The Jan. 6 select committee is slated to hold a public hearing on Tuesday, placing a focus on extremist groups’ role in the deadly breach of the Capitol and allegations that former President Donald Trump sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
While recent reports indicated that a prime-time hearing was expected to take place on Thursday, select committee aides confirmed that Tuesday’s hearing is the event slated to take place this week, with plans for an additional hearing next week.
“To this point, there have been hearings detailing Trump’s plan to exert pressure on state officials, the Department of Justice, even his own vice president to help him reverse those results, and we saw that he was warned that his actions risked inciting violence and undermining our democratic institutions, but he continued to do that anyway,” one select committee aide told reporters on Monday.
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“So, tomorrow, we’ll start looking into that, will show how in the weeks leading up to the 6th, Donald Trump grew more desperate and summoned the mob to Washington. We will give the American public a more complete understanding of the final phase of President Trump and his supporters’ use of radical measures to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and overturn the 2020 election.”
Sources close to the committee would not confirm who the witnesses would be, citing security concerns, and told reporters that Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) will lead the proceedings.
The select committee aide said that the hearing will also explore the role of far-right militia groups, such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, in organizing the breach and how the QAnon conspiracy theory radicalized individuals to come to Washington.
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“We know that both members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with seditious conspiracy by the DOJ in relation to their actions on Jan. 6,” the aide said. “We’re also going to look at QAnon, which is based on a set of deranged, often anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which Donald Trump is a savior figure fighting against the dark forces in the deep state.”
The panel did not offer any additional information on whether former White House senior adviser Steve Bannon or Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) would publicly testify in future hearings. Bannon’s contempt-of-Congress trial starts Monday after the former Trump administration senior White House official stiffed the committee for eight months. Brooks, who recently lost an Alabama Senate bid, has also refused to testify on committee members’ terms.
