WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is scheduled to hold a hearing next Tuesday to reveal its findings about links between the efforts of former President Donald J. Trump to cancel the 2020 elections and the domestic violent extremist groups that helped orchestrate the siege of Congress.
The panel announced that the session will be held on July 12 at 10 am. It is expected to be led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, and Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Florida, who plan to outline the rise of the right-wing homegrown violent extremist groups that attacked the Capitol and how Mr. Trump built and inspired the crowd. The panel also plans to describe known connections and conversations between political actors close to Mr. Trump and extremists.
The hearing will be the first since explosive, surprise testimony last week from Cassidy Hutchinson, a junior White House aide to Mr. Trump, who came forward to provide exculpatory information about the president’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. She recounted how Mr. Trump, knowing his supporters were armed and threatening violence, wanted to relax security measures to allow them to move freely around Washington, urging them to march to the Capitol and join them there.
She testified that she overheard a conversation in which Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff and her boss at the time, said that Mr. Trump had personally sided with the rioters as they stormed the building and called for the hanging to Vice President Mike Pence, saying he deserves it and that his supporters are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
The special committee has held seven public hearings so far, starting with one last year in which it highlighted the testimony of four police officers who fought the Mafia and helped protect the Capitol.
After conducting more than 1,000 interviews, the commission began a series of public hearings last month to lay out the findings of its investigation, including one that focused heavily on the role the extremist group Proud Boys played in storming the building.
The next session focused on how Mr Trump spread the lie of a stolen election despite being repeatedly told the vote was legitimate, robbing his donors and defrauding his supporters in the process. The ensuing hearings focused on how Mr. Trump had pressured Mr. Pence, government officials and the Justice Department in a series of increasingly desperate efforts to overturn the election.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Mr. Raskin declined to provide specific details about communications between political actors close to Mr. Trump and militia groups. But he said it was clear that neither crowd would have come to Washington or descended on the Capitol had it not been for Mr. Trump’s leadership.
“Donald Trump drew the crowd; he called out the crowd in Washington,” Mr. Raskin said, adding: ”It was all aimed at the joint session of Congress.”
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