WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to return to prime time Thursday for what could be the finale of the summer hearing schedule: a session focused on the 187 minutes of inactivity of former President Donald J. Trump as a mob of his supporters attacked Congress.
The hearing, scheduled for July 21 at 8 p.m., is expected to provide a detailed account of how Mr. Trump withstood multiple pleas from staffers, lawyers and even his own family to call off the attack, which continued for hours in the early afternoon. from January 6, 2021.
Representatives Elaine Luria, Democrat from Virginia, and Adam Kinzinger, Republican from Illinois, are expected to lead the hearing.
One witness the panel was able to hear is Sarah Matthews, a former White House press officer who resigned in the wake of Jan. 6. like ‘pouring gasoline on the fire’.
Mr Trump had tried in vain Mr. Pence to pressure to reject the official tally of the electoral votes by Congress to elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president-elect and was in the Capitol when rioters broke into the building chanting “hang Mike Pence.”
The commission is also likely to play clips from other witnesses who attempted to intervene with Mr. Trump during those more than three hours, including White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone. The commission also said it received testimony from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Pence’s national security adviser, about Mr Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as the mob flooded the Capitol.
Mr. Kellogg said that Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, has urged her father to call off the violence at least twice, as have Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.
The panel has already heard testimony from witnesses about failed attempts to get Mr Trump to call for peace.
Most memorable is former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described to the committee how mr. Trump sided with the crowd and sympathized with their chants for Mr. pennies.
The hearing was initially scheduled to be the last in a series of summer sessions in which the panel would reveal its findings. But the commission has continued to gather new evidence, and lawmakers have hinted they could add more hearings to the schedule.
Key Revelations from the January 6 Hearings
Among the new wrinkles, the committee is examining the disappearance of secret service text messages from around the time of the attack.
The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service’s parent agency, met with the panel Friday and told lawmakers many of the texts were being erased as part of a device replacement program, even after the Inspector General had requested them as part of his investigation into the events of January 6.
The Secret Service has disputed parts of the inspector general’s findings, saying data on some phones was “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 keep its records and that it did not “maliciously” delete text messages.
Maryland Democrat and committee member Jamie Raskin said the panel 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 this and find all the missing texts,” Mr. Raskin told reporters on Capitol Hill. “They are missing, but in the age of advanced technology, we must not give up.”
On Friday, the committee also interviewed Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.comwho funded some of the legal efforts to undo the 2020 elections.
mr. Byrne attended what was arguably the most dramatic meeting of the Trump presidency on December 18, 2020in which Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, the pro-Trump attorney, urged to confiscate voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell as special counsel to work on undoing the election.
Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson and the Jan. 6 committee chair, said the panel also discussed what to do with some more high-profile potential witnesses.
Virginia Thomas, a political activist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is “still on the committee’s list” of witnesses to be called, even though she has rejected attempts to interview her, said Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson also told reporters that the panel continued to discuss – as members have been doing for months – whether it should try to call on Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence to testify, but lawmakers have not reached a conclusion on how to proceed.
The panel believes both men will likely fight attempts to have them testify, and some lawmakers fear a public battle over Mr Trump’s compliance would distract from the actual fact-finding investigation.
Mr Thompson has previously said the committee had ruled out a subpoena for Mr Pence, citing “important information” it had received from two of his aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.