The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building will hold at least one more public hearing before concluding its work.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), the chair of the January 6 committee, told reporters on Tuesday that the committee will hold what could be its final public meeting on September 28 at 1 pm Eastern Time.
However, the committee may schedule additional hearings if more witnesses come forward with evidence relating to the attack or attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Thompson said.
“I can say that unless something else develops, this hearing at this point is the final hearing. But it’s not in stone because things happen,” he explained.
According to Thompson, the hearing will include “significant witness testimony” that hasn’t been heard yet, along with previously unaired footage of the attack on the Capitol.
Some of the most notable evidence introduced by the committee so far includes behind the scenes footage of former President Donald Trump struggling to condemn the actions of the mob who attacked the Capitol in his name and the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows who said that Trump was aware that some of the mob was armed as they were marching toward Congress on the morning of January 6.
In recent weeks, the work of the January 6 committee has been somewhat overshadowed by the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, last month, which resulted in the retrieval of 11,000 government documents, including more than 100 documents that were marked as classified. But the committee’s work remains ongoing — and the Department of Justice recently requested information obtained by the panel relating to the fake electors plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, indicating that the committee’s findings have been deemed relevant by investigators within that department.
It’s possible that one of the final witnesses to testify in the September 28 hearing will be a critical one: The committee announced on Wednesday that Ginni Thomas, a conservative political activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, will soon testify before them.
It’s unclear whether Thomas’s testimony will be included in the committee’s final hearing, or, if it is included, whether the testimony will be live or pre-recorded. But it’s likely the committee will inquire about her attempts to convince elections officials in Wisconsin and Arizona to overturn their states’ 2020 presidential outcomes. The committee will also likely question her about text messages she sent to Meadows days after Trump’s loss, encouraging him to press forward with false claims of election fraud in order to overturn the result.
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