Jan. 6 Committee to Hold Final Hearing On Sept. 28

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House of Representatives panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach, sitting beside panel Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), speaks in Washington on Oct. 19, 2021. Alex Wong/Getty Images

The U.S. House of Representative committee which is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the Capitol, will be holding its next hearing on the matter on Sept. 28, according to the chairman of the panel.

The public hearing on Sept. 28 will likely be final “unless something else develops,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters on Tuesday. An interim report detailing the conclusions of the investigation is planned to be released in early October, which is just a few weeks before the elections on Nov. 8—with the midterms deciding the party that will control Congress. The final report is planned for release in December.

Committee members are still debating over which topics will be discussed in the final meeting set to be held at 1 p.m. ET. Security lapses, delays in the deployment of the National Guard, and Trump’s actions after Jan. 6 are a few of the topics under consideration. The investigation has been going on for more than a year.

Thompson also told reporters that the committee has “substantial footage of what occurred and we have significant witness testimony that we haven’t used in other hearings.” The material could be discussed during the hearing.

The Democrat-led committee held eight hearings in June and July during which they disclosed the findings of the probe. The final report of the committee is expected to contain testimony from over 1,000 witnesses. It will provide conclusions on the matter as well as recommend new election reforms.

Misleading the Public

The Jan. 6 committee has been accused of spreading false information about the Capitol breach among the public. In a Sept. 16 tweet, the committee uploaded a video claiming that it was a recording of communications over a walkie-talkie app among Oath Keepers who were inside the Capitol on Jan. 6.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, Jonathon Moseley, who formerly represented Oath Keepers defendant Kelly Meggs, dismissed these claims.

“I can speak from personal, direct, first-hand knowledge that this is a 2-hour, 20-minute recording of people watching TV … This is NOT Oath Keepers at the Capitol,” he said. The committee’s post combines audio clips with an unrelated video to make it seem like Oath Keepers were speaking through radios in the Capitol, Mosley added.

Several attorneys defending Oath Keepers have warned that such kind of utterances from the Jan. 6 committee will make it difficult for defendants to get a fair trial in the District of Columbia, which has a population of mostly Democrats.

In an Aug. 5 commentary for The Epoch Times, investigative journalist Paul Sperry pointed out that committee chair Thompson claimed that police officers were killed by the rioters. However, no police officer was killed in the incident, Sperry states.

Thompson also insisted that Trump had summoned a heavily armed and angry mob. But Sperry points out that not a single gun was recovered from the riots. The only gun used in the incident was when a Capitol officer shot Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protestor.

“Despite airing endless footage of rioters breaching the Capitol and fighting police, the committee omitted footage of USCP Lt. Michael Byrd shooting Babbitt from behind a doorway without warning, which was the most violent incident that occurred that day,” Sperry writes.