Days before the Jan. 6 Select Committee holds its first public hearing, member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on Sunday indicated the public will hear new revelations for the first time.
The panel’s first hearing will take place on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET. The committee has not specified who will testify at the hearings, but said in a release last week that it is set to “present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.”
During an appearance on CBS, Schiff signaled that although the public has seen a “number of bombshells” from the committee’s investigation thus far, those revelations are just the tip of the iceberg.
Schiff said the committee is prepared to map out a “comprehensive narrative,” especially for people who have an “open mind about these facts,” when it holds its first public hearing on Thursday,
“Our goal is to present the narrative of what happened in this country, how close we came to losing our democracy, what led to that violent attack on the 6th,” Schiff said. “The American people, I think, know a great deal already. They’ve seen a number of bombshells already. There’s a great deal they haven’t seen.”
Schiff emphasized that most importantly, the public has yet to see the narrative of Jan. 6 “woven together.”
“How one thing led to another, how one line of effort to overturn the election led to another and ultimately led to terrible violence, the first non peaceful transfer of power in our history,” Schiff said.
“We want to counter the continuing propagation of big lies,” Schiff continued, referring to election fraud falsehoods pushed by former President Trump and his allies. “And that’s what our goal is.”
In an interview that aired on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Cheney expressed confidence that the committee will grab the public’s attention to tune into the panel’s hearings because the deadly Capitol insurrection as “an ongoing threat.” Cheney believes the public will gain a deeper understanding of ongoing threats to democracy during the hearings.
Cheney noted the former president has not “expressed any sense of remorse about what happened” and that he has continued to “use even more extreme language, frankly, than the language that caused the attack.”
“And so, people must pay attention,” Cheney said. “People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it.”
Since its inception almost a year ago, the committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents related to the insurrection; interviewed more than a thousand witnesses; and continues to look into the private communications of Trump administration officials, Trump’s congressional allies and far-right organizers.
Cheney told CBS that she has “not learned anything that has made me less concerned.” The committee vice chair said she is particularly alarmed over “the extent, the expanse, how broad this multi-pronged effort” to subvert democracy was.
Cheney said she believes Trumpworld’s election steal scheme was a conspiracy, reiterating the committee’s allegations in a court filing in March that Trump and his allies “engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States” in trying to pressure former Vice President Pence to toss out the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“I do,” Cheney said, when asked whether she believes the insurrection was a conspiracy. “It is extremely broad. It’s extremely well-organized. It’s really chilling.”
