Jan. 6 Panel to Hold Surprise Hearing  06/28 06:23

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House panel investigating the U.S. Capitol 
insurrection is holding a surprise hearing on Tuesday with an unidentified 
witness, cloaking the last-minute proceedings in extraordinary secrecy and 
raising expectations for new bombshells in the sweeping investigation into the 
Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

   The unexpected hearing, scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday, was announced with 24 
hours' notice while lawmakers are away from Washington on a two-week recess. 
The committee had said last week that there would be no more hearings until 
July.

   The subject of the hearing is so far unclear, but the panel's announcement 
on Monday said it would be "to present recently obtained evidence and receive 
witness testimony." A spokesman for the panel declined to elaborate.

   The committee's investigation has been ongoing during the hearings, which 
started three weeks ago, and the nine-member panel has continued to probe the 
attack by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Among other investigative 
evidence, the committee recently obtained new footage of Trump and his inner 
circle taken both before and after Jan. 6 from British filmmaker Alex Holder.

   Holder said last week that he had complied with a congressional subpoena to 
turn over all the footage he shot in the final weeks of Trump's 2020 reelection 
campaign, including exclusive interviews with Trump, his children and then-Vice 
President Mike Pence. The footage includes material from before the 
insurrection and afterward.

   It is uncertain if Holder's footage will be shown at the hearing Tuesday. 
Russell Smith, a lawyer for Holder, declined to comment.

   Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the panel's Democratic chairman, told 
reporters last week that the committee was in possession of the footage and 
needed more time to go through the hours of video.

   The panel has held five hearings so far, mostly laying out Trump's pressure 
campaign on various institutions of power in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 
joint session of Congress, when hundreds of the Republican's supporters 
violently pushed past police, broke into the building and interrupted the 
certification of Democrat Joe Biden's presidential election victory.

   The committee has used the hearings to detail the pressure from Trump and 
his allies on Pence, on the states that were certifying Biden's win, and on the 
Justice Department. The panel has used live interviews, video testimony of its 
private witness interviews and footage of the attack to detail what it has 
learned.

   Lawmakers said last week that the two July hearings would focus on domestic 
extremists who breached the Capitol that day and on what Trump was doing as the 
violence unfolded.