Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a member of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, on Sunday said the panel plans to focus in its next public hearing on “efforts to assemble” the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.
The panel’s next hearing follows damning testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, last week. In her testimony, Hutchinson detailed Meadows’ and other Trump aides’ anticipation of violence before Jan. 6, and Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to get his staff to allow him to go to the Capitol after the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse.
Late last month, the committee announced an extended schedule for its upcoming hearings, the bulk of which were initially expected to take place in June. The panel said hearings will last through at least July as it “continues to receive additional evidence relevant to our investigation into the violence of January 6th and its causes,” a committee aide told TPM.
During an interview on CBS, Schiff was asked whether the committee has evidence to show that there was communication between far-right militia groups and the Trump White House. In taped testimony aired during the panel’s public hearing last week, Hutchinson said she recalled hearing the words “Oath Keeper” and “Proud Boys” closer to the planning of the “Stop the Steal” rally, “when Mr. Giuliani would be around.”
Schiff declined to get into details on what the panel will present in its upcoming hearings, but confirmed that the next hearing will zero in on “efforts to assemble that mob” of Trump supporters that descended on the National Mall.
“Who was participating, who was financing it, how it was organized, including the participation of these white-nationalist groups like the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and others. And so we’ll be presenting information we have,” Schiff continued. “We haven’t answered all the questions that we have, we continue our investigation into precisely the issue you’re describing.”
Later in the interview, Schiff said the committee is “following additional leads” after Hutchinson’s revealing testimony.
“I think those leads will lead to new testimony,” Schiff said. “Part of the reason we wanted her to come before the public is we were hoping it would generate others stepping forward. Seeing her courage would inspire them to show the same kind of courage.”
The committee has not confirmed the date of its next public hearing. Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is reportedly set to lead an upcoming hearing on what the panel’s investigation has found about violent extremist groups that participated in the Capitol insurrection, which Raskin has characterized as “an attempted coup wrapped inside a violent riot wrapped inside some cosmetic protests on the outside,” according to the New York Times.
Schiff’s remarks echo comments by fellow committee members Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY), both of whom signaled that new witnesses have come forward wanting to testify before the panel after Hutchinson’s explosive testimony.
“Every day, we get new people that come forward and say, hey, I didn’t think maybe this piece of the story that I knew was important, but now that you guys are talking — like, I do see this plays in here,” Kinzinger told CNN.
Watch Schiff’s remarks below:
