That day, it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond any, any law enforcement officer has ever trained for.

Look at all this direct evidence they have from direct witnesses. It's compelling.

I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff which I told the president was bullshit.

What you're proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.

Quote, maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence, quote, deserves it.

There are two different audiences for the committee's work. And maybe audience number one is sitting at the dress of tomorrow.

Hi and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the law, the courts, the rule of law, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

I'm Dialithmic. I cover the Justice Beat for Slate. And we're about a third of the way through the month of June. That's typically the Supreme Court reporters super bowl months, but we're experiencing just tremendous amounts of hurry up and wait.

The court still has a massive backlog in decisions, almost 30 cases that we're waiting on, many of which will be controversial and transformational and earth shattering.

And yet this week it managed to squeeze out just a handful of decisions. It added a decision day on Wednesday in order to announce one single opinion.

It's enough to make a Supreme Court reporter want to spend the whole month in prayer at the 50 yard line.

NPR's Nina Tottenberg this week also reported on a court in complete internal disarray with mistrust and anger and recriminations and ill will and inability to meet deadlines happening inside the building.

Also on Wednesday, a man was arrested with a firearm trying to harm Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family. None of this is normal. None of this is okay.

If you're on in the show, Slate Plus members are going to get to listen in to Mark Joseph Stern break down some of the news out of the Supreme Court, including a stunning decision this week, allowing border agents almost limitless protection from lawsuits for their unconstitutionally bad behavior.

That conversation with Mark can only be accessed by Slate Plus members. If you'd like to join us and have access to bonus segments from lots of your favorite Slate shows, always add free and never to hit a paywall for any of Slate's articles.

Go to Slate.com slash amicusplus and sign up that Slate.com slash amicusplus and thank you so much to our Slate Plus members for supporting the work that we do here on the show and in the magazine.

But the big legal news this week comes not from the Supreme Court, but from Congress where the first January 6 hearing opened on Thursday evening in prime time, hearings are going to follow through the summer and the committee will file a final report.

In September, every major news network with the exception of Fox News carried these live hearings, as I said in prime time, Fox shows skipped having commercials presumably so their viewers would not amble over to peek at the action on other channels.

The two hour session on Thursday night was very tightly scripted. It was very tightly choreographed led by committee leaders Benny Thompson and Liz Cheney.

And the message that they conveyed was pretty simple.

Those who invaded our capital and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president.

President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.

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