WASHINGTON — The ties between allies of former President Donald Trump and the far right extremists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, will be the focus of Tuesday’s hearing by the House committee investigating the insurrection.
The seventh public hearing held by the panel will cover an extended timeline from the Electoral College’s Dec. 14, 2020, meeting to affirm Biden’s win until Jan. 6, 2021, when the electoral vote count in Congress was interrupted by the attack on the Capitol. The committee is expected to present evidence and testimony on the preparations for the insurrection by extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, whose members have since been charged with sedition.
Reps. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., will lead questioning of witnesses following opening remarks from Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. The committee did not release witness names before the hearing, citing concerns about their safety, but several media outlets reported that a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers and a rioter who pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol building will be among those testifying.
The panel will also look at a Dec. 18 White House meeting in which Trump allies tried to convince him to sign an executive order to seize voting machines, and is expected to show how extremist groups took the president’s Dec. 19 announcement of a “wild” rally hours before Congress met to certify the election results as a cue to come to Washington to keep him in power through any means necessary.
The relationship between the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon, as well as former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Republican operative Roger Stone will be discussed by the committee, which will also examine what White House staff and advisers knew about the potential for violence and which members of Congress pressured Vice President Mike Pence in the days before Jan. 6 to change the election outcome.
Flynn was a major player in the attempt to find evidence of fraud after the election and was being escorted on Jan. 6 by a security detail made up of members of the Oath Keepers, several of whom have been charged for entering the Capitol. Stone had a long-standing relationship with the Proud Boys and helped raise money to put on rallies around Jan. 6.
