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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The House Select Committee investigating the Capitol Hill riots will Thursday show evidence of then President Donald Trump’s “dereliction of duty” on January 6 2021 when his supporters stormed the facility in a bid to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
New witnesses are expected to detail his failure to stop his angry supporters from attacking Congress, committee members said Sunday, The Associated Press reports.
“This is
going to open people’s eyes in a big way,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a
member of the House committee investigating the riot who will help lead
Thursday’s session with Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va. ”The president didn’t do
anything.”
The committee
said it is receiving fresh evidence each day and could not rule out additional
hearings or interviews with additional people close to the president whose
testimonies may be of interest to the current investigations. A former White
House strategist Steve Bannon is facing criminal contempt of Congress charges
this week for refusing to comply with the House committee’s subpoena, according
to The Associated Press.
The committee
has also issued an extraordinary subpoena last week to the Secret Service to
produce texts by Tuesday from January 5 and January 6, 2021, following reports
that the agency may have deleted text messages related to the insurrection.
Panel members said Thursday’s hearing will seek to prove how Trump’s actions were at odds with his constitutional legal duty to stop the January 6 riot and provide security to protect Congress from the attacks.
“The commander in chief is the only person in the Constitution whose duty is explicitly laid out to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed,” Elaine Luria of Virginia said, according to The Associated Press. “I look at it as a dereliction of duty. (Trump) didn’t act. He had a duty to act.”
Luria said
the hearing will seek to highlight additional testimony from White House
counsel Pat Cipollone and other witnesses, not yet seen before, “who will add a
lot of value and information to the events of that critical time on January 6,”
The Associated Press reported.
“We will go
through pretty much minute by minute during that time frame, from the time he
left the stage at the Ellipse, came back to the White House, and really sat in
the White House, in the dining room, with his advisers urging him continuously
to take action, to take more action,” Luria said.
Rep. Zoe
Lofgree, D-Calif. said investigations will continue even though much of the
hearing will be concluded Thursday.