- The Jan. 6 committee will host their second primetime hearing Thursday to investigate the Capitol attack.
- The 8 p.m. hearing will focus on Trump's whereabouts while a mob attacked law enforcement and broke into the Capitol.
- Committee aides confirm they have received one Secret Service text message from Jan. 6.
Roughly 187 minutes passed from when a mob approached the US Capitol to the release of a presidential video asking the mob to "go home," during which time then-President Donald Trump was absent from public view. The committee investigating the insurrection that culminated on January 6, 2021 aims to change that by presenting new evidence and testimony about Trump's whereabouts during this pivotal day that disrupted a joint session of Congress.
Since the start of the hearings in June, Trump's actions have been one of the biggest question marks about that dramatic day. The committee suggested that they will finally be able to answer those questions in Thursday's primetime hearing, starting at 8 p.m ET.
Rep. Elaine Luria, the Virginia Democrat who will be leading the next hearing alongside GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, told CNN they will map everything the former president said and did "pretty much minute by minute."
Committee aides say that there is a total of 187 minutes to account for between the end of Trump's Ellipse Rally speech, when he falsely told the crowd the election had been "stolen" and urged them to march on the Capitol, and when he addressed the mob that had attacked law enforcement and ransacked the Capitol via a video at the White House Rose Garden, telling them: "Go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order."
Although it has not been confirmed by the committee, witness testimony is expected to be heard from Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser, Sarah Matthews, ex-deputy press secretary and another former press aide. Matthews resigned the day of the Capitol riot issuing a public statement saying she was "deeply disturbed" by the attack. Pottinger also resigned from the Trump White House following the riot by pro-Trump supporters and said in a clip played during a previous hearing that a tweet about how then-Vice President Mike Pence didn't have "the courage" to overturn to election is what convinced him to leave.
The witnesses are expected to contribute details that fill in some of the blanks of what was happening in the White House during the riot.
In her explosive testimony before the committee, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described an altercation between President Trump and the Secret Service when they refused to take him to join his supporters at the Capitol. The committee subpoenaed records from the Secret Service, however an unnamed senior official told The Washington Post that the agency will not be able to recover any deleted text messages sent by agents on January 6, 2021.
The Guardian reported that the Secret Service did turn over one text message, which the committee later confirmed. However, they did not say whether it will be presented at Thursday's hearing.
The committee says they want to focus on whom Trump spoke to and what was discussed, in an effort to shed light on why the president delayed telling the angry mob to leave the Capitol they occupied, finally defusing the situation that had stalled the certification of Trump's electoral defeat and sent lawmakers and Pence fleeing for their safety.
More video testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone is also expected to be played at this hearing.
Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, will be presiding over the hearing remotely as he tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday.
Thursday's 8pm hearing is the committee's second primetime hearing and was rumored to be the last hearing investigating the attack on the Capitol, however committee aides say that "nothing is off the table," hinting that more hearings are a possibility.