Trump tried to call Jan. 6 committee witness, Cheney says

Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo, said Trump allies are taking a new strategy in an attempt to discredit the committee's hearings after initially denying its findings.

"Now the argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by others outside the administration," Cheney said. She noted that fingers are being pointed at Trump advisers such as John Eastman or Sydney Powell, or Rep. Scott Perry.

"This, of course, is nonsense," Cheney continued. "President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child."

Cheney said the committee has shown Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost anyone else in the nation.

"No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion," she argued. "Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind."

Committee Chair Bennie Thompson gaveled in the hearing shortly after 1 p.m. and immediately invoked a core theme the committee has emphasized in its public hearings.

"We settle our differences at the ballot box," he said, before raising how Trump handled his election loss.

"He seized on the anger of his supporters, and when they approached the line, he didn't wave them off, he urged them on," Thompson said.

"Today, the committee will explain how, as a part of the last-ditch effort to overturn the election and block the transfer of power, Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington D.C. -- and ultimately, spurred that mob to wage a violent attack on our democracy," he said.

Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who testified at the first select committee hearing last fall on how he feared for his life and faced racist attacks while defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, told ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott ahead of the hearing today that he's expecting the afternoon to be "triggering" -- and that he is "emotionally, preparing for the worst."

With Jan. 6 defendant Stephen Ayres set to testify, Dunn said Ayres "owes everyone in the congressional community who was affected by the day an apology." Adding, "if he stops short of being honest about the violence -- that doesn't do enough for me. If he stops short of apologizing -- that doesn't do enough for me."

Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges, who also defended the Capitol and has also been a regular fixture at the public hearings, said it will be notable for Americans to hear what happened straight from someone who breached the building, given that some continue to downplay the violence.

"Having one of the people involved in the attack on Capitol -- in their own words describe their mentality, their intentions and the intentions of the group -- you can't get any closer to the source than that."

Video clips from the roughly eight-hour deposition committee investigators conducted with former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone last Friday are expected to be played at the afternoon hearing, a source familiar with the matter tells ABC News.

Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said last week after Cipollone was subpoenaed by the committee that his testimony did not contradict those of previous witnesses when he met with investigators.

Asked if Americans could assume that Cipollone confirmed the testimony offered by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump's then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, Lofgren told CNN, "Not contradicting is not the same as confirming."

While Hutchinson publicly testified last month that Cipollone stressed to her that Trump should not be taken to the Capitol after his rally, warning, "we're going to get charged with every crime imaginable" if he went, according to Hutchinson, it was not clear if the committee asked Cipollone in his deposition about the comment.

-ABC News' John Santucci and Katherine Faulders