SUDDEN CHANGE: The House Select Committee schedules a surprise hearing for tomorrow
Washington D.C. is abuzz as the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol unexpectedly announced that it would be holding another public hearing tomorrow. The announcement comes after Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the chair of the committee, had previously announced that the televised portion of its hearings wouldn’t be continuing until after the House returns from its recess in mid-July.
The news of the previously unscheduled hearing came first from Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman, who initially posted to Twitter the news that the committee was considering adding the extra session.
🚨🚨NEWS: The Jan. 6 committee is considering holding a hearing TOMORROW. They had planned to push all hearings to July. This signals urgency.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 27, 2022
After Sherman let the cat out of the bag, the committee later confirmed it would be holding a hearing “to present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony” without specifying who the witnesses would be or what portion of the investigation the hearing would focus on.
Each of the previous five hearings that the House Select Committee has televised publicly has examined a very specific topic relating to the origins of the January 6th insurrection, with the last hearing focusing on Trump’s attempts to corrupt the Justice Department.
“The timeline of the hearings is driven, and continues to be driven, by the investigation. The select committee continues to receive relevant new evidence that we think is very important to the investigation,” a committee aide said.
“It’s important that our members (and) investigators take the time needed to assess that information and figure out how we’re going to use that information as we continue to make our presentation to the American people.”
Exactly what new evidence inspired the Committee to accelerate its hearing schedule is still unknown, but the panel did gain access to new Trump White House documents from the National Archives, as well as hours of footage taken by documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who was following Trump around with a film crew during the period around January 6th. Additional new information was also reportedly obtained through the public tip-line that the committee established in conjunction with the televised hearings.
Unless the committee issues a further update on the agenda for tomorrow’s hearings, the public will just have to wait until then to see what new bombshell may emerge.
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