The January 6 Committee, Running Out of Time, Angles for an Extension

The January 6 committee wants to keep its investigation going, even as it runs out of road to make its case against President Trump. An afternoon hearing this week, intended to be the last, was delayed on account of hurricane, but that did not stop members from angling for more time.The committee’s enabling resolution dictates that a written report be submitted this fall with the body’s conclusions, but it hardly looks like the work is wrapping up. Instead, inquiries are continuing across a range of fronts and show no sign of abating, putting the Democrats in something of a pickle. The J6 panel today interviewed Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, behind closed doors. Her lawyer, Mark Paoletta, said in a statement that “Mrs. Thomas is eager to answer the Committee’s questions.” CNN reports that Mrs. Thomas told the committee she believed the 2020 election was stolen.Meantime, the hunt for testimony from key players grows more frantic. Congressman Jamie Raskin has mused that he “would assume” that Vice President Pence will “come forward and testify voluntarily.” Mr. Pence, playing it by the book, has said he would “consider” such an invitation. Separate from high-profile testimony, the committee, by its own admission, is knee deep in work. Congresswoman Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney announced that the body has come into reams of Secret Service correspondence, around 800,000 pages worth, which, almost by definition, would take more time to review.Yet more reading material was supplied by the release yesterday of “The Breach,” a book by one time congressman Denver Riggleman, who leveled criticisms of the committee’s approach to the investigation and urged it to focus to a greater extent on the relationship between the White House and the rioters. A committee spokesman averred that Mr. Riggleman had “limited knowledge of the committee’s investigation. He departed from the staff in April prior to our hearings and much of our most important investigative work.” Mr. Riggleman took to the “60 Minutes” television program to make his case. Mr. Raskin laments that there is such a “huge avalanche of information that it becomes difficult towards the end to decide what we’re going to use in a particular context.” Singing the same song, Representative Zoe Lofgren tells CNN that there is a “huge amount of information. We’re working hard to put it together.” Representative Adam Schiff hints that the next hearing will be “potentially more sweeping” than its predecessors. He led the first failed impeachment effort against Mr. Trump and recommends that the J6 committee refer Mr. Trump to the Justice Department for criminal charges. One element of the next hearing, which has not yet been rescheduled, is likely to be from a a pair of Danish filmmakers, whose footage purports to show Mr. Trump’s then political adviser, Roger Stone, on the day before the 2020 election exclaiming “Fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”

The January 6 Committee, Running Out of Time, Angles for an Extension

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