Congressional hearings into the deadly U.S. Capitol attack by Donald Trump's supporters opened with the panel presenting a video showing that even the former president's daughter, Ivanka, did not believe his false claims of election fraud.

Even members of his own administration including Attorney General Bill Barr - as seen in video shown by the House of Representatives select committee - rejected Trump's claims of widespread election fraud in his loss to Democrat Joe Biden as untrue.

The hearing began with Barr's video testimony calling the fraud claims "bullsh*t," an argument that had convinced Trump's daughter. "I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying," Ivanka Trump said in videotaped testimony.

The panel also showed videotaped testimony from other senior Trump White House officials including then-Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff.

"Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one writer put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government," Democratic U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee's chairman, said in his opening statement. "The violence was no accident. It was Trump's last stand."

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"The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over," Democratic U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee's chairman, said in excerpts of his opening statement. "There are those in this country who thirst for power but have no love or respect for what makes America great: devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect union."

Thompson opened the hearing reminding people in the room and a national television audience of the oath of office that members of Congress take. Thompson said lawmakers "swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That oath was put to test on Jan. 6, 2021" by domestic enemies with the encouragement of the president of the United States.

"Donald Trump lost the presidential election in 2020. The American people voted him out of office. It was not because of a rigged system. It was not because of voter fraud," Thompson added.

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Lawmakers on the Jan. 6 committee Thursday night plan to present information and testimony to the American people in an effort to show the country, during a primetime congressional hearing, that former President Donald Trump was the key to a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

During Thursday’s hearing, lawmakers are expected to present videos of interviews with former top Trump officials and potentially family members created with the assistance of former ABC News president James Goldston.

The hearing will also feature testimony from two live witnesses — Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and filmmaker Nick Quested.

But a select committee aide said Wednesday the hearing in general will emphasize "ongoing threats to our democracy" related to Trump and Jan. 6.

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The House on Wednesday passed a sweeping gun reform bill that would raise the minimum age to purchase an assault rifle in the U.S. from 18 to 21, even though the legislation doesn’t stand much of a chance of passing in the Senate.

The bill, called the Protecting Our Kids Act, would also bar the sale of large-capacity magazines and institute new rules that dictate proper at-home gun storage. The chamber approved it in a 223-204 vote.

The House earlier voted by a 228 to 199 margin to include the purchasing age provision — under heavy scrutiny after two recent massacres carried out by 18-year-olds — in the broader bill. Democrats backed the proposal in a mostly partly line vote, but it drew a small group of Republican support.

Another component of the legislation, called the Untraceable Firearms Act, would bolster regulations around so-called ghost guns, or those firearms without a serial number. It is far more difficult for law enforcement to track ownership and possession of firearms that lack serial numbers.

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Parents of children injured and killed during last month's mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, implored members of the House Oversight Committee to act quickly on gun control measures.

"If after hearing from me and the other people testifying here today does not move you to act on gun laws, I invite you to my home to help me to clean Zaire's wounds so that you may see up close the damage that has been caused to my son and my community," said Zeneta Everhart, mother of Zaire Goodman, a survivor of the Buffalo shooting.

The shooting in a Buffalo grocery store left 10 dead and three injured. The shooting in a Uvalde elementary school left 17 injured and 21 dead, including 19 children.

Kimberly and Felix Rubio, parents of Lexi Rubio, one of the students who died at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, testified virtually, calling for members to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, to raise the age to purchase assault weapons from 18 to 21 years of age, to implement red flag laws and to strengthen background checks and to repeal gun manufacturers liability immunity.

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Boudin will be removed from office 10 days after the Board of Supervisors formally accepts the election results. The city’s more moderate mayor, London Breed, will choose his immediate replacement, and voters will elect a new district attorney in November.

The result comes as little surprise to residents following numerous polls, almost all of which predicted a decisive defeat for Boudin.

The results capped off a furious debate over crime and criminal justice in San Francisco, with the two sides fighting over Boudin’s approach to incarceration and rehabilitation and his leadership. As his supporters lauded his efforts to find alternatives to jails and prisons — which he said had failed the public for decades — his detractors slammed him as too permissive.

Boudin will depart the office after serving two and a half years of his four-year term.

Supporters of recalling Boudin erupted in cheers and chants of “Recall Chesa” as they toasted drinks after first results showed Boudin’s ouster. People embraced and said they were going to cry, overcome with emotion.

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Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former longtime chairman of the extremist group Proud Boys, was indicted on a new federal charge of seditious conspiracy with four top lieutenants on Monday. The charges expand the Justice Department’s allegations of organized plotting to oppose through violence the certification of President Biden’s election victory, culminating in the attack on the Capitol by a mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

Fox News will not carry the hearing. Instead, the network will stick with its prime-time lineup of opinionated conservative hosts: Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who have repeatedly downplayed the assault as a mere “footnote” to American history and tried to discredit the congressional inquiry as a ruse to “purge” former President Donald J. Trump and his supporters from the Republican Party.

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Senators buckled down Tuesday for days of additional negotiations on a response to recent high-profile mass shootings, retreating from earlier calls for quick action even as they expressed optimism that a long-elusive deal to address gun violence might eventually be possible.

The calls for patience came as a small bipartisan group of senators continued delicate talks on a legislative package that could include the first significant new federal gun restrictions in three decades, along with provisions dealing with school security and mental health. But they are fighting a tide of recent history demonstrating that Congress’s appetite for action tends to quickly fade as tragedies such as the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde last month fade from the headlines.

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Matthew McConaughey delivered an emotional speech at the White House today urging lawmakers to commit to stricter gun reform legislation.

The 52-year-old Oscar winner used his time at the press briefing room podium to tell the story of those who died last month in the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the actor’s hometown.

Elsewhere in his speech, McConaughey called out the "people in power" in both the Democrat and Republican parties for failing to pass stricter gun laws.

"Can both sides see beyond the political problem at hand and admit that we have a life preservation problem on our hands?” said the actor, who is a proponent of universal background checks for gun buyers as well as raising the age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21 and implementing a national waiting period for assault rifles.

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Seldom has a set of congressional hearings opened amid so much anticipation and, at the same time, so little guarantee of success.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold the first of at least a half-dozen public hearings this week, having already promised stunning revelations that would lay bare just how dangerously close the U.S. came to losing its democracy.

“It’s all about democratic resiliency. Can we fortify our institutions and our people against insurrection, coups and violence?” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a committee member, told NBC News. “I hope we will be able to spur the country to make the necessary reforms to solidify democracy.”

Thursday is when the suspense lifts and the nine-member committee gets to tell all. 

But what will success look like? The question has weighed on committee members and congressional Democrats who have invited the panel to present both a definitive accounting of the riot and tangible solutions to prevent another.   

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