The select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on a United States capital will be in order.

Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any point.

Pursuit the House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the chair announces the committee's approval to release the deposition material presented during tonight's hearing.

Thanks to everyone watching tonight for sharing part of your evening, to learn the facts and causes of events leading up to and including the violent attack on January 6,

2021. Our democracy, electoral system and country. I'm Benny Thompson, chairman of the January 6, 2021 committee. I was born, raised and still lived in Bolton, Mississippi, a town with a population of 521, which is midway between Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi and the Mississippi River.

I'm from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I'm reminded of that dark history as our hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021.

Over the next few weeks, hopefully you will get to know the other members, my colleagues up here and me. We represent a diversity of communities from all over the United States, rural areas and cities, east coast, west coast and the heartland.

All of us have one thing in common. We swore the same oath. That same oath that all members of Congress take up on taking office and afterwards every two years if they are reelected.

We swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The words of the current oath taken by all of us that nearly every United States government employee takes have their roots in the Civil War.

Throughout our history, the United States has fought against foreign enemies to preserve our democracy, electoral system and country.

When the United States capital was stormed and burned in 1814, foreign enemies were responsible.

After war in 1862, when American citizens had taken up arms against this country, Congress adopted a new oath to help make sure no person who had supported the rebellion could hold a position of public trust.

Therefore, Congress persons and United States federal government employees were required for the first time to swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

That oath was put to test on January 6, 2021.

The police officers who held the line that day on their oath, many came out of that day, blooded and broken. They still bad those wounds, visible and invisible. They did, they are duty.

They repelled the mob and ended the occupation of the capital. They defended the Constitution against domestic enemies so that Congress could return, uphold our own oath and count your votes to ensure the transfer of power just as we've done for hundreds of years.

But unlike in 1814, it was domestic enemies of the Constitution who stormed the capital and occupied the capital, who sought to thwart the will of the people to stop the transfer of power.

And so they did so at the encouragement of the President of the United States, the President of the United States trying to stop the transfer of power, a precedent that had stood for 220 years, even as our democracy had faced its most difficult tests.

Thinking back again to the Civil War in the summer of 1864, the President of the United States believed that we would be doomed to be it for reelection.

He believed his opponent, General George McClellan, would waive the White Fat when it came to preserving the Union. But even with that grim fate hanging in the balance, President Lincoln was ready to accept the will of the voters, come with me.

He made a quiet pledge. He wrote down the words this morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected.

Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect. It will be my duty. Lincoln sealed that memo and asked his cabinet secretaries to sign it, cite unseen.

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