WASHINGTON – The committee investigating the 2021 US Capitol assault plans to stage public hearings in June, it said yesterday, and release its findings at the height of the midterm election campaign later this year.
Across eight hearings, key witnesses interviewed by the congressional probe will testify publicly for the first time on the alleged plot that led to the January 6 insurrection as well as the events of the day itself.
“We’ll tell the story about what happened,” Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee probing the violence, told reporters.
“We will use a combination of witnesses, exhibits, things that we have through the tens of thousands of exhibits…as well as the hundreds of witnesses we deposed or just talked to in general.”
The hearings are expected to make for blockbuster television – potentially on a par with the Watergate hearings or Donald Trump’s two impeachments – as America relives minute by minute the day a mob of the defeated president’s supporters stormed Congress to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to 2020 election winner Joe Biden.
The bench of seven Democrats and two Republicans will explore allegations that Trump inspired the violence through months of false claims about election fraud, as part of an illegal plot to stay in power.
Trump and his inner circle deny all accusations of wrongdoing, characterising their election disinformation and alleged machinations to overturn the results as a good-faith attempt to clear up widespread corruption.
Trump’s ultra-loyal Republican base argues that the investigation is a “witch hunt” to distract from rampant inflation and a burgeoning immigration crisis ahead of elections in November that could see the Democrats lose control of Congress. – AFP, April 29, 2022
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