The Daily Fuckup

By June 20, 2021, the Jan. 6 attack had become more than a memory of a violent afternoon. In Congress, the work was still active and still accumulating: committees were issuing document requests, publishing new material, and holding hearings on the events before, during, and after the breach. The House’s investigative record was expanding, but the separate select committee that would later become the central vehicle for the broader inquiry had not yet been established. ([oversightdemocrats.house.gov](https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/house-committee-chairs-send-letters-seeking-documents-about-january-6-attack-on))

That matters for the timeline. On June 15, the House Administration Committee held a hearing titled “Oversight of the January 6th Attack: United States Capitol Police Containment Emergency Response Team and First Responders Unit.” The same day, the Oversight Committee said newly obtained documents showed Trump repeatedly pressed the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election results in the weeks before the attack. Those were concrete committee actions, but they were still pieces of an inquiry in progress, not the end of it. ([docs.house.gov](https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=112754))

The public record that existed on June 20 was enough to keep the pressure on. House committees had already sent letters seeking records from the White House, federal agencies, law enforcement, and congressional security offices about the attack and the period around it. Congress also had a pending resolution to create a select committee, but that resolution did not clear the House until June 30, 2021. So as of June 20, the investigation was widening through standing committees and document demands, while the larger select-committee phase was still days away. ([oversightdemocrats.house.gov](https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/house-committee-chairs-send-letters-seeking-documents-about-january-6-attack-on))

For Trump, that meant the aftermath was still being written in official records. The questions in front of lawmakers were straightforward: what pressure was applied before Jan. 6, what was known during the attack, and what should have happened afterward. By June 20, there was no final congressional verdict on his role. There was, however, a paper trail, a hearing record, and a timeline that kept pointing back to him. ([oversightdemocrats.house.gov](https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/house-committee-chairs-send-letters-seeking-documents-about-january-6-attack-on))