The next January 6 hearing has been scheduled for Thursday 21 July in primetime at 8pm, the committee investigating the Capitol riot has announced.
The hearing is exptected to lay out the details of the 187 minutes between when then-President Donald Trump left the stage at the Ellipse in front of the White House south lawn on January 6 and his initial public response to the attack on Congress.
The committee’s vice-chair and ranking Republican, Liz Cheney, said on Tuesday that the next hearing would analyse ”minute by minute” what was going on at the White House as the riot unfolded.
“You will hear that Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help,” she said.
“This is not ambiguous. He did not call the military. The secretary of defence received no order. He did not call his attorney general. He did not talk to the Department of Homeland Security. [Vice president] Mike Pence did all of those things.”
Another member of the committee, Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, said the hearing ”will be a profound moment of reckoning for America”.
The previous hearings have sought to outline how Mr Trump pushed the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden’s victory at the polls had been achieved by conspiracy and manipulation, that he had known it to be untrue and had ignored his closest advisers in favour of conspiring with cronies to try to overturn the outcome by an inflammatory show of force.
“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” Mr Thompson told reporters before the first hearing. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on 6 January.”
The hearings typically last between two and two-and-a-half hours, with one of the committee members leading each of the hearings, but attorneys who know the sensitive material involved well conduct most of the questioning of witnesses.
Most of those appearing have been subpoenaed.
Once the hearings have been concluded, the panel is expected to produce a final report before the November midterms detailing its findings and making recommendations.
As we have seen, the content and schedule for the hearings may be subject to change but you can follow all the very latest updates on The Independent website, via our liveblog and regular breaking news updates.
Additional reporting by agencies
