House Jan. 6 select committee schedules next hearing for Oct. 13
Washington — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol will hold its next public hearing Oct. 13, the committee announced Thursday, less than a month before voters head to the polls for the November midterm elections.
The hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET and comes after the House panel postponed a Sept. 28 hearing as Hurricane Ian was barreling down on Florida's southwest coast. One of the committee's members, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, is a Democrat whose Florida district includes part of Orlando.
Last week, the committee met with Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, behind closed doors. The panel's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, told reporters after her more than four-hour-long interview that she answered "some questions," and said her answers will be included in the next hearing if she provided investigators with "something of merit."
A source familiar with her appearance before the committee told CBS News afterward that Thomas had delivered an opening statement, in which she said that she has "never" spoken to her husband about pending cases before the Supreme Court, calling it an "iron clad rule in our home."
She also told the committee that her husband is "uninterested in politics," and said in her statement, "I generally do not discuss with him my day-to-day work in politics, the topics I am working on, who I am calling, emailing, texting or meeting."
The committee asked Thomas to appear voluntarily after learning she corresponded with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who helped craft the legal strategy to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally reject state electoral votes following the 2020 presidential election.
Thomas also sent emails to at least two Wisconsin Republican state lawmakers days after the election, pushing them to name an alternate slate of presidential electors to support President Donald Trump. Thomas also corresponded via text message with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the days following the election, urging him to overturn the results. Ginni Thomas denied her husband knew of her texts with Meadows.
The delayed Sept. 28 hearing was supposed to be the committee's ninth and final one and give its members the chance to reveal new information they learned over the summer. The panel planned to draft an interim report in mid-October, Thompson said last month, and finalize its report before the end of the year.
The committee held a series of eight public hearings early this summer, across which it laid out what investigators said was a multi-pronged campaign from Trump and his allies to thwart the presidential transfer of power and keep Trump in office.
The hearings featured previously unseen footage from Jan. 6, as well as clips from video interviews from Trump's closest advisers in the White House and outside allies, and in-person testimony from top Justice Department officials, state elections officials and former White House aides.
The postponed hearing was expected to feature clips from an upcoming documentary, shot over a three-year period, featuring Roger Stone, a longtime informal adviser and ally to Trump, a source familiar with the committee's plans told CBS News last month. The source said the filmmaker gave the committee 14 clips from the documentary, called "A Storm Foretold," which is expected to be released this year.
Stone told CBS News in a statement that he challenged the "accuracy and the authenticity of these videos and believe they have been manipulated and selectively edited." He also called it "categorically false" that he "knew in advance about, participated in or condoned any illegal activity" on Jan. 6.
"The excerpts you provided below prove nothing, certainly they do not prove I had anything to do with the events of Jan. 6. That being said, it clearly shows I advocated for lawful congressional and judicial options," he said.
Caroline Linton, Jeff Pegues and Nikole Killion contributed to this report