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| Photo Credit: AP. |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is set to unveil “surprising” details including evidence from Donald Trump’s Secret Service about the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol in what is likely to be its last public hearing before the November midterm elections.
The hearing
Thursday afternoon, the 10th public session by the panel, is expected delve
into Trump’s “state of mind” and the central role the defeated president played
in the multipart effort to overturn the election, according to a committee aide
who discussed the plans on condition of anonymity.
The
committee is starting to sum up its findings: Trump, after losing the 2020
presidential election, launched an unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from
certifying Joe Biden’s victory. The result was the deadly mob siege of the
Capitol.
“The mob was
led by some extremist groups — they plotted in advance what they were going to
do,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a committee member, told CNN. “And those
individuals were known to people in the Trump orbit.”
Chairman
Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is poised to gavel in Thursday’s session at an
otherwise empty Capitol complex, with most lawmakers at home campaigning for
reelection. Several people who were among the thousands around the Capitol on
Jan. 6 are now running for congressional office, some with Trump’s backing.
The session
will serve as a closing argument by the panel’s two Republican lawmakers, Liz
Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who have essentially been
shunned by Trump and their party and will not be returning in the new Congress.
Cheney lost her primary election and Kinzinger decided not to run.
Another
committee member, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a retired Naval commander, is in a
tough reelection bid against state Sen. Jen Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter
pilot.
Unlike past
hearings, this one is not expected to feature live witnesses, though the panel
is expected to share information from its recent interviews — including
testimony from Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas. She was in contact with the White House during the
run-up to Jan. 6.
Fresh
information about the movements of then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was
presiding over the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 and was rushed to
safety, is also expected, according to a person familiar with the committee’s
planning who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and requested anonymity.
For weeks
the panel has been in talks with the U.S. Secret Service after issuing a
subpoena to produce missing text messages from that day. Former White House
aide Cassidy Hutchinson described being told by a White House aide about Trump
angrily lunging at the driver of his presidential SUV and demanding to be taken
from his rally to the Capitol as the mob formed on Jan. 6.
Some in the
Secret Service have disputed Cassidy’s account of the events, but it is unclear
if the missing texts that the agency has said were deleted during a technology
upgrade will ever be recovered. The hearing is expected to reveal fresh details
from a massive trove of documents and other evidence provided by the Secret
Service.
The
committee plans to show new video footage it received from the Secret Service
of the rally on the White House Ellipse. Trump spoke there before encouraging
his armed supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
The hearing
also will include new documentary footage captured from the day of the attack.
The Secret
Service has turned over 1.5 million pages of documents and surveillance video
to the committee, according to agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
Lofgren said
that as she learned the information being presented Thursday she found it
“pretty surprising.”
The
committee, having conducted more than 1,500 interviews and obtained countless
documents, has produced a sweeping probe of Trump’s activities from his defeat
in the November election to the Capitol attack.
“He has used
this big lie to destabilize our democracy,” said Lofgren, who was a young House
staff member during the Richard Nixon impeachment inquiry in 1974. “When did
that idea occur to him and what did he know while he was doing that?”
This week’s
hearing is expected to be the final investigative presentation from lawmakers
before the midterm elections. But staff members say the investigation
continues.
The Jan. 6
committee has been meeting for more than a year, set up by the House after
Republican senators blocked the formation of an outside panel similar to the
9/11 commission set up after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Even after the launch
of its high-profile public hearings last summer, the Jan. 6 committee continued
to gather evidence and interviews.
Under
committee rules, the Jan. 6 panel is expected to produce a report of its
findings, due after the election, likely in December. The committee will
dissolve 30 days after publication of that report, and with the new Congress in
January.
House
Republicans are expected to drop the Jan. 6 probe and turn to other
investigations if they win control after midterm elections, primarily focusing
on Biden, his family and his administration.
At least
five people died in the Jan. 6 attack and its aftermath, including a Trump
supporter shot and killed by Capitol Police.
Police
engaged in often bloody, hand-to-hand combat, as Trump’s supporters pushed past
barricades, stormed the Capitol and roamed the halls, sending lawmakers fleeing
for safety and temporarily disrupting the joint session of Congress certifying
Biden’s election.
More than
850 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the Capitol attack,
some receiving lengthy prison sentences for their roles. Several leaders and
associates of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been charged with
sedition.
Trump faces
various state and federal investigations over his actions in the election and
its aftermath.