WASHINGTON-
The prime-time hearing of a US House of Representatives committee on Thursday will offer the most compelling evidence yet of the then US president’s “dereliction of duty” at the US Capitol, they said. committee members on Sunday.
“This will open people’s eyes in a big way,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, a member of the House committee investigating the unrest and who will help lead Thursday’s session with Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Ill. Virginia. “The president did nothing.”
After a year-long investigation, the Jan. 6 House panel is looking to wrap up what could be its last hearing, even as its investigation continues to heat up.
The committee says it continues to receive new evidence every day and is not ruling out additional hearings or interviews with a group of people close to the president. One such figure is Steve Bannon, whose trial begins this week on criminal charges of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the House committee’s subpoena.
The committee also issued an extraordinary subpoena last week to the Secret Service to produce texts beginning Tuesday, January 5 and 6, 2021, after conflicting reports about whether they were removed.
But panel members say Thursday’s hearing will be the most specific to date in crafting and combining previously known details about how Trump’s actions were at odds with his constitutional legal duty to stop the Jan. 6 riots. . Unlike members of the public who generally do not have a duty to take action to prevent crime, the Constitution requires a president to “see to it that the laws be faithfully executed.”
“The Commander-in-Chief is the only person in the Constitution whose duty is explicitly stated to ensure that laws are faithfully executed,” Luria said. “I see it as a dereliction of duty. (Trump) did not act. He had a duty to act.”
Thursday’s audience will be the first in primetime since the June 9 debut that was watched by an estimated 20 million people.
Luria said the hearing will highlight additional testimony from White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other witnesses, not yet seen before, “who will add much value and information to the events of that critical moment on January 6.” . He cited Trump’s inaction for more than three hours, along with a tweet that afternoon criticizing Vice President Mike Pence for his lack of courage to challenge Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election that may have served to incite the mob.
“We’ll be going virtually minute by minute over that period of time, from the moment he left the stage at Ellipse, returned to the White House and actually sat in the White House, in the dining room, with his advisers continually urging action, to take more action,” Luria said.
The hearing comes at a critical point for the panel, which is racing to finalize findings for a final report this fall. The committee originally hoped at this point to wrap up much of its investigation with a final hearing, but is now considering possible options for additional interviews and hearings, panel members said.
“This investigation is ongoing,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat. “The fact that a series of hearings will conclude this Thursday does not mean that our investigation is over. It’s very active, new witnesses come forward, additional information comes forward.”
For example, last week the committee took an unusual step by issuing a subpoena to the Secret Service, a department of the executive branch. That came after he received a closed report from the Department of Homeland Security watchdog that the Secret Service had deleted texts from around Jan. 6, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The finding raised the alarming possibility that evidence could be lost that could shed more light on Trump’s actions during the insurrection, particularly after earlier testimony about his run-in with security while trying to join supporters on Capitol Hill.
“That’s what we have to get to the bottom of,” Luria said, regarding possible missing texts. “Where are these text messages? Can they be recovered? And we have subpoenaed them because they are legal records that we need to see for the committee.”
Luria spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Lofgren was on ABC’s “This Week” and Kinzinger appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
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Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.