Video shows suspect setting Toronto-area barbershop on fire
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, didn't realize the severity of the Jan. 6 insurrection until his wife called him.
He was inside the Capitol, sitting in the upper gallery of the House, hoping for what he called a "bird's-eye view of the process" and to be able to tell his grandchildren that he was there when Congress certified Joe Biden's presidential victory.
People are breaking into the building, London Thompson told him, and it was on television. "I'm watching people climbing over the wall right now," she said.
"It doesn't register," the Mississippi Democrat recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. "I said, `You can't break in. There's police and barricades and a lot of things out there."'
But it was not long before the House chamber was under siege. Police rushed Thompson and several dozen other members of Congress to another side of the gallery and told them to duck under their seats as supporters of then-President Donald Trump tried to break down the doors to the chamber below.
"It was a horrible day," said Thompson, "still almost surreal that it even occurred."
Like Thompson, many who serve and work in the Capitol are trying to make sense of the chaos that unfolded on Jan. 6. And he now has a guiding role in the process, appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as the chairman of a select committee that will investigate the attack. The panel will hold its first hearing Tuesday with police officers who battled the rioters.
As the longtime chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Thompson is accustomed to dealing with grave matters of national security. But his stewardship of the Jan. 6 panel will be a test unlike any other, as he tries to untangle the events of a violent insurrection that many House Republicans increasingly play down and deny.
"We have to get it right," Thompson said. If the committee can find ways to prevent anything like it from happening again, "then I would have made what I think is the most valuable contribution to this great democracy."
Thompson, 73, is a liberal fixture in Congress and longtime champion of civil rights, the only Democrat in the Mississippi delegation, hailing from a majority-black district in the state's western half. He has avoided the limelight during his more than 15 years on the Homeland Security Committee, notching achievements with careful bipartisan outreach.
Several Democrats and Republicans said Thompson was the right choice to lead an investigation that is certain to be partisan and fraught.
"I've dealt with Bennie for 15 years, and we disagreed on a lot, but I don't think there was ever a harsh word between us," says former Republican Rep. Pete King of New York, who was the chairman and top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee for years opposite Thompson. "Bennie is low key, he manages his side well. He was a good guy to work with. He was strong and knew what he wanted, but there was very little drama."
New York Rep. John Katko, who is now the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, gave a similar assessment. Thompson is "a good man, a patriotic American" and a "productive partner," Katko said in statement.
Pelosi chose Thompson as chairman after he crafted legislation with Katko that would have created an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack. That bill won almost three dozen Republican votes in the House only to flame out in the Senate, where the opposition of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was decisive.
Far fewer House Republicans supported creating the House select committee, dismissing the effort as partisan. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said the GOP won't participate after Pelosi rejected two of his appointments, Republican Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Only two Republicans voted to create the panel -- Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Pelosi first appointed Cheney to the committee and then added Kinzinger on Sunday after McCarthy withdrew his picks.
"I'm looking forward. in the long run, to try to have as many of the 13 members that I can," Thompson said last week.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who was appointed to the Jan. 6 committee, said Thompson's history of working with Republicans and his popularity among members will make it harder to malign the panel's work. Reaching the bipartisan deal with Katko was not an easy task, he said.
"I think he has a very even keel that will help him get through this," Schiff said.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, another Democrat appointed to the select committee, says both parties have "partisan brawlers" -- and Thompson is not one of them.
"He's a workhorse, so he likes getting stuff done," Raskin said. "And I think that's the right spirit for this."
Still, Thompson has taken sharply partisan stances. He joined with about 30 Democrats in a 2005 vote to invalidate President George W. Bush's victory -- not unlike the dozens of Republicans who voted to invalidate Biden's in January. In that challenge, the dissenting Democrats claimed irregularities if not fraud in Ohio's vote.
The effort did not end in violence and John Kerry, the defeated Democratic presidential candidate, did not lead or join the effort to deny Bush his victory.
A frequent critic of Trump, Thompson joined other Democrats in filing a lawsuit against the former president after the insurrection, charging that he incited the attack and conspired to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's victory.
Last week, Thompson withdrew his participation in that lawsuit, which he joined soon after the Senate acquitted Trump, at his second impeachment trial, of inciting the insurrection. Thompson's withdrawal petition said he "wishes to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest between his role on the Select Committee and his role as a Plaintiff in this litigation."
The lawsuit, which is still active, names as defendants Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. The Justice Department has filed charges against members of those groups in connection to the attack, and the panel is expected to investigate them as part of its probe.
Domestic extremism and its links to white supremacy are a familiar subject for Thompson not only from his time on the Homeland Security Committee but also from his early involvement in the civil rights movement in Mississippi. He was active with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in college and organized voter registration drives before he was elected mayor of his small hometown of Bolton.
The FBI's assessments about the growing dangers of domestic extremism, he said, show that "the significance of this committee's work is as important as it can ever get."
------
Associated Press video producer Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
A New Brunswick woman suffering from sarcoidosis, a disease that limits your lung capacity, is in need of a double lung transplant.
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
York Regional Police say they are continuing to search for a suspect in an auto theft investigation who was captured on video running over a police officer in Toronto last month.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
Quebec Premier François Legault reiterated that the pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University must be dismantled while police remain 'on the lookout for new developments.'
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.