The first anniversary of the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by followers of Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, coincided with a new and dramatic phase of a congressional committee’s investigation of what happened and what measures might prevent such violence from happening again.
In the days leading up to the anniversary, the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, composed of seven Democrats and two Republicans (most Republicans opposed any inquiry), began to reveal the extraordinary amount of material it had gathered thus far. Unsurprisingly, Trump and his allies have adopted the strategy of attempting to drag out the committee’s proceedings, in the presumption that a Republican victory in the midterm elections this November will allow them to shut down the committee before it has completed its work.
But in a recent interview, the committee’s chair, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said that it will cut off its inquiry whenever that’s necessary in order to get its report written and distributed to the public. Obviously, they want that to be before the midterm elections.
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