Vietnamese American will lead questioning in Jan. 6 select committee probe of failed insurrection

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Rep. Stephanie Murphy, left, will lead the questioning of the House Jan. 6 Select Committee.

Congressmember Stephanie Murphy will be one of the key questioners in today's hearing by the House Jan. 6 select committee investigating the violent failed 2021 coup of US Congress.

The spotlight will be on Murphy, the only Vietnamese American woman in Congress and a member of the select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. Tuesday's hearing will fconnect the dots between people in Donald Trump’s circle and the rightwing radicals -- the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers that egged on the mob that forced their way into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“We will lay out the body of evidence that we have that talks about how the president’s tweet on the wee hours of Dec. 19 of, ‘Be there, be wild,’ was a siren call to these folks,” Murphy said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. 

The hearing could be one of the most consequential held by the panel, potentially answering the long unresolved question of whether Trump knew that far right extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers would storm the Capitol, and whether the president was in contact through intermediaries with the groups’ leaders, who have since been indicted for seditious conspiracy.

“We will lay out a body of evidence that we have that talks about how the President’s tweets on the wee hours of Dec. 19 of ‘Be there, Be wild’ was a siren call to these folks,” Murphy said, referencing a tweet where Trump alleged it was statistically impossible he lost the election.

“We’ll talk in detail about what that caused them to do, how that caused them to organize, as well as who else was amplifying that message,” referring to those members of Congress and Trump's administration.

Murphy will lead the questioning during the Tuesday televised hearing along with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD.

Without revealing any details of the closed-door testimony of form White House Counsel Pat Cipollone's meeting Friday with the select committee.

Cipollone testimony came after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson revealed alleged details about Cipollone's actions that day and the days leading to the attempted insurrection that temporarily inerrupted Congress' certification of the presidential election results during which lives were lost and scores of injuries suffered by law enforcement that tried to prevent the mobs from entering the building.

Murphy, a conservative Democrat who will not be running for re-election this year, said the select committee was able to get Cipollone “to confirm the concerns that he did have” about efforts to overturn President Biden's landslide victory.

“He made very clear that he took the side of many of the folks that you’ve already seen come before the committee, and was asserting that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that the election was not free and fair,” Murphy told MTP host Chuck Todd.

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