Next Jan. 6 hearing to focus on links between Trump allies and violent extremist groups: report

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article listed the hearing date as Jan. 12. This has been updated to reflect that the Jan. 6 hearing will in fact take place on July 12.

During a presidential debate in September 2020, now-President Joe Biden gave then-President Donald Trump an opportunity to condemn violent far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and QAnon. But Trump played it coy and avoided saying anything against them, urging the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

After Trump lost the election, those groups joined the Trump campaign in falsely claiming that the election had been stolen from him — and members of the Proud Boys, QAnon and the Oath Keepers are among the extremists who have faced charges in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

According to New York Times reporter Luke Broadwater, the January 6 select committee’s next hearing — which is scheduled for Tuesday, July 12 — will “reveal its findings about the connections between former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and the domestic violent extremist groups that helped to organize the siege on Congress.”

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The hearing, according to Broadwater, is “expected to be” led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida — who “plan to chart the rise of the right-wing domestic violent extremist groups that attacked the Capitol and how Mr. Trump amassed and inspired the mob.”

July 12’s hearing will follow the bombshell testimony of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. During the committee’s June 28 hearing, the 25-year-old Hutchinson testified that on January 6, 2021, Trump knew that some of his supporters were armed but wanted to march with them to the U.S. Capitol Building anyway.

The U.S. Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has charged the leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys with seditious conspiracy. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, along with other members of the group, was charged in early June. And Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was charged in January along with ten other members of that militia group.

Business Insider’s Tom Porter reports that the July 12 hearing “will likely focus on the question of whether there was deliberate collaboration between extremists and people close to Trump, an issue which so far has remained unclear.”

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“Trump has maintained that he did not seek to provoke violence on January 6, and did not approve of the attack, even though he has also repeatedly praised the rioters,” Porter explains. “In (a) …. presidential debate in September 2020, he attracted criticism by refusing a challenge from President Joe Biden to condemn the Proud Boys, instead sending the group into a state of euphoria by asking them to ‘stand back and stand by.’”