WASHINGTON — Hearings detailing the largest-scale investigation in congressional history begin Thursday, as the House Jan. 6 select committee works to explain how former President Donald Trump's false claims that the election was stolen boiled over to a riot in which more than a thousand Americans overwhelmed police and stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the peaceful transition of power.
For just under a year, the committee has operated almost exclusively behind closed doors, hiring some of the nation's top former prosecutors to conduct more than 1,000 depositions and collect more than 140,000 emails, phone records, internal memos and other documents, including presidential records from the National Archives.
Information gathering continues even as the three weeks of hearings are set to begin. The committee spoke with former Trump Attorney General William Barr last week and is still fighting for access to records and testimony in at least two dozen court cases.
