WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is holding what could be its last public hearing Thursday, with committee members indicating they will focus on former President Donald Trump’s state of mind that day and present a more holistic summation of the events and how they were organized.
Each of the nine committee members are expected to lead a portion of the hearing, which began at 1 p.m. Eastern time, by presenting fresh testimony from new and old witnesses, as well as new evidence obtained from the Secret Service and never-before-seen video footage of the riot and of key players in the days around Jan. 6.
“We still have significant information that we’ve not shown to the public that’s available to us,” Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters last week.
Committee aides described the hearing’s goal as a step back to look at the entire plan to keep Trump in power, and said it will cover the span of time from before the 2020 election until after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Previous hearings each focused on an aspect of Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. Committee members will provide new information relevant to the topics of each of the previous hearings, and will also touch on ongoing threats to democracy, but the main focus will be on Trump’s state of mind and role in the event.
Thursday marks the committee’s first public hearing in nearly three months. In the interim, public attention has been seized by news of the Justice Department’s accelerating investigation into the insurrection and the scheme to use false electors to cast doubt on the election results and keep Trump in office, and on the FBI’s efforts to recover classified materials that were improperly — and possibly illegally — stored at Trump’s Florida estate after he left office.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told CNN that the hearing would touch on the “close ties between people in Trump world and some of these extremist groups” and present other new information the committee has gathered since its last public proceedings in late July.
“I do think that it will be worth watching,” Lofgren said in the interview. “There’s some new material that, you know, I found as we got into it, pretty surprising.”
While no witnesses are scheduled to appear live at the hearing, the committee is expected to show footage captured by Danish filmmakers who followed conservative provocateur Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant with ties to the Proud Boys, for two years filming a documentary.
The hearing is also expected to pull from hundreds of thousands of records received from the Secret Service showing that Trump was told about the potential for violence on Jan. 6, 2021, but rallied his supporters to go to the Capitol anyway. They also detail the former president’s repeated orders to his Secret Service detail to let him join supporters marching on Capitol Hill.
Committee members have indicated that, barring additional information coming to light, this is likely the panel’s last hearing. But committee aides balked at reporters’ attempts to label it their closing argument, adding that more evidence or testimony could surface before the committee presents its final report by the end of the calendar year.
Republicans are not expected to renew the committee if they regain control of the House in 2023.
