Jan. 6 hearing livestream and analysis
The House select committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, will soon hold the panel’s last hearing before the midterm elections. The session will provide the panel with one more opportunity to hammer home its message that former President Donald Trump is still dangerous to democracy.
Here are some key things to watch for once the hearing kicks off at 1 p.m. ET:
No witnesses – but new evidence: Committee aides indicated there won’t be any live witnesses at Thursday’s hearing, but said there would be video testimony and documentary evidence that hasn’t been seen before.
Sources say some of the new evidence will come from new witnesses who only spoke to the committee in recent months, which could include several of Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries: Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
Other portions of new testimony will come from witnesses the committee has presented in previous hearings, aides say.
Since its last hearing in July, the committee has received more than a million communications from the Secret Service from the lead-up to the riot. Committee aides told reporters Wednesday that the upcoming hearing will feature some of that new material, including emails and video handed over by the service.
Recapping the panel’s summer sessions: It’s been nearly three months since the committee last held a public hearing, and committee members are likely to use Thursday’s session to recap to viewers what the panel unearthed in its series of summer hearings.
The committee showed testimony from numerous former aides of former President Donald Trump to make its case that Trump was told he lost the election, was behind plans to try to overturn his loss to Joe Biden and was warned that Jan. 6 could turn violent.
Thursday’s hearing gives the committee one last chance before the midterms to remind potential voters about the case they’ve built against Trump’s attempts to overturn the election and the violence that ensued at the Capitol.
A committee chorus One of the unique features of the committee’s series of summer hearings was that each was led by a different committee member or two – meaning a majority of panel members did not speak at any given hearing.
It was a quite un-Congress-like posture for congressional hearings, where the January 6 committee’s choreographed presentations replaced the typical scattershot sessions where every member gets five minutes to question witnesses or make a speech.
The committee’s final hearing is still likely to go as the panel plans it – the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the committee are all working together on the sprawling investigation. But for the first time, every member of the committee will have a speaking role at Thursday’s hearing, according to aides, as each presents a different portion of the committee’s presentation.
