To do that, the committee will put two military veterans front and center — Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Virginia, and Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois — at the center of its presentation and questioning. Ms. Luria, the only Democrat on the panel running in a competitive re-election race, served in the Navy for more than 20 years and reached the rank of commander. Mr. Kinzinger is an Air Force veteran who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the witnesses they plan to cross-examine in person, Matthew Pottinger, who was deputy national security adviser under Mr. Trump and the highest-ranking White House official who resigned on Jan. 6, 2021, is a Marine Corps veteran. In an interview previewing the hearing, which is scheduled for 8pm on July 21, Ms Luria said the panel planned to document in great detail how Mr Trump did nothing for more than three hours, while his supporters stormed the Capitol, raising moral, ethical and legal questions surrounding the former president. “The captain of a ship can’t sit there and watch the ship burn to the waterline and do nothing to stop it,” Ms. Luria said, citing her experience in the Navy, where she worked on nuclear reactors. “And that’s exactly what he did.”
Key revelations from the January 6 hearings
Ms. Luria said the committee planned to elicit in-person accounts of what happened in the West Wing on Jan. 6 from Mr. Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, a former White House press secretary who resigned after the riot. He also plans to play taped testimony from Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and others to document Mr. Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6. “We have testimonies from people who observed him,” Ms Luria said. “There was no worry, no anger, no anxiety. He wasn’t upset by it.” The committee plans to prove that Mr. Trump had the power to withdraw the mob, but declined to do so until after 4 p.m. that day — and then only after hundreds of officers responded to the Capitol to support the embattled Capitol Police force and the tide had begun to turn on the mob, making it clear that the siege would fail, according to committee aides. The panel also plans to present results from Mr. Trump’s Jan. 7 video remarks, in which he struggled to condemn the violence and promise a peaceful transfer of power, according to a person familiar with the panel’s plans. The plans to display the outputs were reported earlier by the Washington Post. Representative Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi and chairman of the committee, plans to chair the hearing remotely after testing positive for Covid-19 this week. The committee has already begun analyzing some of its evidence of Mr. Trump’s inaction. Ms Matthews told the panel that a tweet Mr Trump sent to Vice President Mike Pence while the riot was under way was like “adding petrol to the fire”. Mr. Trump had tried unsuccessfully to pressure Mr. Pence, who was inside the Capitol as rioters stormed the building chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” to reject the official count of congressional electoral votes to confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president-elect. . Both Mr Pottinger and Ms Matthews cited this tweet as contributing to their desire to leave the White House. “These were people who believed in the work of the administration, yet today, when faced with the conditions, the president’s inaction and some of the statements he made, they decided they were done, they were going to resign,” Ms. Luria said. “That’s very powerful when you hear directly from them.” The committee also said it received testimony from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pence’s national security adviser. He told the panel that Ivanka Trump, Trump’s eldest daughter, urged her father at least twice to stop the violence, as did Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary. The panel also released text messages from Fox News hosts, including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, calling on him to do more to stop the violence that day. “Everyone who came into contact with him that day and everyone who had access to him, from what they’ve shared with the committee, put some degree of effort into getting him to do more,” Ms. Luria said. At each hearing this summer, the committee has presented evidence that lawmakers and aides believe could be used to bolster a criminal case against Mr. Trump. The committee has revealed new details they believe could prove a conspiracy to defraud the American people and Mr Trump’s own donors. revelations about his plan to submit false voter information that could lead to charges of filing false government documents. and revelations about his plan to disrupt the election count on Capitol Hill that suggest he could be prosecuted for obstructing an official congressional proceeding. While there are penalties for members of the military found derelict in their duties, Ms. Luria said she was not sure Mr. Trump could be charged with a criminal offense as a result of his inaction. Still, he said, Thursday’s hearing was expected to be a milestone in a series of hearings in June and July in which the commission presented its initial findings from more than 1,000 interviews. The commission is expected to continue its investigation, strengthening its work ahead of releasing a preliminary report in September. The commission could also convene more public hearings, members said.
