The House select Jan. 6 committee adjourned its eighth public hearing of the summer. This will conclude the Washington Examiner’s live blog coverage for the evening.

Three days after the Capitol riot, top lieutenants in former President Donald Trump’s campaign texted each other and expressed outrage over the president’s handling of U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s death.

“Also s****y not to have even acknowledged the death of the Capitol Police officer,” campaign official Tim Murtaugh texted.

“That is enraging to me,” campaign official Matthew Wolking replied. “Everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie.”

“You know what that is, of course. If he acknowledged the dead cop, he’d be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won’t do that, because they’re his people. And he would also be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault. No way,” Murtaugh said.

Sicknick, a 42-year-old who joined the agency in 2008, died on Jan. 7, one day after he responded to rioters breaking into the Capitol as lawmakers counted electoral votes to affirm Joe Biden‘s victory over former President Donald Trump.

Sicknick’s death, which some originally attributed to the Capitol riot, was the result of natural causes stemming from a stroke, according to the chief medical examiner for Washington, D.C.

Former President Donald Trump ratcheted up his criticism of former Vice President Mike Pence, claiming his onetime No. 2 failed to do his duty as the Jan. 6 committee held its final summer hearing.

“Mike Pence told me, and everyone else, there was nothing he could do about the Electoral Vote Count— it was etched in stone. But if so, how come the Democrats and RINOs are working so hard to make sure there is nothing a VP can do,” he said in a post shared to his social media app, Truth Social, on Thursday.

Trump added that all he wanted to do was have Pence send the slates back to the states.

He then gave a list of what he believes are bad events that would not have occurred under a second Trump term, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and high gas prices.

“What a difference it would have made if the State Legislatures had another crack at looking at all of the Fraud, Abuse, and Irregularities that have been found. Our country would have been a different place!” Trump concluded.

As legal challenges against the 2020 election results in several states were swept aside, Trump and his allies pushed a plan to enlist members of Congress and put pressure on Pence to stall the Jan. 6 certification and send electoral votes back to several battleground states where GOP-led legislatures could try to overturn the results over concerns about fraud and irregularities. Pence resisted the pressure and even sent a letter to Congress saying that he did not have the power to reject Electoral College votes.

Lawmakers, along with Pence, reconvened that night and certified President Joe Biden’s victory after the Capitol riot.

As the hearing came to a close, Trump shared another post, saying: “The Unselects are embarrassed by their ‘performance’ tonight!”

There was at least one instance in which former President Donald Trump acknowledged responsibility for the Capitol riot, according to the Jan. 6 committee.

It came in a phone call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who recalled the exchange in a clip played by the committee.

“He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened,” McCarthy explained in the audio clip. “And he needs to acknowledge that.”

In the audio, McCarthy said he believed Trump should resign from office.

“Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” McCarthy explained. “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation [Trump] should resign. I mean, that would be my take, but I don’t think he would take it.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) used her closing remarks to throw shade at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for withdrawing nominees from the Jan. 6 committee.

“For those of you who seem to think the evidence would be different if Republican leader McCarthy had not withdrawn his nominees from this committee, let me ask you this: Do you really think Bill Barr is such a delicate flower that he would wilt under cross-examination?” she said.

McCarthy withdrew his nominees to the committee last summer after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rejected some of his nominees, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Former President Donald Trump has since blasted McCarthy for the move, arguing it prevented him from having defenders on the committee.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) unloaded on former President Donald Trump for engaging in a “dereliction” of duty on Jan. 6.

“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 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation,” Kinzinger declared in his impassioned closing remarks.

“It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed in died in service of our democracy,” he added.

Kinzinger recalled testimony the committee received about how Trump’s tweets on Jan. 6 inflamed the rioters who stormed the Capitol and how he refused to take “urgent advice” from his close advisers to call off the attack.

The House Jan. 6 committee played what members billed another set of never-before-seen outtakes from a speech former President Donald Trump filmed the day after the Capitol riot.

During his outtakes of the address to the nation, Trump took issue with certain components of his speech, expressing reluctance to concede that he lost the election in any way — even being reluctant to condemn the rioters.

“I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday and to those who broke the law. You will pay. You do not represent our movement. You do not represent our country, and if you broke the law — can’t say that,” Trump said, cutting off the flow of his speech.

“But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results. I don’t want to say the election is over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the elections is over, OK?” Trump later added during an exchange with staffers.

One showed Trump quibble over a word. At other times, Trump got visibly angry, even slamming the podium.

Amid the chaos that followed the 2020 election, national security officials fears that foreign rivals of the United States would test the country’s resolve, Matthew Pottinger testified.

“When you have a presidential transition, even under the best circumstances, it’s a time of vulnerability,” he explained. “I was certainly concerned that some of our adversaries would be tempted to probe or test U.S. resolve. As an example, in late December, the Iranian government attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — they did that using some of their terrorist proxies.”

Coinciding with efforts to challenge U.S. resolve, Pottinger feared foreign adversaries would use the Capitol riot to help feed a perception that the U.S. system of democracy was a failure.

“I think [it] emboldened our enemies by helping give them ammunition to feed a narrative that our system of government doesn’t work, that the United States is in decline,” he said. “China, the Putin regime in Russia, Iran — they’re fond of pushing those kinds of narratives, and by the way, they’re wrong.”

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not hear from former President Donald Trump on the day of the Capitol riot, but he did hear from former chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to the committee.

Meadows stressed the need to dispel the narrative that then-Vice President Mike Pence was calling the shots in the aftermath of the riot.

“He said we have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative that, you know, that the president is still in charge and that things are steady or stable on WhatsApp,” Milley recalled in a clip of his testimony played by the committee.

“I immediately interpreted that as politics, politics, politics — red flag for me personally, no action, but I remember just thinking … I don’t do political narratives,” he added.

During the hearing, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) could be seen crying. She was in the Capitol building when it had been breached and stormed by violent protesters.

It appears that she began crying around the time the committee played a clip of evacuations at the Capitol.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The Jan 6 committee aired a video showing Senate leaders Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in a secure location on the phone with Defense Secretary Chris Miller.

Schumer relayed that some U.S. Capitol Police officers believed it could take days to clear the building.

Miller disagreed, estimating instead that it could take anywhere from four to five hours.

McConnell was heard saying the Capitol needed to be cleared “so we can get back in session and finish the people’s business.”

After a flurry of pleas from confidants, former President Donald Trump eventually relented and agreed to film a message calling off the rioters from the Capitol.

Staffers had given him a script, but the president opted to make his remarks largely off the cuff, Nicholas Luna, former assistant to the president, testified.

One key line that had been stricken from his remarks said, “I’m asking you to leave the capital region now and go home in a peaceful way,” according to the committee.

In a clip of his outtakes, Trump could be seen musing about what to say.

“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election,” he said before trailing off.

Trump ultimately sought to peddle his claims that the election had been stolen from him in the response.

“You have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us,” he pleaded in another outtake.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone was seemingly stunned into silence when pressed about whether former President Donald Trump wanted rioters to leave the Capitol on Jan. 6, drawing laughter from the audience.

Investigators pressed Cipollone on who in the White House wanted the rioters to leave the Capitol.

“On the staff?” he asked in response. “I can’t think of anybody. You know, on that day, who didn’t want people to get out of the Capitol, particularly once the violence started.”

“What about the president?” Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) asked in response.

“She said the staff,” he replied.

“No, I said in the White House,” she shot back.

After a brief exchange of apologies for the miscommunication, Cipollone answered the question.

“Obviously, I think,” he said, before looking at his lawyers.

He then paused.

“Yeah,” he says in the clip.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) explained that Cipollone was concerned about executive privilege.

“Although Pat Cipollone has been careful about executive privilege. There really is no ambiguity about what he said. Almost everybody wanted President Trump to instruct the mob to disperse,” Kinzinger said. “President Trump refused to understand how inadequate the president’s tweets were.”

In a text message exchange with former chief of staff Mark Meadows, Donald Trump Jr. stressed that his father needed to “condemn this s*** ASAP.”

Meadows replied that he was pushing it hard. Trump Jr. then warned it could tarnish his father’s legacy. At one point, Trump Jr. said Meadows “needs to go to the mattresses on this issue,” the Jan. 6 committee detailed.

“Just a reference for going all in,” Trump Jr. told investigators when pressed on what that meant. “It’s a Godfather reference.”

The clip of Trump Jr. drew laughter from the audience, a Washington Examiner reporter observed.

The committee also displayed other text message exchanges from allies of former President Donald Trump, such as Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, in which they encouraged Meadows to push the president to condemn the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

The text exchanges have previously been reported.

The House select Jan. 6 committee resumed its hearing after a brief recess.

The House Jan. 6 committee broke for a quick recess. Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) announced it would last for 10 minutes.

The Jan. 6 committee aired surveillance video showing lawmakers, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), running through the Capitol complex as rioters swarmed the area.

A Washington Examiner reporter observed laughing in the room when the video was shown.

Hawley, who supported efforts to contest President Joe Biden’s victory, made headlines that day when he was seen raising a fist to the people gathered outside the Capitol before the riot.

“I waved to them, gave them the thumbs-up, pumped my fist to them, and thanked them for being there, and they had every right to do that,” the senator later told the Washington Post.

While rioters stormed the Capitol and came in close proximity to former Vice President Mike Pence, former President Donald Trump fired off a critical tweet against his No. 2.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution,” Trump tweeted.

Witnesses Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews blasted the tweet during their testimony, contending that it made the situation worse.

“They truly latch on to every word and every tweet that he says, and so I think that in that moment for him to tweet out the message about Mike Pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the fire and making it much worse,” Matthews said.

As rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, the Secret Service detail assigned to Vice President Mike Pence pondered over their radio communication systems about how they could say goodbye to their family members, an unnamed White House security official recalled.

“There was a lot of yelling,” the official said, “a lot of very personal calls over the radio. … I don’t like talking about it, but they were called to say goodbye to family members, so on, so forth.”

The Jan. 6 committee played a clip of the unnamed security official’s remarks.

“For whatever the reason was on the ground, the VP detail thought that this was about to get very ugly,” the official said.

The committee then played footage of rioters angrily chanting about Pence.

It would have taken former President Donald Trump less than 60 seconds to travel from the Oval Office to the press briefing room, Sarah Matthews testified.

Despite how easy it would have been for Trump to make a quick public rebuke of the Capitol riot, some of his staffers fretted about the prospects of Trump going off script.

“Gen. Keith Kellogg told us that some staff were concerned that a live appearance by the president at the microphones at that moment could actually make matters worse,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) recalled.

“He told us he recommended against doing a press conference because during his four years in the Trump administration, ‘there wasn’t a single clean press conference we had had,” Kinzinger added. “President Trump’s advisers [knew his] state of mind at that moment, and they were worried about what he would say in unscripted comments.”

Former President Donald Trump was not eager to take action in response to the Capitol riot, an unnamed witness told the House Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) recalled.

The witness had overheard a conversation between White House counsel Pat Cipollone and senior adviser Eric Herschmann in which Cipollone said the president did not want to take action in response to the violence.

“Herschmann turned to Mr. Cipollone and said, ‘The president didn’t want to do anything,'” Luria recalled.

She noted that the committee had combed through interviews and documents and found that Trump had not called key law enforcement officials when the riot unfolded.

“We have confirmed and [conducted] numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President Pence … and D.C. government officials, none of them, not one heard from President Trump that day. He did not call to issue orders, did not call to offer assistance,” she said.

Instead, Trump was “calling senators to encourage them to delay or object to the certification,” she added.

Ivanka Trump was among those pushing to have her father tell the rioters to leave the Capitol, according to multiple witnesses, including White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

During the duration of the riot, former President Donald Trump refused to be photographed, according to the Jan. 6 committee.

The chief White House photographer wanted to document what Trump was doing, but Trump refused, simply saying, “No photographs,” according to Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA).

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) played a clip of an interview with retired Washington, D.C., police Sgt. Mark Robinson to corroborate accounts of how former President Donald Trump was allegedly irate after his speech at the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6.

“We have evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry exchange in the presidential SUV, including testimony we will disclose today from two witnesses who confirmed that a confrontation occurred. The first witness is a former White House employee with national security responsibilities,” Luria said.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson had testified that Trump was furious for not being permitted to head toward the Capitol and that he attempted to commandeer the wheel of the Secret Service vehicle he was in and lunged toward an agent’s throat. Robinson confirmed that Trump was angry about not being allowed to go to the Capitol.

“So at the end of the speech, we do know that while inside the limo, the president was still adamant about going to the Capitol. That’s been relayed to me,” Robinson said. “I would just estimate maybe 45 to 45 minutes to an hour waiting for Secret Service to make that decision.”

Robinson noted that he had ridden with the president “probably over 100 times.” Trump had been informed that he could not travel to the Capitol following his speech at the Ellipse, according to Robinson.

The committee played video of an interview of an anonymous White House security official talking about being “alarmed” at former President Donald Trump’s insistence that he wanted to “lead tens of thousands of people to the Capitol.”

The House Jan. 6 committee swore in its witnesses for the Thursday hearing. This included Matthew Pottinger, the former national security adviser for the Trump administration, and Sarah Matthews, who served as a deputy press secretary.

Both Pottinger and Mathews gave introductory remarks explaining how they joined the Trump White House. Both witnesses expressed pride in some of the work in the Trump administration.

“I’m also very proud of President Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments — we were able to finally compete with China, we were also able to broker peace agreements between Israel and three Arab states. Those are some examples of the types of policies that I think made our country safer,” Pottinger said.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) played a clip of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticizing former President Donald Trump for doing “nothing” during the Capitol riot. Kinzinger compared his remarks to those of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on the night of the riot.

“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,” Kinzinger declared.

The mob of rioters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 was the only thing “achieving President Trump’s goal,” Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) declared in her opening remarks.

“Only one thing was achieving President Trump’s goal: The angry armed mob President Trump sent to the Capitol broke through security, invaded the Capitol, and forced the vote counting to stop,” she recounted.

As the violence unfolded, Secret Service was fearful about the safety of Vice President Mike Pence, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was holed up in the Capitol “scared,” Cheney contended.

“As you will see today, Donald Trump’s own White House counsel, his own White House staff, members of his own family all implored him to immediately intervene to condemn the violence and instruct his supporters to stand down,” Cheney added. “For hours, Donald Trump chose not to answer the pleas from Congress, from his own party, and from all across our nation to do what his oath required.”

The House Jan. 6 committee is not finished with its slew of public hearings. More hearings will come in September, a top member announced on Thursday. An exact number is not immediately clear.

Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) noted that the committee has come across additional information about the machinations of former President Donald Trump and others in the events surrounding the Capitol riot. She stressed that the committee would comb through much of that new evidence during August.

“We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather. So our committee will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings this September,” she said.

The House Jan. 6 committee gaveled in its eighth public hearing of the summer with a video of introductory remarks from Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who contracted COVID-19 earlier in the week and was not able to attend the hearing Thursday in person.

The chairman, delivering remarks remotely, said the hearing will focus on the events transpiring in the White House and Capitol as rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. He panned former President Donald Trump’s inaction during that time period.

“This man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved,” he said. “And more tellingly, Donald Trump ignored and disregarded the desperate pleas of his own family, including Ivanka and Don Jr., even though he was the only person in the world who could call off the mob.”

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) is set to lead Thursday’s Jan. 6 prime-time hearing, along with Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA).

Kinzinger is one of only two Republicans on the committee and is a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump. Luria, speaking for both of them, tied their military service to the decision to have them lead Thursday’s hearings.

“Mr. Kinzinger and I, who are both veterans leading this committee, I think, as veterans of the military, understand what action looks like in a time of crisis,” Luria said on CNN.

Kinzinger announced last year that he will not be seeking reelection.

The hearing Thursday evening is expected to focus on Trump’s apparent inaction in the hours before he released a statement urging the rioters to go home.

Officials with the Secret Service have retained legal counsel as investigators hone in on deleted text messages sought by the House Jan. 6 committee to provide more insight into the days leading up to the Capitol riot, according to a member of the panel.

It’s not entirely clear when the Secret Service members retained the legal representation or why that decision was made, but Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said she believes it is a “new” development that occurred in recent days after revelations that communications around the time of the Capitol riot were erased despite requests from Congress and federal investigators.

SECRET SERVICE PROVIDED JUST ONE TEXT MESSAGE AFTER REQUEST FOR MONTH’S WORTH

These messages were requested by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general as part of an evaluation of the events of Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden‘s presidential victory.

“They have retained private counsel, which is unusual, but they have a right to do that,” Lofgren told MSNBC on Thursday.

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Melania Trump says she was unaware of the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and was focused on “fulfilling” her duties as first lady on the day of the Capitol riot.

Trump opened up on the same day the Jan. 6 committee is set to hold its final planned summer hearing Thursday evening. The former first last said she “would have immediately denounced the violence” if she had been fully informed of the Capitol riot, according to Fox News. Her chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, was not in the White House the day of the Capitol riot, and it was her role to provide “detailed briefings surrounding our Nation’s important issues,” Trump added.

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The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog has started a criminal investigation into the deleted Secret Service text messages related to the days on and around the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021

The missing text messages, which the Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot has asked for, could provide new information regarding what happened behind the scenes on or before the day of the riot. The office of the DHS inspector general ordered the Secret Service to stop any internal investigations into the deleted text messages, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

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Fox News won’t carry the eighth Jan. 6 hearing that is set to air in prime time on Thursday, instead reserving its program schedule for its regular talk shows.

Fox will continue with its regular lineup of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham while its sister network, Fox Business, will air the hearing in real-time.

The network also did not carry the panel’s first prime-time hearing that was held last month. However, Fox has aired the committee’s other hearings that have taken place during the day when fewer viewers are tuning in.

A former Trump aide blasted the Jan. 6 committee and several of its witnesses as “anti-white” and a “Bolshevik” campaign after meeting with panel lawmakers for an interview this week.

In a 27-minute audio livestream after he offered testimony before the panel, during which he was likely asked about his ties to a key White House meeting in which allies of former President Donald Trump tried to convince him to declare martial law and seize voting machines, Garrett Ziegler accused the panel of being discriminatory.

“They’re Bolsheviks,” Ziegler said. “So, they probably do hate the American founders and most white people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-white campaign. If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?”

A report published Wednesday evening raises new questions about the watchdog agency that alerted Congress to vanishing Secret Service text messages around the time of the Capitol riot.

Sources told the Washington Post that the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, knew in February that the cellphone texts from the Secret Service had been erased but did not alert Congress for months. DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari informed two House committees just last week that many messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot, had been erased “as part of a device-replacement program.”

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The House Jan. 6 committee will show outtakes on Thursday from a video message then-President Donald Trump posted on Twitter the day after the riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to panel members.

The outtakes were recorded as part of the production for the Jan. 7, 2021, speech in which Trump conceded that a new administration would take power on Inauguration Day. The outtakes reportedly show Trump having difficulty with the taping of his concession speech, refusing to say the election results had been settled and attempting to refer to the rioters as “patriots.”

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The panel’s hearing on Thursday — which is expected to be the “last one at this point,” according to committee Chairman Bennie Thompson — will examine the 187 minutes between when the former president ended his “Stop the Steal” rally and when he posted a video telling the rioters at the Capitol to “go home.”

Lawmakers will offer a minute-by-minute account of what was going on inside the White House while rioters breached the Capitol, with two former Trump aides offering testimony of what they encountered during that time frame.

“The story we’re going to tell tomorrow is that in that time, President Trump refused to act to defend that Capitol as a violent mob stormed the Capitol with the aim of stopping the counting of the electoral votes and blocking the transfer of power,” a committee aide told reporters on Wednesday.

The panel will also reveal a deleted tweet that Trump posted at 6:01 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, in which he suggested that widespread election fraud was responsible for the Capitol attack.

AP

The Jan. 6 committee’s eighth public hearing, which will air during prime time on Thursday, is set to feature two former White House aides, including former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews.

Matthews, the deputy press secretary during the Trump administration, resigned just hours after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, later calling it “one of the darkest days in American history.”

The former press aide agreed to testify after being subpoenaed by the committee in early July, days after ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided explosive testimony that elicited criticism from several on the Right who sought to dismiss it as unreliable.

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Andrew Harnik/AP

The Jan. 6 committee’s eighth public hearing, which will air during prime time on Thursday, is set to feature testimony from two former White House aides, including former Trump White House official Matthew Pottinger.

Pottinger, the former national security adviser for the Trump administration, resigned just hours after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, later recalling it as “the moment where I felt that it was appropriate for me to go.” His decision was largely due to a tweet from former President Donald Trump on the day of the attack that blasted former Vice President Mike Pence for not having “the courage” to overturn the election results.

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(John Minchillo/AP)

A Democratic super PAC is set to air an ad during Thursday’s prime-time hearing targeting four Republican candidates who downplayed the Jan. 6 riot on the Capitol in the months following the attack.

American Bridge will air an ad targeting four GOP candidates running for statewide offices in key swing states, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina. The 30-second ad features images from the Jan. 6 riot with audio of some Republicans talking about the attack or rejecting the results of the 2020 election.

“At least 120 election deniers are on the ballot this year,” the ad reads. “This November take our democracy back.”

The ad on Thursday will specifically target Doug Mastriano, GOP candidate for governor in Pennsylvania; Kari Lake, GOP candidate for governor in Arizona; GOP candidate for governor Ryan Kelley; and Tedd, GOP candidate for Senate in North Carolina.

The 30-second hit will air during the committee’s eighth hearing that will examine the 187 minutes between when former President Donald Trump ended his “Stop the Steal” rally and when he posted a video telling the rioters at the Capitol to “go home.”