The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol will go public with its findings in a prime-time hearing next week, the start of what lawmakers hope will be a high-profile airing of the causes and consequences of the domestic attack on the U.S. government.
Lawmakers plan to hold a series of hearings in June that they promise will lay out, step-by-step, how former President Donald Trump and his allies worked feverishly to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, spreading lies about widespread voter fraud — widely debunked by judges and his own administration — that fueled a violent assault on the seat of democracy.
The six hearings, set to begin June 9 and expected to last until late June, will be the first time the committee discloses “previously unseen material” about what it has discovered in the course of a sprawling 10-month investigation that has touched nearly every aspect of the insurrection.
The committee, which has called Jan. 6 “one of the darkest days of our democracy,” was formed in the aftermath to “investigate the facts, circumstances, and causes relating to the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.”
Unlike any other congressional committee in recent times, the panel’s work has been both highly anticipated by Democrats and routinely criticized by Trump and the former president’s allies, including some Republicans in Congress, who complain it is partisan.
More than 1,000 people have been interviewed by the panel, and only brief snippets of that testimony have been revealed to the public, mostly through court filings. The hearings are expected to showcase a series of witnesses, but the committee has not yet publicly released the names.
The investigation has focused on every aspect of the insurrection, including the efforts by Trump and his allies to cast doubt on the election and halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory; the financing and organizing of rallies in Washington that took place before the attack; security failures by Capitol Police and federal agencies; and the actions of the rioters themselves.
The hearings are expected to be exhaustive, but not the final word from the committee, which plans to release subsequent reports on its findings, including recommendations on legislative reforms, ahead of the midterm elections.