WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol announced Tuesday that it was postponing its public hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
The next hearing will take place on Thursday instead.
The committee did not say why it was postponing Wednesday’s hearing.
The witnesses who were expected to testify at the hearing included former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue and Steve Engel, former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.
Former Attorney General William Barr, who has emerged as a key witness in the hearings, will not be testifying at upcoming hearings and has not been asked to do so by the committee, a person familiar with the matter tells NBC News.
The announcement Tuesday comes a day after the panel held its second hearing on Capitol Hill, which was delayed by more than 30 minutes Monday because Bill Stepien, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, was no longer able to join after his wife went into labor.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said last week that the third hearing would offer evidence about Trump’s unsuccessful plan to oust Rosen and replace him with another DOJ official who was more supportive of Trump’s fraud claims, Jeffrey Clark, according to Cheney. Clark drafted a letter to states that said the department “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.”
“In our hearings, you will hear first-hand how the senior leadership of the department threatened to resign, how the White House Counsel threatened to resign, and how they confronted Donald Trump and Jeff Clark in the Oval Office,” Cheney said Thursday.
The fourth hearing was expected to focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence “to refuse to count certain electoral votes on Jan. 6,” according to Cheney. She said the committee would present testimony from Pence’s former general counsel, Greg Jacob, saying what Trump demanded of Pence “wasn’t just wrong, it was illegal and unconstitutional.”
The three other hearings set for June have not been scheduled yet. They are expected to focus on Trump’s plan to pressure state legislators and election officials to change election results and how Trump summoned a violent mob and directed them to “illegally” march on the U.S. Capitol. The final hearing is expected to feature a moment-by-moment account of the hourslong attack from more than a half dozen White House staff members.
Peter Nicholas contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
