulated by outside people.
She said that the president is 76 years old. He is not like other children. He is responsible for his actions and choices.
Facing a Trump-backed opponent in August, her congressional seat in deep-red Wyoming in danger, she framed the stakes for fellow Republican lawmakers at the first hearing.
She could lose her race because Democrats and liberals are pouring money into her race.
The committee told a story from the testimony of sober and evocative witnesses from the first hearing to the eighth.
The panel introduced the nation to the harassed and haunted election workers from Georgia, a young White House aide who saw and knew a lot, little known Justice officials who proved to be a bulwark against Trump's scheming, and more.
That's right.
Lady Ruby.
Everyone in the Georgia community where she has lived her entire life knows her as Lady Ruby, even though her name is Ruby.
She doesn't wear that shirt anymore and never will. Her explanation for why not made for great television. It gave a human face to the pressure-and-smear campaigns used by the president.
For weeks, the country heard from lawyers at the highest levels of government and campaign aides who were present in the room with Trump for some of his more private moments.
Lady Ruby was not one of those.
Shaye Moss worked as an election worker in Fulton County, Georgia, where she helped the elderly and disabled with voter registration.
The women's lives took a turn when Giuliani publicized a fake video about a handover.
Shaye Moss said she got a call from her grandmother. She shrieked at the top of her lungs as strangers tried to force their way in to find her mother.
She didn't want anyone to know her name. I don't want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell at me. I don't buy groceries at the store. I haven't been in a long time.
She said she had gained 60 lbs. I don't know everything that I do. It has changed my life in a big way. Every way. All because of false statements. She said the final word.
Lady Ruby held her hand as her daughter spoke.
Lady Ruby said she wouldn't introduce herself by her name anymore. I'm concerned about who's listening. I'm nervous when I have to give my name. My name and reputation have been lost.
That's right.
There is a girl named Cassidy Hutchinson.
In 1973, the nation was riveted by a young White House lawyer, John Dean, a participant in the Watergate scandal who delivered hours of harmful testimony about the Nixon White House during congressional hearings.
Even if they aren't as important as Dean's were in the proceedings that helped force a sitting president out of office, the Jan. 6 hearings delivered another witness whose words will be remembered even if they aren't as important as Dean's were in the proceedings that helped force
She was Cassidy Hutchinson, the mid-20s White House staffer and aide to chief of staff MarkMeadows whose age and anonymity were belied by her testimony June 28. The president was unbound.
The president was prone to fits of rage, throwing a porcelain plate of food against a White House wall when he found out his attorney general had lied about voter fraud. She grabbed a towel to help with the cleaning.
She said that the president was aware on the morning of January 6 that loyalists in Washington were armed and that he wanted security to be loosened.
She was the one who heard from her boss that Trump didn't think the vice president deserved to be hanged.
She was told by the White House counsel that it was important to stay away from the Capitol even though Trump wanted to go.
Cipollone told her to keep in touch. If we make that movement happen, we're going to get charged with a lot of crimes.
She recalled in an interview that she was brought to tears when she found out she was going to work for the White House.
She was disgusted when Trump said that he didn't have the courage to reject the electors from the states that voted for him.
She said she was disgusted. It was not American. It wasn't an American thing. The Capitol building was being defaced.
Hutchinson, a leading witness in Trump's first impeachment because of her insights as the president's Russia adviser, took all sorts of risks to come clean. She used her position in the White House to listen to the senior people around her.
She understood that telling the truth is the most powerful thing you can do. She's going to be defined by that. It is an extremely brave act for her.
That's right.
Is Sunday Night MassaCRE possible?
The hearings showed how the Justice Department was brought to the brink by both outside and inside pressures.
The department's chief environmental enforcement official, Jeffrey Clark, was a little-known lawyer when he joined the department.
Clark had been quietly preparing to challenge the election results.
The acting attorney general was one of three senior Justice officials who testified. In detail, the men described how they presented a united front against Trump.
The president told the two congressmen that the election was corrupt and that they should leave it to him. The short answer was R.
It all culminated in an Oval Office meeting on the Sunday evening three days before the Capitol attack, when the question was whether or not Trump would elevate Clark. White House call logs cited by the committee referred to Clark as the acting attorney general by that afternoon.
Trump told the group that they wouldn't do anything to overturn the election.
He said he replied that he was correct.
The Justice officials in the room were told to resign if they were fired. Hundreds of federal prosecutors could leave the door.
The Saturday Night Massacre of 1973, when the attorney general and his deputy both resigned, was the greatest crisis of all time.
Trump decided to back down. He would retain his job. Trump wanted to know what happened to Clark now. Is he going to be fired?
The only one who had the authority was Trump. That wouldn't happen.
The person said, all right. All of us should return to work.
That's right.
186 minutes.
The last scheduled hearing, in prime time like the first, looked at 187 minutes from the time Trump left a rally stage to the time he appeared in a Rose Garden video to tell insurrectionists to go home.
He had watched the violence on Fox News and resisted the pleas of his horrified aides and family members to speak out. The committee said that he called senators to ask them to block Biden's election.
The hearing made it clear that the insurrectionists on their phones were listening to Trump as they attacked the complex.
The committee was told that agents from the Secret Service were at the Capitol trying to get Vice President-elect Mike Pence to safety. The mob came close to Pence.
There was a detailed case made by the panel that Trump was not doing his job. The military or Homeland Security were not summoned by him. Part of the script that was prepared for him was shown to him in the video.
He doesn't want to say the election is done. He hasn't changed his mind yet.
That's right.
The hearings produced more words for a classic novel of scheming and corruption than George Orwell's "1984" or Niccol Machiavelli's "The Prince."
Reagan spoke a lot about America being the shining city in his farewell address in 1989. He asked how the city stood.
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is currently in danger. Enough of the president's men and women said an emphatic, effing, no.
That's right.
The Associated Press writer contributed.
That's right.
The findings of the Jan. 6 committee can be found on the AP's website.
You can follow AP's coverage of the hearings at www.apnews.com.
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