Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said that the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Capitol breach will release “all the evidence” it has gathered before the new Congress sits in January.
Lofgren serves on the Democrat-dominated select committee.
Over the course of several hearings, the committee has tried to push the narrative that the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in 2021 was the culmination of an intentional plot by former President Donald Trump to overthrow the United States government.
“Within a month, the public will have everything that we’ve found, all the evidence,” Lofgren said during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“For good or ill,” she added.
Lofgren said that since the Jan. 6 panel began its investigation, it has “made a compelling presentation that the former president was at the center of the effort to overturn a duly elected election, assembled the mob, sent it over to Congress to try and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.”
Criticism
The credibility of the panel’s information has, on several occasions, come under fire, and the panel has faced repeated allegations of partisanship by critics.Trump has dismissed the panel as a “partisan witch hunt,” an attitude shared by several Republicans.
Some testimony provided to the committee has also been scrutinized by critics.
Ed Martin, a top attorney for defendants arrested in connection to the events of Jan. 6, told The Epoch Times in an interview that one of the deepest-running flaws of the panel is its lack of adversarial voices, particularly after Pelosi refused McCarthy’s Republican appointees.
“You want in a process that has an adversarial tone to it,” Martin said. “You would have questions generated—that’s the reason you have an adversarial process, is to generate tension in the fact finding area to see what comes up and what doesn’t. When you have zero [adversarial voices] as they did in this case, you don’t really know what you’re missing.”
Martin added, “This is one of the many reasons it’s such an affront, the January 6 Select Committee. There are many reasons but one of them is the lack of adversarial process.”
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), another Republican originally pegged by McCarthy to sit on the committee, told The Epoch Times that the committee’s real raison d'être has been to try deprive Trump of another term in the White House.
Nehls argued that Pelosi could have prevented the breakdown of order on Jan. 6 if she had honored then-U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund’s request for National Guardsmen to be present on the day.
The reason this didn’t happen, Nehls opined, was to give Democrats an opportunity to denigrate Trump.
“I think Nancy Pelosi could have prevented all this,” Nehls said. “They could have prevented it but they chose not to—they chose not to.
“Now, what they’re doing with this January 6 committee ... they’re using it to try to keep Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024. That’s what this sham committee is all about,” he added.
Panel Set to Dissolve Soon
The Jan. 6 panel is set to dissolve at the end of this Congress, with Republicans highly unlikely to renew it for another two years.The controversial panel was formed at the beginning of the 117th Congress in an almost totally party-line vote. Only two Republicans—Ranking Member Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), both of whom are virulent Trump critics—sit on the committee.
Cheney was selected for the top spot on the panel after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made the unprecedented decision to refuse McCarthy’s picks for the committee. McCarthy attempted to have Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and others named to the committee, but these picks were refused.
Historically, the minority leader has been in charge of choosing committee assignments for their party.
At the time, Pelosi defended the move.
“The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision,” she contended.
Though Kinzinger had already decided that he would not run again, Cheney attempted to hold onto her seat in the ultra-red stronghold of Wyoming. Despite hopes that she could convince enough Democrats to vote for her in the Republican primary, Cheney was defeated by Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman.
Hageman has since then won her race, and will sit as Wyoming’s only U.S. representative during the 118th Congress.
The panel will be dissolved following the seating of the 118th Congress, and would need to be reauthorized by a majority vote to continue existing. Because Republicans have secured enough seats to be the majority party in the lower chamber next year, this is highly unlikely to happen.
These range from questions about the circumstances surrounding Trump supporters’ deaths that day, whether the FBI was involved in the attack, and others.
Though the committee voted in favor of a motion by Cheney to subpoena Trump, Trump has challenged the subpoena in court. The dispute likely will not be resolved before the dissolution of the Jan. 6 panel.
