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The Jan. 6 committee has postponed its Wednesday hearing and will next meet Thursday
By: Ximena Bustillo | NPR
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (NPR) — The third Jan. 6 committee hearing scheduled for Wednesday has been postponed to an as-yet unknown day, the panel said in a statement Tuesday.
The committee’s release does not offer an explanation, but a source familiar said the move was a result of scheduling conflicts.
The committee’s next hearing will take place Thursday, June 16.
Jan. 6 committee member Pete Aguilar said the hearing would likely be moved to next week, although he cautioned that the calendar continues to be fluid.
The panel scheduled seven total hearings throughout June to discuss their months-long investigation into the connection between former President Donald Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy claims and the insurrection on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020.
It is unclear how the postponement of Wednesday’s hearing will impact the planned focus for each hearing the panel laid out last week.
Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who took over after William Barr left in the wake of the election, was scheduled to appear at Wednesday’s hearing, along with former DOJ officials Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel. Wednesday’s hearing was expected to focus on Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department to spread election false claims.
Thursday’s hearing was set to focus on the former president’s pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes.
Monday’s hearing focused on Trump’s role in perpetuating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen as the panel continued to make its case that former was the central character responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. Witness testimony and recorded interviews presented by the committee showed that many Trump advisers knew the election wasn’t stolen and told him so, but he ignored them. Instead, he listened to those in his inner circle, like Rudy Giuliani, who urged him to declare victory on election night and embrace claims of massive voter fraud.
Giuliani calls the claim he was inebriated on election night a lie
On Tuesday, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani denied claims presented at Monday’s hearing through video interview clips that he was intoxicated on election night when he urged him to declare victory.
In one, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign, referenced an inebriated Giuliani wanting to speak to Trump to tell him to say “We won. They’re stealing it from us.”
Miller told the committee in his recorded testimony that the former New York mayor “was definitely intoxicated” when he talked to him that night.
On Twitter, Giuliani called the claim a lie and that he refused alcohol that evening.
And Trump responded to the panel’s second hearing on Monday night with a 12-page statement that called the committee’s investigation a sham and again pushed baseless voter fraud conspiracies.
Members appear to disagree on whether the panel would issue criminal referrals to DOJ
Following Monday night’s hearing, committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters that the committee would like not issue a recommendation to the Justice Department to press charges.
“If the Department of Justice looks at it and assumes that there’s something that needs further review, I’m sure they will do it,” Thompson said.
But ranking member Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., took to Twitter to quickly clarify that the committee “has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals.”
“We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time,” she said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Monday that he is watching the House hearings as are the Justice Department lawyers prosecuting cases related to the attack on the Capitol.
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