The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot announced it’ll hold a latest hearing on Tuesday “to present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony.”
The surprise hearing, set for 1 p.m. ET on Capitol Hill, was announced Monday afternoon. It was not immediately clear what latest evidence the committee planned to disclose. The panel didn’t discover who’s scheduled to testify.
Monday’s announcement got here days after the committee’s fifth public hearing, which focused on how former President Donald Trump pressured the Department of Justice to assist him overturn his loss to President Joe Biden within the 2020 election.
The committee previously planned to carry seven hearings on the initial findings from its nearly yearlong investigation into Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and sent members of Congress fleeing for safety.
Chairperson Bennie Thompson (D-MS) attends the third of eight planned public hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to analyze the January 6 Attack on the USA Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 16, 2022.
Sarah Silbiger | Reuters
Those hearings were originally expected to be held in June. However the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said last week that the ultimate hearings within the series would are available July, suggesting that the schedule modified resulting from latest evidence coming in.
Earlier this month, as an example, the committee obtained never-before-seen documentary footage from a filmmaker with access to Trump and his family before and after the riot.
The bipartisan committee has put Trump at the middle of what it calls a coordinated multi-pronged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results that directly led to the violence on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Trump, who ultimately left the White House after one term in office, has denied wrongdoing while continuing to spread false claims of widespread election fraud. These false claims form a central component of the committee’s case against the previous president.
Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has said that the committee’s final two public hearings will concentrate on how Trump illegally directed his supporters toward the Capitol, then didn’t take quick motion to quell the attack once it began.
The committee has no power to file criminal charges against Trump or anyone else, and it just isn’t clear whether the panel plans to issue a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick Garland has told reporters that federal prosecutors are watching the hearings.
