The House Jan. 6 Select Committee plans to unveil its discoveries about former President Trump’s months-long effort to steal an election over the course of several hearings in June. The first, held in prime time, was on Thursday, June 9, and featured a roadmap, laid out by panel co-chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), explaining the story she and her colleagues hope to tell.
The hearings appear to track roughly with what the committee called a “sophisticated seven-point plan” to steal the election, executed by Trump and his underlings. A committee source shared a copy of that plan with TPM reporter Matt Shuham.
Here’s what we know about the focus of upcoming hearings.
Second Hearing: Monday, June 13
Time: 10:00 a.m. ET
Live Witnesses
- Bill Stepien, former Trump campaign manager
- Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News political editor
- Ben Ginsberg, Republican-aligned election attorney
- BJay Pak, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, who Trump sought to oust
- Al Schmidt, former city commissioner of Philadelphia
This hearing will, according to Cheney, focus on a point the committee pushed hard in its first hearing: “That Donald Trump and his advisors knew that he had, in fact, lost the election.” Nonetheless, Trump and those around him stoked his supporters rage throughout November and December, ultimately leading to the insurrection on Jan. 6.
According to Cheney’s comments, this hearing will feature excerpts of testimony from those around Trump in the days post-election, including Jason Miller, campaign staff and lawyers, and DOJ officials. The panel announced Sunday that Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, will also provide live testimony, as will BJay Pak, a U.S. attorney Trump sought to oust because he believed he was insufficiently loyal.
It will make the case that the lies that Trump’s lawyers were pushing, including in court, were known by them to be exactly that: lies. As an aide to the committee told reporters Sunday, it will explore “the decision by the former president to ignore the will of the voters, declare victory in an election that he had lost, spread claims of fraud, and ignore the rulings of courts when the judgments didn’t go his way.”
Third Hearing: POSTPONED
Live Witnesses:
- Jeffrey Rosen, former acting attorney general
- Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general
- Steve Engel, former assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel
This hearing, according to Cheney, will largely focus on Trump’s plot to replace DOJ leadership with a department official who was prepared to do his bidding, Jeffrey Clark. Among Clark’s promises to Trump was that he would send a letter first to Georgia and then to other swing states, browbeating those state governments to investigate bogus fraud allegations.
Cheney also suggested that this hearing will feature information about efforts by at least one member of Congress, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) to secure a pardon for himself following his role in the DOJ pressure campaign. “As you will see, Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a Presidential Pardon,” she said. “Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought Presidential Pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”
Fourth Hearing: Thursday, June 16
Time: 1:00 p.m. ET
Live Witnesses:
- Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and informal Pence advisor
- Greg Jacob, former counsel to Vice President Mike Pence
This hearing, according to Cheney, will be all about Vice President Mike Pence and the pressure campaign the White House waged against him in the run-up to Jan. 6. It will examine the legal arguments that Trump mustered in service of pressuring Pence, including those profferred by attorney John Eastman.
“Witnesses in these hearings will explain how the former Vice President and his staff informed President Trump over and over again that what he was pressuring Mike Pence to do was illegal,” Cheney said.
“And you will hear that while Congress was under attack on January 6th and the hours following the violence, the Trump legal team in the Willard Hotel war room continued to work to halt the count of electoral votes,” she added later.
Fifth Hearing: Tuesday, June 21
Time: 1:00 p.m. ET
This hearing will focus on Trump’s pressure campaign on the states, according to Cheney.
“You will hear new details about the Trump campaign and other Trump associates’ efforts to instruct Republican officials in multiple states to create intentionally false electoral slates, and transmit those slates to Congress, to the Vice President, and the National Archives, falsely certifying that Trump won states he actually lost,” she said.
Final Hearings
After establishing the broad, multi-part conspiracy to steal an election that unfolded in the run-up to Jan. 6, the final hearings will turn back to that day, including the work of Big Lie influencers to take some of the coupiest actions of the whole election-theft campaign.
“On December 18, 2020, a group including General Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others visited the White House,” Cheney previewed. “They stayed late into the evening. We know that the group discussed a number of dramatic steps, including having the military seize voting machines and potentially rerun elections.”
These hearings will also include more details about the Proud Boys and other far-right groups, Cheney said. And they will seek to fill in what remains a significant gap in our knowledge: What was Trump doing as the insurrection unfolded?
“In our final hearing, you will hear a moment-by-moment account of the hours-long attack from more than a half dozen White House staff, both live in the hearing room and via videotaped testimony,” Cheney said. “There is no doubt that President Trump was well aware of the violence as it developed.”
Josh Kovensky contributed reporting.
