When is the next committee hearing on the January 6 attack on the Capitol and what can we expect?
The January 6 committee will conduct its fifth hearing on Thursday to share with the American public what it has uncovered over months of investigations.
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol will hold their next hearing 23 June, starting at 3 pm ET. This will be the fifth day of witness testimony into the events that led up to a violent mob assaulting the seat of American democracy.
The next session will focus on how former President Trump tried to strong arm the Justice Department attempting to enlist the top law agency in the seditious plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Three top officials who led the department after former Attorney General Bill Barr resigned in the final days of the Trump administration are expected to testify.
Also see:
What can we expect to hear on Day 5 of the January 6 investigation hearings
The fifth House Select Committee hearing, which is scheduled for Thursday afternoon, will be led by one of the committee’s two Republican members, Adam Kinzinger. Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue are expected to testify on the pressure campaign applied by Trump and how they pushed back on the DOJ advancing bogus claims of fraud in the election.
Trump wanted the department to put its weight behind various strategies that had been cooked up to give credence to the “Big Lie”. This included filing lawsuits on behalf of the Trump campaign and appointing a special counsel to investigate fraud claims. Also, Trump wanted the Justice Department to send letters to states that Biden won with Republican-led State Houses expressing concern about the “sanctity of their elections”.
Trump threatened to replace head of Justice Department
Rosen and Donoghue were hounded by President Trump for not doing more to address his unfounded claims of election fraud. According to a report by the Senate Judiciary Committee in the time between former Attorney General Barr leaving the Trump administration and 3 January 2021, the former president pressured them in nine calls and Oval Office meetings “where Trump directly raised discredited claims of election fraud”.
In one of those discussions with the former president, Trump said, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” according to testimony. Due to their refusal to meet his demands, Trump suggested replacing the leadership at DOJ with Jeffrey Bossert Clark, an environmental lawyer with the department. The former president had “heard good things” about Clark in reference to him being willing to go along with Trump’s plans to overturn the 2020 election results.
It is expected that the third witness that is scheduled to be called before the January 6 panel, former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel, will testify to how he informed Trump of what the consequences of Rosen being replaced by Clark would be. When the former President put forth the idea saying “What do I have to lose?”, Donoghue said that he would resign right then and there.
Engel, according to testimony, then informed Trump that his entire leadership at DOJ and attorney generals across the US would also quit en masse. The Justice Department would be “a graveyard; there would be no one left,” for Clark to lead.