- The House Jan. 6 Committee is holding its ninth public session and possibly its last.
- It will examine former President Donald Trump’s thinking and actions as he tried to cling to power.
- The panel will present “never-before-seen information” to close its case that he led an insurrection.
The House Jan. 6 Committee plans to give the public a closer look Thursday at former President Donald Trump’s thinking. And actions as he tried to cling to power following his defeat in the 2020 election. And to start closing the case that he led an insurgency.
“We’re going to put a special emphasis on the former president’s state of mind. And his involvement in these events as they unfolded,” a committee aide said. “What you’ll see is a synthesis of some evidence we’ve already presented with… never-before-seen information to demonstrate Donald Trump’s centrality to the scheme prior to the election.”
This hearing, the committee’s ninth and possibly final public session, comes after a nearly two-month hiatus during which the criminal trials of the Jan. 6 rioters — including a group charged with seditious conspiracy — continued in federal court, the FBI seized a slew of documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, and the panel’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., lost her re-election primary.
During that time, the panel has conducted closed-door interviews with witnesses such as conservative activist Ginni Thomas, the well-connected wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. Ginni Thomas, a supporter of Trump’s re-election, believes the 2020 election was rigged.
“What’s really interesting is that we keep getting more information, and I think this hearing allows us to go a little deeper into what people knew, when they knew it, and what decisions they made based on that information,” committee member Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hours before the hearing.
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Simultaneously, the panel has indicated that it is preparing to incorporate new details into the existing architecture of the argument that it has been developing for months. The lawmakers — seven Democrats and two Republicans — have already presented evidence that Trump and his closest allies attempted to keep him in office despite his defeat, culminating in the Capitol riot.
“What we’re going to do is take a step back,” the aide said of the hearing on Thursday. “We’re going to look at the whole plan, the whole multi-part plan, to overturn the election.”
They have already heard testimony from police officers who were beaten by rioters at the Capitol, Trump White House officials, and people with knowledge of a plot to install “fake electors” to overturn the 2020 election results.
The panel is under time constraints as it gathers and publicises evidence before issuing a final report. If Republicans retake control of the House in November, as most predict, the committee will be disbanded in January. That means panel members must have completed their work by the end of the year.
The panel will show testimony from pre-recorded interviews on Thursday, as it has done in previous hearings. However, no live witnesses are expected to be present.
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