US Capitol riot hearing: Trump slammed for ‘selfish desire’

After losing the 2020 election, Donald Trump ignored close allies who told him that his claims of widespread election fraud were untrue, and when the followers who believed his false accusations stormed the US Capitol, he sat back and watched. That was the narrative the US House of Representatives' select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack laid out in eight hearings over six weeks, which wrapped up with a study of the former president's actions during the 187-minute assault on Congress by thousands of his supporters. The hearings were intended to lay out a case that the Republican Trump violated the law as he tried, for the first time in US history, to stop the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. It is not yet clear if the Justice Department will bring charges against Trump, but the hearings appear to have somewhat hurt his standing with Republican voters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Thursday found that 32 percent of Republicans say Trump should not run for president in 2024 -- a possibility he continues to flirt with publicly -- up from 26 percent who said that at the start of the hearings.