The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is scheduled to return to prime time on Thursday to deliver a sort of closing argument in the case it brought against former President Donald J. Trump, accusing the former commander in chief of dereliction of duty for failing to call off the attack on his behalf.
To do that, the group will put two military veterans — Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Virginia, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois — front and center in leading its introduction and questioning.
Ms. Luria, the only Democrat on the panel running for a competitive re-election race, served in the Navy for more than 20 years and reached the rank of commander. Mr. Kinzinger is an Air Force veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the witnesses they plan to question in person, Matthew Pottinger, who was Mr. Trump’s deputy national security adviser and the highest-ranking White House official who resigned on Jan. 6, 2021, is a Marine Corps veteran .
In a preview interview for the hearing, which is scheduled for 8 p.m. on July 21, Ms. Luria said the panel planned to document in great detail how Mr. Trump did nothing for more than three hours while his supporters stormed the Capitol, raising ethical, moral and legal questions surrounding the former president.
“The captain of a ship can’t sit there and watch the ship burn to the waterline and do nothing to stop it,” Ms. Luria said, referring to her experience in the Navy, where she worked on nuclear reactors . “And that’s exactly what he did.”
Key takeaways from the January 6 hearings
Ms. Luria said the group planned to elicit personal accounts of what happened in the West Wing on Jan. 6 from Mr. Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, a former White House press aide who resigned after the riot. He also plans to play taped testimony from Pat A. Cipollone, a former White House adviser, and others to document Mr. Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6.
“We have accounts of people who observed it,” Ms. Luria said. “There was no worry, no anger, no suffering. He wasn’t upset about it.
The committee planned to demonstrate that Mr Trump had the authority to call the crowd back but refused to do so until after 4pm that day – and then only after hundreds of officers had responded to the Capitol to support overcrowded police Capitol forces, and began turning the tide on the mob, making it clear the siege would fail, according to committee aides.
The panel also plans to show excerpts of Mr. Trump’s video remarks from Jan. 7, in which he struggled to condemn the violence and promise a peaceful transfer of power, according to a person familiar with the committee’s plans. Plans to display the samples were previously reported by The Washington Post.
Rep. Benny Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee, plans to lead the hearing remotely after testing positive for Covid-19 this week.
The group has already begun detailing some of its evidence of Mr. Trump’s inaction. Ms Matthews told the committee that a tweet sent by Mr Trump attacking Vice President Mike Pence during the riot was like “pouring petrol on the fire”.
Mr. Trump tried unsuccessfully to pressure Mr. Pence, who was inside the Capitol as rioters stormed the building chanting “Ten Mike Pence,” to reject the official count of congressional electoral votes to confirm Joseph R .Biden Jr. as president-elect .
Both Mr Pottinger and Ms Matthews cited that tweet as contributing to their desire to leave the White House.
“These were people who believed in the work of the administration, but on this day when they were faced with the circumstances, the inaction of the president and some of the statements that he made, they decided that it was done, they were going to resign,” Ms. Luria said. “It’s very powerful when you hear from them directly.”
The committee also said it received testimony from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who served as Mr. Pence’s national security adviser. He told the panel that Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, had called on her father at least twice to end the violence, as had Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.
The panel also released text messages from Fox News anchors, including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, urging him to do more to stop the violence that day.
“Everyone who came into contact with him that day and everyone who had access to him, according to what they shared with the committee, made some kind of effort to try to get him to do more,” said Mr Mrs. Luria.
At each of its hearings this summer, the panel has presented evidence that lawmakers and aides believe could be used to support a criminal case against Mr. Trump. The committee revealed new details that they say could provide evidence of a conspiracy to defraud the American people and Mr. Trump’s own donors; revelations about his plan to submit false voter rolls, which could lead to charges of filing false documents with the government; and revelations about his plot to disrupt the election count on Capitol Hill, suggesting he could be prosecuted for obstructing official congressional proceedings.
While there are penalties for members of the military found to be dereliction of duty, Ms. Luria said she was not sure Mr. Trump could be charged with a criminal offense as a result of his inaction.
However, she said, Thursday’s hearing was expected to be the culmination of a series of hearings in June and July in which the group laid out its initial findings from more than 1,000 interviews.
The group is expected to continue its investigation, adding to its work pending the publication of a preliminary report in September. The commission may also hold more public hearings, members said.
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