Jan. 6 committee announces next hearing will be next Thursday

Rebecca Shabad and Ali Vitali
Updated ·2 min read
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WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol announced Thursday it's holding its next hearing next Thursday.

The panel had postponed a public hearing it had scheduled last week because Hurricane Ian was set to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The hearing next Thursday is set to begin at 1 p.m. ET.

Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the hearing's format will diverge from the one used in the committee's series of hearings over the summer so all of the nine lawmakers will have chances to speak.

Members haven’t explicitly said the next public hearing will be their last. It will be held less than a month before the midterm elections on Nov. 8.

The panel still needs to produce a written report on its findings over the past 14 months. But as the Justice Department ramps up its criminal investigation into the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, the committee’s relevance has begun to fade, a member said.

It's unclear what the next hearing will focus on; however, there have been several developments since the committee's last public hearing in July. The panel recently interviewed conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The rescheduled session could feature video of testimony from some other members of former President Donald Trump's administration, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who have spoken to the committee but haven't appeared in any of the hearings.

The last set of public hearings, held in June and July, featured wide-ranging testimony from former Trump staffers, as well as new video from the day of the riot.

Among the interviewees who were featured prominently were White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a senior aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. In bombshell testimony, Hutchinson detailed outbursts she said Trump made on Jan. 6.

The most recent hearing in late July focused on what happened inside the White House during the 187 minutes between Trump's speech and his tweet encouraging rioters to head home.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com