Committee aides say the panel will show how Trump “refuses to act to protect the Capitol” as insurgents attack him. The committee has spoken to a number of former Trump aides who were with him that day — including former White House adviser Pat Cipollone — and their video testimony is expected to be used to help tell what was going on in the White House on 6th of January.
Two former White House aides who left after Jan. 6 — former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews — will testify at Thursday’s hearing, CNN previously reported (the committee has not formally announced witnesses to the event).
Previous reports from CNN and others, as well as excerpts of committee testimony that have been publicly released, detail how Trump watched television outside the Oval Office while rioters breached the Capitol walls. Before Trump released his video telling rioters to go home, he sent out several tweets that did not tell them to leave the Capitol — as well as one attacking Pence for not joining his scheme to try to repeal the 2020 elections
Here’s what to watch in the most-watched committee hearing:
Connecting the dots back to Trump
Thursday’s hearing, the panel’s eighth in the past two months, is a culmination of sorts for the Jan. 6 panel, which has made it a point to put Trump at the center of every hearing.
The panel used people around Trump repeatedly to show how he was told he lost the election but refused to listen, and how he played a key role in numerous attempts to overturn the election leading up to Jan. 6.
On Thursday, testimony from those same aides is likely to show how Trump was urged to stop the violence but failed to do so.
The committee has already aired testimony from Cipollone’s video testimony, in which the former White House adviser said he pushed Trump to release a statement telling people to leave the Capitol.
“I felt it was my duty to continue to push for it, and others felt it was their duty as well,” the former White House adviser replied.
The committee also spoke to other people who were around Trump on Jan. 6, including his daughter Ivanka Trump, former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and retired Pence’s former national security adviser, Gen. Keith Kellogg.
Kellogg testified about how he urged Ivanka Trump to go and talk to his father in the hopes that she could contact him, according to excerpts of his testimony that have been released, as well as previous reports.
Both witnesses left the Trump administration after January 6
Two former Trump White House staffers who resigned after the deadly attack are expected to testify Thursday.
Pottinger, the former deputy national security adviser, served under Trump for four years. A former journalist who served in the Marine Corps, Pottinger was brought to the White House as senior adviser on Asia by Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for whom he worked in the military.
In testimony the committee played, Pottinger told the committee he made his decision to resign when a staffer brought him a printout of a Trump tweet attacking Pence. “I read this tweet and at that moment I made the decision to resign. This is where I knew I was leaving that day,” Pottinger said in the video testimony.
According to The New York Times, Pottinger did not speak with Trump that day, but told Meadows that the National Guard had not yet arrived at the Capitol as the violence was unfolding.
Matthews, the former deputy press secretary, was one of several White House aides who urged Trump to condemn the violence. According to a source familiar with her decision, Trump’s inaction led to her resignation that evening.
Matthews met with committee members or staff three times before her public testimony, and she told the committee that Trump’s tweet about Pence was “adding fuel to the fire by tweeting that,” according to a video clip of her testimony played at a previous hearing.
Matthews also did not speak with Trump on Jan. 6, but a source told CNN that she will be able to shed some light on what happened in the White House that day, including information from conversations involving officials in the room with Trump.
Covid-19 will not prevent Thompson from presiding over the hearing
Congressman Benny Thompson, who tested positive this week for Covid-19, will still serve as committee chairman at Thursday’s hearing — albeit remotely, aides say.
After Thompson’s positive test was announced, his office made it clear that the hearing would go ahead even if the Mississippi Democrat could not attend in person, although it was unclear whether the speaker would play any role.
Aides said Wednesday that Thompson is “feeling good” and will still preside over the hearing virtually.
Democrat Elaine Luria of Virginia and Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois will lead Thursday’s presentation, according to committee aides.
“We’re going to go through it almost minute by minute over that period of time” during the 187 minutes of the Capitol riot, Luria said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“He was doing nothing to stop the riot,” she added.
The panel’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, will also play a role, as she has in each of the seven previous hearings.
The last hearing of this series, but probably not the last
Committee aides again declined to say whether there would be more hearings after Thursday’s presentation, but left the door open to that possibility.
The panel has consistently maintained that its investigation is still ongoing and has designated Thursday’s hearing as a season finale of sorts.
“We indicated in June that we were holding this series of hearings to lay out the findings to tell you a story,” a committee aide told reporters Wednesday. “We also said at the beginning of the hearings that we have far more information than we could present to the American people in one series of hearings.”
“All I would say is that nothing is off the table. I think all of our members have indicated that there is potential for future hearings. Of course, when we release any special committee report, you can expect to see the committee rally around that,” the aide added.
That echoes what Luria told CNN on Sunday.
“Whether it’s in the form of hearings or other methods of presenting evidence, but you know, we have a responsibility to present the things that we’ve uncovered, and we’re talking about how best to do that as a board after that hearing,” she said.
CNN’s Holmes Librand contributed to this report.
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