WASHINGTON — The committee investigating the Capitol insurrection will focus for the first time this week on the relationship between people in former President Donald Trump’s orbit and the extremist groups that planned and orchestrated the violence on Jan. 6, 2021.
The hearing could be one of the most consequential held by the panel, potentially answering the long unresolved question of whether Trump knew that far-right extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers would storm the Capitol, and whether the president was in contact through intermediaries with the groups’ leaders, who have since been indicted for seditious conspiracy.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who will lead the hearing with Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., has made clear the the committee won’t present smoking-gun evidence. But he said the panel will show how the extremist groups took Trump’s announcement of a “wild” rally hours before Congress met to certify the election results as a cue to mobilize and prepare to keep him in power through any means necessary.
