The House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is making it clear they will not let the November midterm elections keep them from holding hearings and releasing new findings in the weeks leading up to the November 8 balloting.
Damaging new revelations could be a big problem for Republicans, who have seen their polling lead vanish in recent weeks at the same time President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are polling strongly and could wind up keeping control of both houses of Congress.
According to Axios, Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is signaling that there will be no pullback by the panel:
Thompson told Axios the panel does not want to be “perceived as a partisan committee … we’ve been fairly free of those kind of complaints, and we would not want to interfere with the election.”
But he said the time between an expected Sept. 28 hearing and the election “won’t be a quiet period.” He also said that “the goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election.” The panel may release its interim report in that window.
Committee member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Republicans will complain no matter what happens in the hearings:
“There are those partisans of former President Trump that will denounce anything we do, so we’re not going to jump through hoops to please people who will call anything we do partisan.”
The biggest fear for Republicans: Damaging new information coming out of the hearings that would put the issue forefront in the minds of voters right as they’re headed to the polls.
The panel’s highly publicized public hearings over the summer dredged up events Republicans would sooner forget, searing them into the public consciousness in a way they hadn’t been since early 2021. New revelations could return concerns to the forefront of voters’ minds.
