The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021 is holding six public hearings, according to a draft schedule.
ABC, CNN and MSNBC are expected to focus their coverage on the hearings and many other outlets are likely to show the hearings on their websites and YouTube channels, including The Independent.
The hearings will also be shown live on C-SPAN.
Fox News appears to have a different approach to the daytime hearings versus the prime time events. The network carried the committee’s second hearing on Monday 13 June live on air. During last week’s prime time hearing, the network aired Tucker Carlson’s programme as usual, with coverage on Fox Business Network and online without authentication.
The committee has held one prime time hearing so far, on Thursday 9 June. The committee held its first daytime hearing at 10am on 13 June. Additional hearings will be conducted during the day on 16, 21, and 23 June.
The hearings have outlined how Donald Trump and some of his associates violated the law as they tried to overturn the 2020 election.
“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” committee chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters last month. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on January 6.”
The primetime hearings are scheduled to last between 1.5 and two hours, and the morning hearings are set to last between two and 2.5 hours.
One of the committee members will lead each of the hearings, but attorneys who know the sensitive material well will conduct most of the questioning of witnesses.
Most of the witnesses have been subpoenaed to appear at the hearings. Attorneys will also show texts, photos, and videos to strengthen their case.
The content and schedule for the hearings may change. The panel plans to detail the Trump team’s effort to overturn his loss in the more than two months from when he falsely claimed to have won the 2020 election until the Capitol riot on 6 January.
In a March court filing, the committee said that “the president’s rhetoric persuaded thousands of Americans to travel to Washington for January 6, some of whom marched on the Capitol, breached security, and took other illegal actions”.
“Hearings will address those issues in detail”, they added.
