January 6 committee to have final hearing after revelations and focus on Trump

The House committee investigating the attack on Capitol on January 6, 2021 revealed key details surrounding the former president’s heated argument Donald Trump with the Secret Service when he was told he couldn’t make it to the scene – the latest in a series of findings stemming from the hearings due to come to an end this week.

THE CNN reported for the first time on Thursday that a Washington, D.C., police officer in the Secret Service motorcade confirmed details to the committee that related to an explosive public testimony earlier this month.

At the same time, the Secret Service undergoes further scrutiny this week due to the deletion of text messages on January 5th and 6th, 2021. On Friday (15th), the committee issued a subpoena to the Secret Service, requesting the messages of text.

The corroboration comes as the committee plans to address Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021 at its next hearing, which will focus on Trump’s response — or lack thereof — when protesters breached Capitol walls and forced lawmakers to flee. from their seats.

Committee members accused Trump of “dereliction of duty” for failing to act when the Capitol was under attack — and his vice president, Mike Pence was in danger.

Next week’s public hearing is the last eight planned, as the panel sought in each session to link Trump to the deadly attack that unfolded on Jan.

“There will be a lot of information, a lot more clarity about the details of the things that happened that day, what the people who were working in the White House were doing, around the president and even people advising him to do things, actions that he I wasn’t taking it based on reasoned advice,” he told CNN this week Democratic Representative from Virginia Elaine Luria, who will help lead the next hearing. “I see it as a dereliction of duty. He didn’t. He did not act to stop the violence.”

New details on Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden continue to emerge.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that a little-known conservative attorney, William Olson, spoke with Trump in December 2020 about efforts to recruit the Department of Justice to sign a U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit seeking to annul the results of the presidential elections.

Olson asked Trump to replace his then acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, if Rosen did not endorse the Supreme Court lawsuit, according to the memo.

He encouraged the former president to replace lawyers in the White House attorney’s office and to take election-related measures that would effectively amount to “martial law.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation is also expanding, as it has issued numerous subpoenas in recent weeks and is seeking information in all seven states where the Trump campaign has called up false voters as part of an effort to subvert the Electoral College.

In addition to accusing the protesters, the department asked questions about the organization of rallies that preceded the attack, searched the cell phone of a Trump election lawyer and the home of a former Justice Department official, and continued its jury activity in around extremist groups. With that, it is closing in on political circles around Trump.

While the DOJ investigation appears to be behind schedule in some aspects of the House committee’s work and the two investigations have largely operated separate from each other, they have also begun to intersect.

A prime time audience next week

The committee announced on Friday that it would hold the hearing on Thursday, July 21, at 8:00 pm local time — it’s the second session of the panel in prime time, to try to maximize audience and attention.

The panel did not say who will testify at next week’s hearing, although the CNN previously reported that Trump’s former deputy press secretary at the White House, Sarah Matthews, must be a witness.

The committee is also expected to rely heavily on video clips of testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former attorney at the White House . Cipollone sat down for a transcribed interview last week, and the committee used clips from the interview 14 times during Tuesday’s hearing, including playing a video of Cipollone discussing Trump’s response on Jan. prepare for next week’s hearing.

While next week is the last planned in the series of public hearings, the committee has said all along that it is not finished with its investigation.

Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of two Republicans on the panel, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview this week that the agency is still considering asking Trump to testify and may request a written response from Pence or issue a subpoena to him. testify.

Investigations around Trump

The Jan. 6 committee is just one of Trump’s potential investigative concerns, even as he considers moving forward with a 2024 presidential campaign announcement.

In Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney has issued subpoenas for the testimony of Trump allies before a special grand jury investigating the former president’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is seeking to overturn the subpoena for his testimony, which relates to at least two calls Graham made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff after the election.

In New York, Trump and his sons Donald and Ivanka are due to testify after losing court battles to avoid testifying in the state attorney general’s civil investigation into the Trump Organization.

Testimony was scheduled to begin next week but was temporarily postponed due to the death of Trump’s first wife, Ivana.

And in Washington, D.C., the efforts of the former Trump aide Steve Bannon to postpone his trial for contempt of Congress were rejected this week by a federal judge, and the trial is scheduled to begin next week.

Deleted Secret Service Texts Raise New Questions

New questions also emerged surrounding the Secret Service and the relationship to the Capitol Hill attack, related to the agency’s deletion of text messages on January 5 and 6, 2021, shortly after they were requested by oversight officials.

The inspector general of Homeland Security (DHS) sent a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security committees warning them that the messages had been deleted “as part of a device replacement program” after an oversight agency requested electronic communications from the Secret Service.

The House Homeland Security Committee is chaired by Representative Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who also chairs the House committee investigating January 6.

DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari met with the Jan. 6 committee behind closed doors on Friday, briefing panel members on the deleted text messages.

Thompson told CNN after the meeting Cuffari stated that the Secret Service was not fully cooperative. He added that the committee will work “to try to verify whether these texts can be resurrected.”

According to a source familiar with the briefing, the inspector general told the panel that the Secret Service did not conduct its own January 6 after-action review and chose to rely on the inspector general’s investigation.

“We had limited involvement with the Secret Service. We will continue with some additional involvement now that we have met with IG,” Thompson said.

The Secret Service responded in a statement on Thursday noting that the “insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false.”

“In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the OIG in every aspect – whether it be interviews, documents, emails or texts,” the agency said.

Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat on the Committee, said there appeared to be “contradictory statements” between the inspector general and the Secret Service about whether text messages had actually disappeared.

explosive witness

The Secret Service’s January 6 response was already under scrutiny in light of public testimony earlier this month from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former adviser to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who recounted details about Trump’s angry exchange with the Secret Service on January 6th.

In her public testimony, Hutchinson said that then White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato — who had previously worked for the Secret Service and then returned to the agency in 2021 — told her on Jan. 6 that Trump was furious. with the Secret Service’s decision to prevent him from going to the Capitol after his speech, and that “he reached out to the front of the vehicle to grab the steering wheel”.

Hutchinson said Ornato told her that Trump “then used his free hand to attack” his top Secret Service agent, Robert Engel.

She testified that Ornato told her the story in front of Engel, and that he did not dispute the report. Trump and his allies have tried to cast doubt on Hutchinson’s testimony — which included several damning additional details about Trump’s conduct.

After Hutchinson claimed that a Secret Service official who declined to make the record said that Engel would deny parts of the story and that the agents involved would publicly testify to that effect, though they did not return to the committee to testify.

Neither Engel nor Ornato commented publicly.

But further corroboration of Hutchinson’s account has emerged from his testimony. THE CNN reported earlier this month that two Secret Service sources said they had heard of Trump angrily demanding to go to Capitol Hill and berating his details when he didn’t get his way.

The sources told the CNN that stories circulated about the incident after January 6, which included details similar to those described by Hutchinson.

In addition CNN reported on Thursday that an official from the Metropolitan Police Department had corroborated details of Hutchinson’s account and reported what was seen to committee investigators.