Jan. 6 Panel Reportedly Planning Dramatic Presentations On Trumpworld’s Big Lie Actions

The Jan. 6 Committee is reportedly set to hold more public hearings in the new year as it works to deliver an interim report on the events surrounding the deadly Capitol insurrection by summer, according to the Washington Post.

The public business meeting held by the committee earlier this month, in the run-up to the House’s vote to hold Mark Meadows in contempt, offered a preview of what we can expect more of next year, the Post reported. During the meeting, the committee revealed a handful of the 9,000 documents and records that Meadows produced in his short-lived engagement with the panel, painting a picture of how much there is still to learn about the events of Jan. 6.

The committee presented some of Meadows’ texts related to his involvement in Trump’s attempts to subvert the election results — which showed an alleged plot to appoint alternate, Trump-friendly slates of electors as early as the day networks called Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Meadows also participated in a phone call between Trump and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, when the former president asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss in the battleground state. During the call Meadows texted with an official in Georgia who urged him to shut the call down, according to records revealed by the committee.

The committee is preparing to hold additional, similar public hearings to present the evidence it has gathered, according to the Post.

“We want to tell it from start to finish over a series of weeks, where we can bring out the best witnesses in a way that makes the most sense,” a senior committee aide told the Post. “Our legacy piece and final product will be the select committee’s report.”

Former President Trump and his allies continue to trumpet their opposition to the committee’s probe by painting it as a partisan endeavor — an effort, they say, to disparage both Trump and the GOP in the months leading up to the 2022 midterms.

That raises the prospect that Republicans could shut down the committee’s work entirely if they retake the majority next year.

Senior committee staffers are reportedly discussing a timeline where public hearings would begin this winter and continue into spring, before an interim report in the summer and a final report before the midterm elections in November.

“I think we may issue a couple reports and I would hope for a [full] interim report in the summer, with the eye towards maybe another — I don’t know if it’d be final or another interim report later in the fall,” a second senior committee aide told the Post.

The committee reportedly plans to include in its probe questions such as how Trump has convinced many of his supporters to buy into the Big Lie of a “stolen” election.

“I think that Trump and his team have done a pretty masterful job of exploiting millions of Americans,” one of the senior committee aides told the Post. “How do you get that many people screwed up that deeply? And continue to screw them up? Right? And what do we do about that? So there are some big, big-picture items that go well beyond the events of [Jan. 6] that the committee is also grappling with.”

The Post also reports that the committee is expected to recommend legislative and administrative changes, with members currently reviewing the Electoral Count Act, the 19th century law that dictates the process for counting electoral votes during a joint session of Congress. Additionally, members of the committee have stated their plans to review laws surrounding a president’s emergency powers in order to prevent the abuse of those powers if an election is challenged.