Panel sets surprise hearing as new evidence emerges
The House panel investigating last year’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol called a surprise hearing for today to “present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony,” according to statement.
The abruptly scheduled 1 p.m. ET hearing was announced Monday after the committee said last week it planned to take a pause until next month.
The committee didn’t outline the new evidence and testimony that prompted the hearing.
The committee last Thursday interviewed British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder about footage he has of former President Donald Trump after the election and leading up to the assault on the Capitol by his supporters.
Holder’s footage also has interviews with Trump family members, including
Ivanka Trump, her husband, Jared Kushner, and Eric Trump.
In a statement posted on Twitter last week, Holder said he was working on a documentary series about the final six weeks of
Trump’s reelection campaign and his footage includes never-before-seenfootage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.
As television programming goes, expectations were widespread that the
Jan. 6 committee hearings would essentially be reruns. Instead, they have been much more.
The five sessions have revealed a storyteller’s eye, with focus, clarity, an understanding of how news is digested in modern media and strong character development — even if Trump’s allies suggest there aren’t enough actors.
The hearings are concise, no more than 2 ½ hours, each day with a specific theme. It goes like this: first, viewers are told at the outset what they’re going to hear. Then they hear it. Then they are told at the end what they just heard.
Usually there’s a preview of what’s next — a trick that likely reflects the advice of James Goldston, a former ABC News producer hired as a consultant.
Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, DMiss., and Republican Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, RWyo., question witnesses alongside one other member who is in charge of each hearing.
The result is a rare sight in Congress: lawmakers staying silent.
“I’m surprised by the discipline involved in doing this effectively, because politicians love to grandstand,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a specialist in political communication and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “And if people were grandstanding, it wouldn’t work.”
As a result, sound bites that emerge from each hearing and are repeated online and in news reports — the way many Americans learn about these sessions — consistently reflect the narrative the committee is trying to advance, Jamieson said.
Each day’s hearing fits the overall theme — that the plot to nullify the 2020 election was multifaceted, with the events of Jan. 6, 2021, only one part, and that many of the people surrounding Trump didn’t believe his claims of election fraud.