Capitol riot back in focus as public hearings kick off
WASHINGTON: Nearly a year since its inception, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will go public with its findings starting this week as lawmakers hope to show the American public how democracy came to the brink of disaster.
The series of hearings that will take place over the next several weeks begin with a primetime session on Thursday night in which the nine-member panel plans to give an overview of its 11-month investigation.
More than 1,000 people have been interviewed by the panel, and only snippets of that testimony have been revealed to the public.
The first of six hearings is set to go live at 5:30 am (IST) on Friday. It will take place in a large House office building in the US Capitol complex. Lawmakers plan to have witnesses testify and to display a series of neverbefore-seen images and exhibits relating to the lead-up to the insurrection and the attack itself.
The select committee has yet to publicly announce who is expected to testify on Friday. But The Associated Press has been able to independently confirm that British filmmaker Nick Quested, who recorded members of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group as they stormed the building, and Caroline Edwards, a US Capitol Police officer who was seriously injured in the attack, will be among the witnesses.
The first hearing is expected to be a table-setter for the rest of the subsequent hearings.
The committee, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, plans to lay out several areas of information it has gathered throughout its investigation. Lawmakers are also expected to focus part of the first hearing on far-right extremists who broke into the building that day.
The panel’s probe has so far been divided into a series of focus areas, including the efforts by former President Trump and his allies to cast doubt on the election and halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory; the financing and organising 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.
Several members of the committee have promised new and explosive information to arise from the public hearings, but it remains unclear what that will entail. The hearings are expected to be exhaustive but not the final word from the committee. It plans to release subsequent reports ahead of the midterm elections in November.