How the January 6th Committee plans to drop the hammer at Thursday's hearing
The House Jan. 6 committee's next public hearing on Thursday will cover new material provided by the Secret Service revealing that former President Donald Trump was "repeatedly alerted to brewing violence" on Jan. 6, according to The Washington Post.
The Secret Service provided over one million electronic communications to congressional investigators, two anonymous sources told NBC News. This includes emails and other electronic messages from agents in the days leading up to and during the insurrection.
The communications can provide insight into contact agents had with rioters, their efforts to protect former Vice President Mike Pence and what happened when Trump allegedly ordered Secret Service agents to take him to the Capitol.
"We have and continue to fully cooperate with the Jan. 6 select committee. While no additional text messages were recovered, we have provided a significant level of details from emails, radio transmissions, Microsoft Teams chat messages and exhibits that address aspects of planning, operations and communications surrounding Jan. 6," Secret Service Special Agent Steve Kopek told NBC.
In July, the committee subpoenaed the Secret Service for communications from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021 that were said to have been erased as part of a pre-planned phone system upgrade. The content of these texts garnered a lot of interest after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee that she had heard secondhand that Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent after he refused to drive the former president's vehicle to the Capitol during the insurrection, according to NBC.
The committee also plans to share surveillance footage taken near the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6 before Trump's speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally. Other internal emails that will be revealed at the hearing may include evidence about staff members warning Trump about the possibility of violence taking place that day, but Trump continuing to press Secret Service agents to take him to the Capitol to join his supporters, three people said according to The Washington Post.
The committee held several public hearings over the summer showing never-before-seen video footage from the Capitol attack and video testimony from former officials about Trump's refusal to accept his election loss. The hearings provided an insight into the plans Trump's allies orchestrated to replace electors in battleground states that President Joe Biden won and revealed the ways local and state elections officials were threatened.
The ninth public hearing will touch on the "close ties between people in Trump world and some of these extremist groups," Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who sits on the panel, said in a CNN interview.
"We're going to be going through, really some of what we've already found, but augmenting with new material that we've discovered through our work throughout this summer," Lofgren added.
The hearing is set for 1 p.m. ET on Thursday after being rescheduled last month due to Hurricane Ian's devastation in Florida.
