House Jan. 6 committee announces last-minute hearing Tuesday
The House Jan. 6 committee unexpectedly announced Monday that it will hold a hearing on Tuesday, June 28. The move comes days after the committee said it would not be holding more hearings until July.
The hearing is scheduled to take place at 1 p.m. ET, with the committee saying it plans to "present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony."
The House is currently in the middle of a two-week recess.
In last week's hearings, there were stunning revelations about former President Donald Trump's pressure campaigns against state lawmakers, local elections officials and the Justice Department. Thursday's hearing focused on former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer with no criminal prosecution experience who Trump wanted to install as attorney general because he wished to help Trump promote his false claims of the stolen election.
Clark's home was raided by law enforcement officials on Wednesday, the day before the hearing that focused on his role in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack.
Since the public hearings began on June 9, members of the committee have said that they have received new evidence. Last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee, said "there's been a deluge of new evidence since we got started" with the public hearings.
For instance, the committee met last week with documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who met with Trump and members of his family both before and after Jan. 6. Holder told "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell that Trump didn't take responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack.
"I think what was staggering was that he essentially gave the reason why they were there without fully understanding that he was responsible for that reason," Holder said in the first interview since his deposition.
Thompson said the committee will incorporate Holder's material into future hearings. "It's been significant," Thompson said of Holder's video, adding, "It's a lot of video we have not been privy to."
Committee members had also initially said they weren't interested in speaking with the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas, who attended the rally at the Ellipse and urged former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to work on overturning the 2020 election results. But since the public hearings began, the committee has learned that Ginni Thomas corresponded with Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman, who was involved in the campaign to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election results.
Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered Eastman to turn over 159 documents to the House select committee that he had attempted to withhold, claiming executive privilege.
Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said last week that Ginni Thomas said she would appear before the committee, although it was unclear under what format. "We'll have to set through the parameters," Thompson told reporters on Friday.
