Jan. 6 hearings will continue into July : NPR

The House Jan. 6 select committee held its fourth public hearing on Tuesday.

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The Washington Post via Getty Images

The House Jan. 6 select committee held its fourth public hearing on Tuesday.

The Washington Post via Getty Images

The House Jan. 6 committee is extending the timetable for its public hearings into July.

Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters that Thursday’s hearing, focused on former President Donald Trump’s pressure on the Department of Justice, will be the last for the month of June with more hearings to come after Congress’ July 4^th recess. The House will reconvene the week of July 11, and Thompson indicated that’s the earliest hearings would likely resume.

A committee aide tells NPR’s Claudia Grisales: “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.”

Thompson said the new evidence the committee has includes hours of video footage handed over by a British documentarian who followed Trump, his family and aides, as well as conducting interviews with them, for weeks before and after the 2020 election. Thompson also said there is “a lot of information to the tip line” that the committee has set up.

Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said at Tuesday’s hearing that Trump’s former White House counsel Pat Cipollone should testify and that the committee is still working to make that happen. Over the weekend, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the committee has more witnesses it would like to hear from and wouldn’t rule out a subpoena for former Vice President Mike Pence.

The committee had originally been expected to hold hearings throughout the month of June, followed by a report on its findings in September.

The committee had planned at least two more hearings beyond tomorrow’s session, to lay out their case that Trump “summoned a violent mob and directed them illegally to march on the United States Capitol” and another hearing on Trump’s inaction to stop the violence on Jan. 6. Given that the committee is considering new evidence and potentially new witnesses, it’s possible other hearings will be added.