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The House Jan. 6 committee is set to unveil “surprising” details including evidence from Donald Trump’s Secret Service about the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol in what is likely to be its last public hearing before the November midterm elections.
The hearing Thursday afternoon, the 10th public session by the panel, is expected delve into Trump’s “state of mind” and the central role the defeated president played in the multipart effort to overturn the election, according to a committee aide who discussed the plans on condition of anonymity.
The committee is starting to sum up its findings: Trump, after losing the 2020 presidential election, launched an unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. The result was the deadly mob siege of the Capitol.
“The mob was led by some extremist groups — they plotted in advance what they were going to do,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a committee member, told CNN. “And those individuals were known to people in the Trump orbit.”
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is poised to gavel in Thursday’s session at an otherwise empty Capitol complex, with most lawmakers at home campaigning for reelection. Several people who were among the thousands around the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now running for congressional office, some with Trump’s backing.
The session will serve as a closing argument by the panel’s two Republican lawmakers, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who have essentially been shunned by Trump and their party and will not be returning in the new Congress. Cheney lost her primary election and Kinzinger decided not to run.
Another committee member, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a retired Naval commander, is in a tough reelection bid against state Sen. Jen Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot.
Unlike past hearings, this one is not expected to feature live witnesses, though the panel is expected to share information from its recent interviews — including testimony from Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
