Jan 6 committee hearings latest: House panel plans prime time session next week as Trump

Memes showing former US president Donald Trump ‘bombing’ the Georgia Guidestones appeared on his own social media platform days before the monument was attacked, a report says.

The photoshopped image featuring Mr Trump appeared on Truth Social on 2 July – four days before the mysterious 18-foot granite monument was damaged in an alleged explosion.

According to the DailyDot, the meme was posted by a verified user on the Trump-owned social media site.

It had earlier appeared on Twitter and was shared by other users.

One of the main effects of the 6 January hearings has been to take some of the allure out of a Trump re-election campaign, with even some Republicans who have supported him in public up till now starting to openly advise against it. That in turn raises the question of who might run instead – and as Eric Garcia writes, few are as well-placed as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Tom Cotton, the hard-right Arkansas Senator who infamously called for the military to be sent in to crack down on anti-racism protests in the summer of 2020, recently told a room of donors that he would not be put off running for president if Donald Trump announces another tilt a the White House. And now he appears to be doing the Iowa groudwork that’s compulsory for anyone seeking a presidential nomination…

The next session of the Jan 6 committee, which is scheduled for Tuesday, July 12th at 10:00am ET, is set to focus on the role played by extremist groups who participated in the Capitol riot, and on the ways they were coordinated – possibly with the involvement of Trump confidantes.

Politico quotes committee member Jamie Raskin giving this assessment: “Our investigation shows that there was a tremendous convergence of interests between the domestic violent extremist groups and the broader MAGA movement. This hearing will be the moment when one sees both the convergence of efforts at a political coup with the insurrectionary mob violence. We see how these two streams of activity become one.”

For more on the Oath Keepers, whose leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy over their role in the events of 6 January, here is Richard Hall’s report on leader Stewart Rhodes.

A growing number of defendants are pushing to have their trials moved out of DC, saying the outcome of the first trials proves that the odds are unfairly stacked against January 6 defendants in the nation’s capital.

“DC is a city that, as a whole, feels that it has been the victim of a crime,” attorneys in two cases against members and associates of the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group wrote in court papers seeking to have their trials moved to Virginia.

Prosecutors and judges see no evidence that Capitol rioters can’t get a fair trial in DC and believe the process of weeding out biased jurors is working. Judges presiding over January 6 cases have consistently rejected requests to move trials, saying the capital has plenty of residents who can serve as fair jurors.

A former US Department of Justice official central to Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election was captured on police video outside his home in a shirt and boxer shorts as investigators searched the property on 22 June.

Law enforcement investigated Jeffrey Clark’s home one day before the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol heard testimony about the former president’s pressure campaign to reverse his election defeat.

Alex Woodward has more details.

The director of an upcoming documentary “Unprecedented” whose scenes were handed over to the Jan 6 committee under subpoena has said that his approach was “very soft” and he did not push when he spoke to Mr Trump.

Alex Holder, a British filmmaker, was in the White House on the day of the attack and also spoke with Trump and his family in the aftermath of the Jan 6 riots.

Mr Holder told Time that he filmed Mr Trump “fuming” over Georgia governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom he called cowards.

“They’re not even running the state,” Mr Holder recalled Mr Trump as saying. “The state’s being run by Stacey Abrams.”

He said: “My approach was being really open and transparent and very soft. I didn’t push. I sort of took what I could get from them… There were no tricks in this. I’m very straightforward.”

After the interview finished, “there was a very awkward silence. A very uncomfortable atmosphere. There was a feeling of people being scared,” he said.

The filmmaker handed hours of footage to the committee which he says was “very important for the chronology and for what was going on in people’s minds at those specific times”.

All three episodes of the documentary will be streaming on Discovery+ on Sunday.

A former Trump White House staffer who resigned after the 6 January riot at the US Capitol is set to testify publicly to the select committee investigating the incident.

Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy press secretary in the later phase of the administration, will reportedly be appearing by agreement at a future hearing after receiving a subpoena, according to CNN.