On Thursday, the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will be returning to primetime in a hearing that is expected to feature testimony from two key former Trump White House aides as the panel explores what former President Donald Trump was doing as the deadly insurrection unfolded.
This will be the second public hearing that has been held during primetime hours, with the panel’s first primetime hearing on June 9 having been viewed by an estimated 20 million people.
Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., and GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., are set to lead Thursday’s hearing, which will examine former President Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters breached the Capitol. They are expected to specifically focus on what Trump was doing during the 187 minutes after rioters entered the capitol before Trump released a public response.
“We will go through pretty much minute by minute during that time frame, from the time he left the stage at the Ellipse, came back to the White House, and really sat in the White House, in the dining room, with his advisers urging him continuously to take action, to take more action,” said Rep. Luria on CNN’s State of the Union.
Lawmakers on the panel have said that this hearing will offer the most compelling evidence yet of Trump’s “dereliction of duty” that day, with witnesses detailing his failure to stem the angry mob.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who will be one of the committee members leading Thursday’s hearing, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday that the hearing will “open people’s eyes in a big way” about Trump’s behavior.
Two former White House aides are expected to testify on Thursday, namely former Deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and former Trump deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews, according to a person familiar with the plans.
Pottinger and Matthews both resigned from the Trump White House immediately after the Jan. 6, 2021 incident. When she resigned, Matthews said she was honored to serve in Trump’s administration, but stated that she was “deeply disturbed by what I saw,” she said at the time. “Our nation needs a peaceful transfer of power.”
It was reported at the time that Pottinger stepped down in response to Trump’s reaction to his supporters breaching the U.S. capitol.
The hearing will also highlight additional testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other witnesses not yet seen before.
Previous public hearings have highlighted the chaos in the White House during and in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6. The committee has also drawn attention to Trump’s efforts after Election day to push his baseless claims of voter fraud and that the election was ‘stolen’ on former Vice President Mike Pence, the Justice Department, state lawmakers as well as local elections officials.
Committee Chair, Rep. Bennie Thomspon, 74, will not be in attendance at Thursday’s hearing after he announced on Tuesday that he had tested positive for COVID-19. Despite this, the panel will still go ahead with the primetime hearing.
This will be the eighth hearing the select committee has held this summer and the ninth overall. It may be the last until the committee finishes its report after the yearlong investigation. The committee has said that it continues to receive fresh evidence each day and isn’t ruling out additional hearings or interviews.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. EST.
