WASHINGTON ( Associated Press) – Members of the House Committee investigating the Capitol riot will hold another hearing on June 21, this time focusing on former President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure state lawmakers and local election officials to rule out the outcome of the 2020 to change presidential elections.
The hearing will start at 1pm on June 21. Before the event begins, Nicole Ellis of PBS NewsHour will hold a live talk with White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López to preview the proceedings. Look at both events in the player above.
The trial is the fourth to be held by the committee this month. Several members indicated Sunday that they could sue additional witnesses, including former Vice President Mike Pence, and are waiting to hear from Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, about her role in the illegal plot around the 2020 election.
READ MORE: Who is Ginni Thomas and why is she important for the January 6 hearings?
Lawmakers have indicated they will release more evidence about Donald Trump’s alleged attempt to defraud supporters by raising funds from false claims of a stolen presidential election. They also undertook to provide relevant material to the Department of Justice by the end of the month for its criminal investigation.
The department complained in a letter last week that the committee was complicating its investigation by not sharing transcripts of its 1,000 interviews.
“We are not taking anything off the table in terms of witnesses who have not yet testified,” Rep. Adam Schiff, who described a Pence subpoena as “definitely a possibility”.
“We would still, I think, want more high-profile people to come before our committee,” Schiff, D-Calif.
For example, the committee was able to document most of Trump’s end of his call to Pence on the morning of the January 6, 2021 uprising, when the then president made his last plea for Pence to certify Joe Biden’s victory when Pence the score of the Electoral College in Congress. Members have not yet directly documented what Pence said in response.
READ MORE: Who are the witnesses testifying at the January 6 hearings?
The committee chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, recently said the committee is still “involved” with Pence’s lawyers, while also suggesting that it may not be necessary for him to appear because of testimony from many of Pence’s neighbors. employees.
Committee members also hope to find out more about Ginni Thomas’ own attempt to keep Trump in office and the potential conflict of interest that will be placed on her husband as a result on January 6, cases coming before the Supreme Court.
Republican State Rep. Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker, is scheduled to testify at the committee’s hearing Tuesday and focus on government officials who were contacted by Trump and the White House as Trump tried to reverse the results. Bowers will likely be asked about emails he received from Thomas requesting him and other government officials to set aside Biden’s 2020 victory and select their own set of voters.
“We have questions for her and we may also have questions for him,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
Thomas has publicly stated that she “can not wait” to appear before the committee after receiving their request by letter last week.
Along with the email to Arizona officials, Thomas, who attended a rally that Trump attended just before the Capitol riot, also wrote to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election, and encouraged him to work to reverse Biden’s victory. E-mails recently obtained by the committee also show that Thomas had e-mail communications with John Eastman, the lawyer who played a key role on behalf of Trump in attempts to pressure Pence to reverse the election.
“I think the committee will be interested, among other things, in whether it was discussed with Judge Thomas, as he has ruled on matters that have an impact or we will get some of this information,” Schiff said.
This past January, Thomas was the only member of the court to support an attempt by Trump to withhold documents from the January 6 committee.
Read more: The hearings of January 6 are underway. Here’s how to watch them
Lofgren said the committee would release additional evidence they had gathered about the “big rip off,” in which the committee claims Trump may have committed fraud by raising funds by making a false claim that the election was stolen.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Said the public will eventually have a clear picture of a “failure of the oath” by Trump.
“I think what we offer to the American people will definitely rise to a level of criminal involvement by a president,” he said.
Kinzinger also said he and his family received threats because of his role on the committee. He spoke of his concern that “there is violence in the future. … And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can not expect otherwise. “
Schiff appeared on Nation World News’s “State of the Union”, Praise was on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and Kinzinger was on ABC’s “This Week”.
Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Eric Tucker in Washington and Farnoush Amiri in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
