The House select committee is poised to hold its likely final hearing into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot Thursday afternoon that could unveil new information from the Secret Service about former President Donald Trump’s role in spurring his supporters’ actions to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The hearing will examine Trump’s “state of mind” after he lost the election and his connection to the groups that stormed the US Capitol to disrupt Congress’ certifying the vote for former Vice President Joe Biden, a committee aide briefed reporters.
“We’re going to be looking at that entire plan, the entire multi-part plan to overturn the election. We’ll be looking at it in a broader context, and in a broader timeline as well,” the aide said.
The hearing, slated to begin at 1 p.m., will serve as a summing up of the panel’s case before it releases a final report sometime after the midterm elections on Nov. 8 that will determine which party controls Congress.
If Republicans regain control of the House, they are expected to disband the panel.
It will also be the swan song for the only two Republican members of the panel — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.
Cheney was stripped of her leadership positions in the House and lost her Republican primary race to a Trump-backed candidate in August, while Kinzinger opted not to seek re-election.
What is expected to happen today?
Unlike the previous hearings that began in June, Thursday’s will not feature any live witnesses, and members will present information gleaned from recent testimony, including from Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
She was in contact with White House officials in the days after the election and up to Jan. 6.
And while previous sessions looked at Trump’s inaction that day in calling off his supporters as lawmakers scrambled to seek safety, the hearing Thursday will focus on how he incited the mob at the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse despite being warned that violence was possible.
How will this be different from previous hearings?
Among the new evidence are more than a million pages of documents and surveillance video the Secret Service turned over to the committee, including an email that depicts the alarm at Secret Service headquarters about Trump’s insistence on being taken to the Capitol as the siege unfolded, the Washington Post reported.
In previous testimony, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said she was told by a Trump staffer that the former president lunged at the driver of his presidential limousine when the Secret Service refused to take him to the Capitol.
It’s unclear whether any of the newly released documents will shed light on that episode.
Some Secret Service agents rebutted Hutchinson’s account, but the agency said it was unable to turn over texts and emails from that day because they were lost in a technology upgrade.
With Post wires