Trump Allies Still in the Dark on Response to House 6 Jan. Committee’s Upcoming Hearing: US Media

6 January 2022 marked the first anniversary of the Capitol Riot, which saw scores of Trump supporters attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results of what the 45th US president slammed as "the most corrupt election" in American history.

Allies of former US President Donald Trump are still trying to figure out how best to respond to the House January 6 Select Committee’s first primetime hearing on last year’s Capitol Riot, due to be held on Thursday night, Politico reported.

The news outlet quoted its unnamed sources as saying that with coordination between Trump’s ex-aides, GOP allies on Capitol Hill, and the Republican National Committee (RNC) in place, their “actual plans for pushback” are yet to be determined.

The sources claimed that it is the House GOP that will be engaged in responding to the hearings, while “the Senate side is likely to lay low”.

According to the insiders, Trump allies allegedly believe that the public’s opinions on Capitol Riot are already in place and that “even expertly produced hearings won’t materially change the situation”.

“They saw this as people don’t care about it and aren’t paying attention and there are bigger problems. If nothing else in an election year this [Jan. 6] committee has united every Republican faction with an illegitimate committee and bureaucratic and government overreach at a time when many member constituencies are suffering,” one of the sources argued.

Steven Cheung, a former Trump campaign official and Republican campaign strategist, for his part told Politico that as a tactical move, Trump and his allies might dismiss the hearing as a political distraction, which is not tied to voters’ real concerns.

“It’s important to highlight that it’s been a year-and-a-half since Jan 6 happened and look where we’re at. High inflation rates. High gas prices. A lot of crime happening. These are things people are focused on, and we’re going to spend the entire month in primetime television on Jan 6. What’s the purpose of it?” he said.

He spoke as the House Select Committee pledged that during the upcoming hearing, the panel will present “previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, and provide the American people an initial summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power”.

An aide to the panel earlier said that they had interviewed over 900 witnesses in the 10-month investigation and had received nearly 104,000 documents pertaining to the matter.

Last month, Committee chair Bennie Thompson stressed that during the 9 June hearing, the panel plans to "use a combination of witnesses, exhibits, things that we have through the tens of thousands of exhibits we've [...] looked at, as well as the hundreds of witnesses we deposed or just talked to in general”.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the nine-person committee, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans nearly a year ago to investigate the events of 6 January 2021, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington, DC, to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes in favour of Democrat Joe Biden, in a riot that claimed the lives of five people.