Image source, Getty Images

The Trump family, including the former president, have so far remained silent on social media during the first 6 January committee hearing.

Earlier on Thursday, the former president said in a statement that the committee is composed of "political thugs" who did "not spend one minute studying the reason that people went to Washington DC in massive numbers".

He was referencing the false claim that the 2020 election result was rigged.

Testimony from the former president's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner were played during the remarks by Republican Liz Cheney.

Tara McKelvey
BBC News, Washington

Whitney Williams says she recalls vividly the day of the siege and how she felt at the time. She says she was shocked that people from the US had tried - in her view - to circumvent the electoral process.

She was about a mile away from the Capitol that day, and remembers how she and her friends spent the evening “drinking, and...crying”.

The former graphic artist says she still finds it hard. “This is very painful,” she says, touching her heart.

Today, she is sipping sangria wine with her dog, Luna, at an outdoor party in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood where the hearing has been playing on a big screen set up in the grass.

The opening remarks by the committee chair, Rep Bennie Thompson, resonate for her, she says, looking up at the screen.

“The US history he has brought forward in his arguments are very relevant,” she says.

Then she adds: “We’re all crossing our fingers that this hearing makes it so that it doesn’t ever happen again”.

Image source, Getty Images

Cheney has wrapped up her remarks with an admonition to her Republican colleagues, saying they are "defending the indefensible" by continuing to support Trump's election fraud claims.

Earlier, in laying out the timeline for the committee's hearings going forward, Cheney disclosed that it would be shown that Trump had a "sophisticated" seven-part plan to remain in office, despite being told that he had lost the election.

Her comments were accompanied by a number of images of rioters inside the capital Rotunda, as well as testimony from Trump-era officials.

Image source, Getty Images

In her remarks, Cheney referenced the Proud Boys several times.

Founded in 2016 by Canadian-British activist Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys is a far-right, anti-immigrant, all-male group with a history of street violence against its left-wing opponents.

To be called a Proud Boy, a person must declare that he is "a Western chauvinist who refuses to apologise for creating the modern world".

The FBI recently charged the leader of the Proud Boys with sedition over the group's role in the riot.

According to the filing, Enrique Tarrio and other Proud Boys used encrypted communications to plan the attack.

They are said to have encouraged members to attend the rally on 6 January 2021, and crowd-funded online to buy protective gear and cover travel expenses to Washington DC.

Read more:

Proud Boys leader faces sedition charge over US Capitol riot

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

Democrats in Congress see tonight’s hearing as a pivotal moment for American democracy.

A chance not only to set a formal record, for history, of what happened on 6 January, 2021, but also to pave the way for law reforms that to prevent democratic institutions from future subversion.

Most Republicans, on the other hand, view these latest hearings as part of a long series of efforts by their opponents to undermine Trump’s – and, by extension, his party's – political power.

It’s partisan theatre, they say, and nothing more.

As we watch tonight's hearing, the BBC's panel of five Americans from across the political spectrum will share their take on what's said.

Here is what they expect to learn:

"I feel like [information] hasn't come out in a coherent way. Little bits come out here and there, and the way it is getting out is kind of fragmented for me. I would like to hear a full timeline of what happened, who was involved, how they found out this information."

"I don't expect all that much. It's probably going to be pointedly political, and that's going to be the purpose of it. Everybody has their pre-drawn conclusions."

"I know that there's going to be a lot of new information that will be exposed. Information that I hope will expose the true intentions of what this event was supposed to be. I hope that, from this hearing, we can expose the truth, define it and move forward [together as a country]."

"I think they've done a tremendous job trying to dig in, make people come and testify, and try to get as much information as they possibly can. To get to the bottom, I want to know the people who are involved, talk to the people who were wrong. You want to talk to people who were in charge. And I think that's what they're trying to do."

"I have every expectation it's going to be a political circus. My hope is they hurry up and get through it, and publish their findings. I think a lot of people are not going to give any value to those findings, and it's just going to move on."

Image source, Getty Images

Unlike rivals ABC, NBC and CBS, the conservative network Fox News is not showing the hearings live tonight.

However, ahead of the hearings, Republicans appeared on the network to dismiss the panel's work.

Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator, argued that the hearing "is about trying to blame President Trump in a fashion to change the outcome of midterms” - a reference to elections taking place in November that will determine control of Congress.

Fox News host Jesse Waters framed it as an attempt to thwart another presidential run from Trump.

“Isn’t that what this is about? Making sure Trump cannot be president in 2024?” he asked.

Newsmax, a news outlet sympathetic to Trump, had headlines declaring the event a "political smokescreen" and a "red herring".

Breitbart, the site that Trump strategist Steve Bannon left to join his campaign, called the event a "primetime circus".

Image source, Handout

Amid the remarks from Cheney and earlier, Thompson, footage of Donald Trump's Attorney General William Barr and others has been played - including Ivanka Trump, the former president's daughter.

Video is expected to be part of the testimony presented over the course of tonight's 90-minute hearing and subsequent ones.

We will probably see more of what members of the Trump administration and their allies said about January 6 and the election defeat, as well as footage from the day.

Image source, Getty Images

Two Republicans sit on the House committee, and one of them, Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, has begun speaking, condemning Donald Trump for "justifying" the attack.

Cheney has laid out some of what to expect from tonight's hearing.

"President Trump refused for hours to do what his staff, his family and many of his advisers urged him to do," she said.

The US public will see never-before-seen footage of the riot and the events leading up to it, she said.

"Elements" of the plan for the riot will be revealed, including some from the far-right group the Proud Boys.

"The attack on our Capitol was not a spontaneous riot," she said.

We have been warned by the committee to expect to hear several instances of profane language in tonight's hearing.

At least 10 curse words will be uttered in videos played in the committee chamber, our colleagues at CBS News were told.

The expletives will air live on several networks, including BBC News.

Image source, Getty Images

Thompson called the 6 January riot an "attempted coup" in which "violence was no accident".

He went on to dismiss claims that the committee's work is politically motivated and that Trump's allies "don't want January 6 investigated at all".

"We can't sweep what happened under the rug," he said. "The American people deserve answers".

"I come before you this evening not as a Democrat, but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution," he said.

"The Constitution doesn’t protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us."

Image source, Getty Images

The 6 January committee is led by Congressman Bennie Thompson, a veteran of the House of Representatives.

Thompson, 74, a Democrat, has served in the House since 1993.

As the representative of the only majority-black district in Mississippi, he has often been the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation.

His national security experience has seen Thompson rise to the chairmanship of the House Committee on Homeland Security twice.

After the riot on 6 January, 2021, Thompson joined a lawsuit accusing former President Donald Trump of inciting the violence - but he left the suit after his appointment to the House committee investigating the attack.

He has said his leadership post could be the “signature work” of his time in Congress.

Image source, Getty Images

Bennie Thompson has begun his remarks outlining the work of the committee as part of elected duties of US lawmakers to uphold their oath to protect the constitution against "all enemies foreign and domestic".

Using previous historical examples from the War of 1812 and the US Civil War, Thompson said that the oath was again put to the test on 6 January, 2021.

"Police officers who held the line that day honoured their oath," he said. "They did their duty."

As the committee hearing begins with Thompson's remarks, here's a reminder of what happened more than a year ago on 6 January, 2021.

Members of Congress were due to meet to confirm the victory of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

As the event was to take place, supporters of former President Trump broke into the Capitol in an attempt to thwart the process.

The Capitol riot unfolded over the course of several hours and was preceded by a speech from Trump and tweets questioning the validity of the election.

Image source, C-Span

At 08:17 local time (13:17 GMT), Trump tweets allegations of voter fraud, and called on his vice-president, Mike Pence, to block the certification of Biden's election victory.

At noon local time, Trump gives a speech calling for followers to protest "peacefully and patriotically" on Capitol Hill.

By 12:53, unruly protesters are beginning to storm police barricades as Trump's speech continues.

Around 13:00, police officers on Capitol Hill begin calling for backup, reporting attacks by the crowd.

At 13:45 a riot is declared after protesters storm up the closed steps of the capitol.

Image source, Getty Images

At 14:41, a US military veteran is shot by police while trying to break into the Senate chambers. Vice-President Pence had been evacuated, but many other members of Congress are still in the building.

At 15:13, Trump tweets that the crowd should "remain peaceful".

At 18:00, fifteen minutes after police confirm the rioter who is shot has died, Trump tweets and tells rioters to "go home". He later compliments them as "great patriots".

Read more here:

Capitol riots timeline: What happened on 6 January 2021?

The 6 January committee has begun with opening remarks from chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi.

Tonight's hearings are due to begin at 20:00 local time (01:00 BST). BBC News will be carrying tonight's hearing live.

If you'd like to follow our coverage, scroll up and click the red play button.

Image source, Getty Images

The rhetoric and ideology that led to the 6 January riot at the US Capitol remains a threat to US democracy, Democratic committee chairman Bennie Thompson is expected to say in his opening remarks.

According to an excerpt of his planned remarks sent to media ahead of the hearing, Thompson will argue that the committee's work is needed because “we can’t sweep what happened under the rug” and “the American people deserve answers”.

The committee, he will add, “must do more than just look backwards”.

“Our democracy remains in danger,” he is expected to say. “The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over”.

Image source, Getty Images

The panel, which is chaired by congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans.

The Democrats are Zoe Lofgren (California), Elaine Luria (Virginia), Adam Schiff (California), Pete Aguilar (California), Stephanie Murphy (Florida) and Jamie Raskin (Maryland).

The two Republicans, Liz Cheney (Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (Illinois), are staunchly anti-Trump conservatives.

They were appointed by Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi after she rejected three congressmen suggested by Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy.

Image source, Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump has continued to insist that the 2020 election was “rigged”.

In a statement issued Thursday morning, he insisted that the committee of “political thugs” should have been investigating alleged voter fraud, not the Capitol attack.

The panel did not “spend one minute studying the reason that people went to Washington DC in massive numbers,” he said, adding that the crowd in Washington DC on 6 January, 2021 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country to make America great again”.

“It was about an election that was rigged and stolen, and a country that was about to go to hell,” he said.

“Look at our country now”.

A 'must see TV' night?published at 00:24 British Summer Time 10 June 2022

00:24 BST 10 June 2022

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

The first public hearing of the 6 January committee is being presented on a Thursday evening for a very obvious reason – to command the largest audience possible.

Thursday nights have a traditionally been the prime window for American television viewership, when networks offer their flagship programming.

The committee members hope their offering will become“must-see TV” as well.There’s more to compelling viewing than a time slot, however. The goal for the committee will be to capture America’s attention – and hold it.

Given that the events being investigated took place more than a year ago, that could prove a difficult challenge.There are plenty of historical benchmarks that can measure success or failure.

A number of recent high-profile hearings generated massive audiences. Thirteen million people tuned in to the first day of Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial; Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh addressing allegations of sexual assault attracted 20 million and former FBI Director James Comey’s first appearance after being fired by Trump got 19.5 million.

All these took place during the day, when Americans were nominally at work, yet many watched anyway.

But those proceedings had an element of drama and the unknown – conditions that will be difficult for the January 6 committee to match.