The January 6th Committee announced this week that they will be extending their public hearings for several more weeks to review “additional evidence”.
Initially the Committee was scheduled to hold their final 2 public hearings at the end of June. Now, with the change, the public hearings are expected to run well into July.
“The Select Committee continues to receive additional evidence relevant to our investigation into the violence of January 6th and its causes. Following tomorrow’s hearing, we will be holding additional hearings in the coming weeks. We will announce dates and times for those hearings soon.”
According to January 6th Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, there will be “at least 2” additional hearings starting on the week of July 11th once the House returns from their Independence Day recess. He has not ruled out adding additional days to the schedule beyond that, either.
The notion of extending the hearings even further was backed up by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md, who said, “There may well be a need for future hearings because of information elicited because of the hearings.”
The January 6th Committee made the decision to extend the hearings after British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who was documenting Trump and his family directly at the time of the Capitol riot, confirmed in a statement that he had “fully complied with all of the committee’s requests” His footage includes full interviews with Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence around that time.
One of only 2 Republican congresspeople on the committee, Liz Cheney, said the final hearings will focus on how former President Trump “summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the U.S. Capitol” and “ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.”
Despite boastful claims by committee members of incriminating evidence against the former leader, Committee Chairman Thompson has thrown cold water on those assertions, saying the committee doesn’t plan to push for charges from the DOJ.
Republicans have frequently suggested that the January 6th Committee hearings are just a distraction from Biden’s political failures. Do you think they will try and extend the hearings until November to try and swing the elections in favor of Democrats? Will it work?