The Jan. 6 committee will hold hearings in June, some in primetime

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The Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol will launch its public hearings beginning June 9 and will commence eight sessions that will be aired during the daytime and primetime hours,

The committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said Thursday that after the panel rounds out its final interviews with witnesses through the end of this month and May, the hearings will kick off and effectively resume what the probe started in July 2021 when officers from the U.S. Capitol and Metropolitan Police Department offered gut-wrenching testimony to Congress for the first time.

“Eight is the number at this point and we’re moving forward for June hearings… We will tell the story about what happened. We will use a combination of exhibits, staff testimony, outside witnesses,” Thompson told press gathered outside of the Capitol early Thursday evening.

As of Friday, some 478 days have passed since former President Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The committee was formed just under a year ago and only after facing steep resistance from the overwhelming majority of Republicans led by House Leader Kevin McCarthy.

McCarthy, in this months-long process, has emerged as a stubborn figure in the investigation; starting first with his refusal to voluntarily cooperate and leading more recently to his blanket denials and walk-backs after being caught on tape acknowledging the need for Trump to resign in the aftermath of the assault.

He is also recorded saying that Trump’s actions were “putting people in jeopardy.”

Nonetheless, the probe has amassed a huge wealth of information about what transpired on Jan. 6, interviewing a procession of Trump administration aides and staff, high ranking and low.

They have elicited key testimony about the strategy deployed by Trump to stage what investigator Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland defined to Daily Kos recently as “a coup that was orchestrated by the president against the vice president and against the Congress,”

And for those that have patently refused to cooperate, like Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime adviser, the committee has doled out contempt of Congress referrals with the backing of the U.S. House.

So far, the Justice Department has acted only on Bannon’s referral; his trial is expected to begin later this year.

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also referred for contempt after he abruptly reversed course on his cooperation. He provided thousands of text messages and records before bailing, however, and many of those materials have already come to expose the breadth and depth of the push by Trump and his allies to stop or delay the certification on Jan. 6 so that Trump could remain in office despite his loss.

Meadows is currently under investigation by the state of North Carolina for voter fraud and has since been removed from the rolls there.

There has been no clear indication from the Justice Department on how they might proceed with Meadows.

The committee has also approved and voted out of the House contempt referrals for Trump’s former communications adviser Dan Scavino and onetime trade adviser Peter Navarro. Both former White House officials were subpoenaed and both refused to cooperate. Navarro called the committee a group of “domestic terrorists” and insisted that executive privilege would shield him from answering questions about a strategy.

Trump, however, has not invoked executive privilege over Navarro’s testimony and President Joe Biden has waived it, anyway.

For now, the committee is keeping details about who will appear at the hearings under wraps. When asked Thursday, Rep. Raskin told CBS News that a witness such as former Vice President Mike Pence—who was integral, if not the key to Trump’s scheme—was unlikely to appear.

“I think we have what we need from him,” Raskin said.

Members of Pence’s staff, like chief of staff Marc Short and national security adviser Keith Kellogg, were subpoenaed by the probe and ultimately provided some of the more disturbing details yet to emerge, including insight into Trump’s obstinance and sheer idleness on Jan. 6 as rioters actively swarmed the Capitol and the vice president inside.

Almost 1,000 depositions and interviews have been taken by the committee and there are still people investigators will continue to “engage” with, Thompson said Thursday. That would include figures like Donald Trump Jr., CBS reported.

Details, for now, are also sparing on how the committee will specifically present its findings although Raskin has said it will be presented like chapters of a book.

Through the committee’s successful legal battles for records from the Trump White House and from attorney John Eastman—who wrote a six-point memo for Trump strategizing how to overthrow the election by utilizing Pence unconstitutionally—the panel has been able to piece together information about Trump’s orchestrated efforts to defraud the United States by way of his “Big Lie” about voter fraud.

The sprawl of the committee’s work has been so extensive that it broke up its research into multiple teams that would then home their focus on a specific angle. One group followed the money, for example, assessing the fundraising for the Jan. 6 rallies by Trump’s organizers and campaign staff.

Other teams, with a fine-tooth comb, pored over the involvement and coordination of domestic extremist groups and activists involved in the assault like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Others drilled down on the pressure strategy targeting Pence. There were also breakaway groups reviewing evidence of how members of congress may have been directly pressured by Trump and more.

Lack of cooperation from some figures subpoenaed already has not stymied the probe entirely though members are reportedly still weighing what legal recourse they have to compel testimony from fellow legislators like GOP leader McCarthy.

Chairman Thompson indicated that by the end of this week the panel would send an “invitation” for McCarthy again. He has not been formally subpoenaed. The California Republican and House Speaker-aspirant has dubbed the investigation a sham and has, in recent months, said he would not cooperate.

That was a change of tune from May 2021 when McCarthy responded “sure” when asked by CNN if he would testify about his conversations with Trump.

Other lawmakers, like Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, are expected to receive new requests to appear soon, too. Both men heavily promoted Trump’s lie that election fraud was rampant.

Text messages obtained by the committee and otherwise made public have put both Jordan and Perry at the heart of the push to stop the certification on Jan. 6.

Once the hearings conclude, the committee will issue a public report.

Raskin told Daily Kos that report would not be a dry, perfunctory rehashing of the mountain of information obtained. Instead, Raskin said he hoped it would be a “multimedia report” to better encapsulate the gravity of what was at stake on Jan. 6, lay everything out for the record visually, and make it accessible to all.

Though the committee indicated in court this March that it found enough criminal evidence to refer Trump to the DOJ, as of early April, members were reportedly split on how to proceed.

Despite the criticism from those who have stood opposed to the committee from its inception, the panel has strived to keep the contours of its probe clearly delineated from the Justice Department’s own investigation.

The DOJ has now charged more than 800 people for crimes connected to the insurrection at the Capitol.

And while separation of powers undergirds so much of what has driven the committee for these many months, members have also made clear: if in the course of their investigation they unearth evidence of a crime, it will, of course, not go ignored.

Posted in Independent News