The hearing, scheduled for 8pm on July 21, is expected to detail how Mr Trump resisted multiple pleas from staff, lawyers and even his family to stop the attack, which raged for hours in the early afternoon of January 6, 2021. Representatives Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, and Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, are expected to play leading roles in the hearing. One witness the panel could hear from is Sarah Matthews, a former White House press secretary who resigned after Jan. 6. He told the committee that a tweet Mr Trump sent to Vice President Mike Pence while it was underway was like “pouring petrol on the fire”. Mr. Trump had tried unsuccessfully to pressure Pence to reject the official congressional vote count to confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president-elect and was inside the Capitol as rioters stormed the building chanting “hang Mike Pence ». The committee is also likely to play excerpts from the testimony of other witnesses who tried to interject Mr. Trump during those three-plus hours, including Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. The committee also said it received testimony from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pence’s national security adviser, about Mr. Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as mobs engulfed the Capitol. Mr Kellogg said Ivanka Trump, Trump’s eldest daughter, had urged her father at least twice to stop the violence, as had Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary. . The committee has already heard testimony from witnesses about unsuccessful efforts to persuade Mr. Trump to seek peace. Most memorably, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described to the committee how Mr Trump sided with the mob and sympathized with their calls to execute Mr Pence. The hearing was originally scheduled to be the last in a series of summer meetings at which the commission would reveal its findings. But the committee continued to collect new evidence, and lawmakers hinted they could add more hearings to the schedule.
Key revelations from the January 6 hearings
Among the new wrinkles, the committee is looking into the disappearance of Secret Service text messages from the time of the attack. The committee subpoenaed the Secret Service on Friday night, seeking text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, which were allegedly deleted, as well as any after-action reports. The development came after the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service’s parent agency, met with the committee on Friday and told lawmakers that many of the texts were deleted as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had them request as part of his investigation into the events of January 6. The Secret Service disputed parts of the inspector general’s findings, saying data on some phones had been “lost” as part of a planned three-month “system migration” in January 2021, but none relevant to the investigation. The agency said the project was underway before it received notice from the inspector general to retain its data and that it did not delete “malicious” text messages. Representative Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland and a committee member, said the committee wants to hear more from the Secret Service to try to understand what happened. “The committee is absolutely determined to get to the bottom of it and find all the missing texts,” Mr. Raskin told reporters on Capitol Hill. “They are missing, but in the age of high technology, we must not give up.” On Friday, the committee also interviewed Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, who funded some of the legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Byrne was present at what was perhaps the most dramatic meeting of the Trump presidency on Dec. 18, 2020, in which Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, the pro-Trump lawyer, pressed to understand voting machines and name Ms. Powell as special counsel to work on overturning the election. Representative Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi and the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, said the committee was also discussing what to do about some potential high-profile witnesses. Virginia Thomas, a political activist who lobbied to overturn the 2020 election and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is “still on the committee’s list” of witnesses to call, even though she declined attempts to interview her , said Mr Thompson. . Mr. Thompson also told reporters that the committee had continued to debate — as members have for months — whether it should try to call Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence to testify, but lawmakers have not reached a conclusion on how they will proceed. The committee believes both men would likely fight efforts to get them to testify, and some lawmakers worry that a public battle over Mr. Trump’s compliance would distract from the real work of the finding. Mr Thompson has previously said the committee had ruled out subpoenaing Mr Pence, citing “significant information” he had received from two of his aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.
