JANUARY 6 HEARING: Chair Bennie Thompson reveals panel may hold a vote TODAY on a referral of criminal charges – and Liz Cheney says we ‘cannot only punish the foot soldiers who stormed our Capitol’
The January 6 select committee is holding on Thursday afternoon what could be its last televised hearing before the 2022 midterms and ahead of the release of its full report on the Capitol attack.
The nine-member panel is gathering publicly for the first time since its series of primetime hearings wrapped earlier this summer to make the final case against Donald Trump and his role in the January 6 Capitol riot.
The House Jan. 6 committee meets at 1 p.m. ET in what could be the final hearing about its U.S. Capitol insurrection investigation. Over eight hearings in the summer, the Democrat-led committee laid out its case that former President Donald Trump was at the center of the 2020 election fraud conspiracy that ultimately led to the deadly riot at the Capitol.
Get caught up:
- New evidence: The committee is expected show new Jan. 6 evidence — but with no live witnesses and no particular topic of focus as its other hearings have. “This one is going to look a little bit different,” a select committee aide said.
- Rewind to July: The panel last met publicly in July, when it focused on the 187 minutes Trump went dark during the riot. Recap that hearing and revisit key moments since the series started in early June
- Key moments: Revisit some of the revelations from the past 8 blockbuster hearings.
Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney says another Jan. 6 could happen without accountability
Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in her opening remarks that another attack like Jan. 6 could happen again “if we do not take necessary action to prevent it.”
“Without accountability, it all becomes normal and will recur,” Cheney said.
Cheney said Trump was the “central cause” of the insurrection and was “personally and substantially involved in all of it.” The hearing today, she said, will focus on Trump’s state of mind and intentions.
Cheney said in her statement that the committee may decide to make a “series of criminal referrals” to the Department of Justice, but she reiterated that it is not the committee’s role to make decisions regarding prosecutions.
Previous hearings have drawn millions of viewers
Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., used part of his opening statement to urge viewers to focus on the facts and evidence about to be presented. He specifically addressed people who may be tuning in for the first time.
It’s not clear how big an audience that actually is. But we do have some viewership numbers from previous hearings, thanks to the Nielsen Company.
Some 20 million people tuned into the committee’s first hearing on June 9, and an estimated 17.7 million watched the second prime-time hearing on July 21, the Associated Press has reported.
The six other hearings held during the daytime averaged 11.2 million viewers, with a peak audience of 13.2 million on June 28 — a surprise hearing that featured explosive testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson about Trump’s behavior.
NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik has reported on how the committee has used tricks of the TV trade to make its hearings easy to follow. Read that here.
