The committee investigating last year's assault on the US Capitol launches public hearings today, promising explosive revelations as it lays out in granular detail the story of the deadly siege and assesses Donald Trump's culpability.
In the first of six made-for-TV presentations, the panel of lawmakers will aim to demonstrate that the president and his inner circle committed felonies in a criminal conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden that culminated in the violence of 6 January 2021.
The major networks ABC, CBS and NBC along with CNN will devote up to two hours of prime time to show the committee hearing live, with Fox News going instead with its usual line up of shows.
Democratic panel member Jamie Raskin said at a recent event at Georgetown University in Washington that the hearings would "tell a story that will really blow the roof off".
While Republican Liz Cheney urged Americans to tune in to the televisions.
"People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don't defend it," she said.
The seven Democrats and two Republicans who make up the House of Representatives committee are expected to set out exactly what happened on 6 January and who they believe were the "ringleaders".
The hearing will feature visual illustrations such as text messages, photographs and videos, some which have never been seen publicly before.
There will be live testimony from US Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, who was injured by the rioters, and filmmaker Nick Quested, who recorded the first moments of violence.
The committee is trying to determine if former US president Donald Trump or members of his inner circle had a role in planning or encouraging the violent attack.
No president has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organise an inside coup to overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order," Mr Raskin said.
"And then also (to) use a violent insurrection made up of domestic violent extremist groups, white nationalist and racist, fascist groups in order to support the coup."
As key witnesses testify in public for the first time, lawyers will exhibit texts, photographs and videos to shine a light on various schemes by the Trump White House that began to gestate before the election.
At the first hearing, in the 8pm (1am Irish time) prime-time slot, the panel said it will "present previously unseen material documenting January 6... and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power".
After today, the Democrat-led committee, which has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, is expected to hold hearings on 13, 15, 16 and 21 June, followed by a final hearing on 23 June.
The committee will run through several unlawful plots it says were devised by the Trump White House to keep the defeated president in power, including a scheme to use fake "electors" - the people appointed to vote for president in the state-by-state "Electoral College".
They will also lay out an authoritarian plan to seize voting machines and the alleged plot to delay the certification of Mr Biden's win through the violence at the Capitol, which was linked to five deaths and the wounding of more than 100 police officers.
Investigators want to get to the bottom of a 187-minute delay before law enforcement was beefed up to protect the Capitol and learn why there is a gap of almost eight hours in White House logs of Mr Trump's calls as the violence played out.
One of the main aims though will be to draw a straight line from the alleged conspiracy to overturn the election, Mr Trump's rally speech encouraging the mob to march on Congress and the ensuing violence.
"If such a relationship can be established, it will have a profound and reverberating effect on our ability to impose legal consequences on incitement," Gerard Filitti, a senior counsel for New York-based Jewish civil rights group The Lawfare Project, said.
"And in upholding the rights of minority communities to live free of the threat of physical violence incited by rogue actors."
It comes as the FBI arrested leading Republican candidate for governor in Michigan on charges of participating in the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
The Justice Department said Ryan Kelley took part in the violent attack on the Capitol that aimed to halt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden's victory over Trump in the presidential election two months earlier.
Mr Kelley, a planning commission member in Allendale was arrested at his home in Michigan, the FBI said.
He is a founder of the far-right American Patriot Council and was charged with illegally entering the Capitol and engaging in physical violence against property.
An affidavit filed in Washington federal court detailed his participation using video, photographs and other information posted on social media, as well as phone records, to identify him, while some footage showed him urging others to enter the Capitol.
Raising his profile in the state, he and the American Patriot Council have led protests against Covid-19 containment policies including masking and vaccination over the past two years.
Mr Kelley is one of more than 840 people who have been arrested for taking part in the attack on the seat of the US Congress that day.
Most, including Mr Kelley, have been charged illegally entering the Capitol and obstructing an official meeting of Congress, but around 255 face criminal charges of assault, theft and conspiracy.
Illegality 'was obvious'
The question of whether Mr Trump broke the law has already been answered in some respects.
Federal judge David Carter ruled in March that it was "more likely than not that president Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6."
"The illegality of the plan was obvious," he said.
The committee faces a challenge, however, in building up a compelling and dramatic narrative, as much of the evidence has already been aired in public.
Among the biggest leaked revelations is a trove of 2,319 text messages obtained by CNN that show Mr Trump's family and his allies in Congress and the media imploring White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to get the then-president to call off the mob attacking the Capitol.
The texts, which Mr Meadows handed over voluntarily before ending his cooperation with the probe, also show Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pushing for the will of millions of voters in swing states to be overturned.
But the committee may still have a few shocks up its sleeve as Democrats look ahead to November's midterm elections and hope to entice voters beleaguered by spiralling inflation and the lingering pandemic.
There has been no official word on who will take the stand, but the committee has ruled out Mr Trump himself, concluding that his testimony would add nothing to the narrative.
The committee's Democratic chairman Bennie Thompson has said, however, that the hearings will include testimony from witnesses "we've not heard from before".
