WASHINGTON – The House committee created to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol is scheduled to begin a series of hearings in June starting Thursday.
The committee, which is made up of nine members of the House, has subpoenaed nearly 100 close allies of former President Donald Trump, individuals and businesses that organized events surrounding the date of the insurrection.
Most recently, the committee subpoenaed five Republican lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for relevant knowledge leading up to the events of Jan. 6.
Seven Democrats and two Republicans are on the bipartisan committee. Each was appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., after McCarthy retracted his choices.
Who is on the Jan. 6 committee? And what experiences do they bring to the table?
Rep. Bennie Thompson
How he got here: Rep. Bennie Thompson, a 74-year-old Democrat from Mississippi, is the committee chairman.
Thompson called Jan. 6 a “horrible day” and one that is “still almost surreal that it even occurred.”
What to know: “We have to get it right,” Thompson, the only Democrat in the Mississippi delegation, said in 2021.
Pelosi appointed Thompson as chairman after he worked with Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., on legislation to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigation Jan. 6. That legislation died in the Senate last year.
Thompson sued Trump after the Capitol riot, accusing the former president of inciting the deadly assault and conspiring with his lawyers and extremist groups to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
The lawsuit named Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and other groups, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, as defendants.
Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, also called on fellow lawmakers to remove anything bearing the Confederate flag emblem from the House.
“Continuing to display a symbol of hatred, oppression, and insurrection that nearly tore our union apart and that is known to offend many groups throughout the country would irreparably damage the reputation of this august institution and offend the very dignity of the House of Representatives,” Thompson said on the House floor in June 2021.
Quotable: “Obviously, there is not a second in the day that the president of the United States is not on record somewhere,” Thompson said in March of missing White House call logs from Jan. 6, 2021. “Having a record of what the president was doing on that day is absolutely vital to the work of the committee.”
Rep. Liz Cheney
How she got here: Rep. Liz Cheney, 55, of Wyoming is the vice chair of the panel and one of the two Republicans on the select committee. Cheney was originally the only Republican Pelosi appointed when she named her picks to sit on the panel.
More:McCarthy said he would urge Trump to resign after Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to new audio
More:Jan. 6 committee wants to talk to Loudermilk about Capitol tour given the day before attack
What to know: The Wyoming representative and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney has been a fierce critic of the Republican party since the Jan. 6 attack, not only condemning Trump for his role in the attack but also voting to impeach him shortly after.
Cheney, who was the third highest ranking Republican in the House, was ousted from GOP leadership after continually lambasting the former president’s actions and the Republicans who remain loyal to him.
She faces a Trump-backed challenger, Harriet Hageman, in a GOP primary this August.
Quotable: After the vote to remove Cheney from leadership, she vowed to “do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger
How he got here: Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, 44, of Illinois was a recent addition to the committee by Pelosi after McCarthy pulled his five appointees from sitting on the panel.
More:GOP censures Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, calls Jan. 6 riot ‘legitimate political discourse’
More:Will McCarthy, Jordan talk to the Jan. 6 committee? Panel faces dilemma in coaxing defiant GOP
What to know: Kinzinger, like Cheney, has been an outspoken and critical member of the GOP. He was one of the ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the insurrection on Jan. 6.
Pelosi said in a statement that Kinzinger “brings great patriotism to the committee’s mission: to find the facts and protect our democracy.”
The Illinois Republican has also condemned several members of his own party and was one of the 11 House Republicans who voted to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from her committees due to her previous incendiary social media posts.
Kinzinger was also the first GOP member to call for the resignation of fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz after reports implicated the Florida Republican in a federal investigation into sex trafficking allegations.
Kinzinger will not seek reelection.
Quotable: “We have failed to understand or address the disease that led to that coup attempt,” Kinzinger wrote in a January opinion piece. “What happened last Jan. 6 was a vicious symptom of a cancer that’s been growing for far too long, one that has been fed by anger, fear and hopelessness.”
Rep. Elaine Luria
How she got here: Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria, 46, is another Democrat Pelosi tapped to serve on the select committee.
Luria, a retired Navy commander, pitched herself to Pelosi to serve on the committee, feeling personally motivated to be on the panel, according to the Washington Post.
More:The Jan. 6 committee got a boost from a ruling on a confidential memo. What’s next?
What to know: Shortly after the insurrection, Luria told USA TODAY that she noticed groups of eight to 15 apparent Trump supporters walking through Capitol office buildings and through the underground tunnels connecting surrounding office buildings in the days leading up to the riot.
While on the Jan. 6 committee, Luria has criticized the Justice Department’s delay in pressing criminal charges against those who have defied congressional subpoenas, such as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino.
“The Department of Justice must act swiftly,” she said at a March committee meeting. “Attorney General (Merrick) Garland, do your job so that we can do ours.”
Quotable: “We cannot allow those who seek to destroy our country from within to prevail,” Luria said in a statement in January announcing her reelection bid on the anniversary of the attack. “We need representatives and leaders who will uphold and strengthen our laws and institutions, not side with those who try to tear them down.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin
How he got here: Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, 59, who garnered national attention when he served as lead House impeachment manager for Trump’s second impeachment, also serves on the committee.
What to know: A constitutional law professor, Raskin drafted the article of impeachment against Trump after the Jan. 6 attack before leading the prosecution for House Democrats.
His son, Tommy, died less than a week before the impeachment hearings. Raskin told the Washington Post in December that his 25-year-old son’s suicide – heartbreaking as it was – gave him a renewed sense of purpose to go after the perpetrators of the insurrection.
Raskin has been vocal about the committee’s mission to find evidence. Soon after former Trump aide Steve Bannon was held in contempt for defying a congressional subpoena, Raskin warned other non-cooperative Trump aides that “nobody has the right to blow off the Congress of the United States.”
Quotable: “I know that I have a responsibility to do whatever I can to preserve American democracy, which is fragile in a lot of ways. I feel that strongly, and I know Tommy felt that strongly and would feel that strongly,” Raskin told the Washington Post in December. “And so as I’ve gotten stronger and stronger, I know that this is a political and personal mission that I can never back down from, ever.”
Rep. Stephanie Murphy
How she got here: Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, 43, is also among the members on the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
What to know: Murphy, who is not seeking reelection, is a centrist in the Democratic caucus who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition.
In March, Murphy told Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post that the goal of the committee is, in part, to protect the integrity of free and fair elections.
“When we got to January 6th, the courts had already settled the cases. We cannot find ourselves in a situation where elected leaders find whatever loophole they can to try to hold on to power, because that makes us no better than any autocracy in this world,” she said.
Murphy also called some of the evidence discovered during the investigation “shocking and deeply, deeply disturbing.”
Quotable: “I have learned some shocking things, because we’re looking at not just what happened on that day and of the people who are household names and their roles in this incident. We are also looking at the organizations and folks at the local and state level who had a role in trying to overturn a free and fair election.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar
How he got here: Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., 42, said he was “honored to have been selected” to serve in a July statement. Aguilar also described Jan. 6 as “one of the darkest days in our country’s history.”
What to know: The California congressman is the only Latino representative on the committee. Aguilar said he and other Latinos who may have experiences in countries fraught with political turmoil can understand the fragility of democracy.
“Some of the campaigns and some of the political rhetoric in other countries really does sound shockingly familiar to the language that (Trump) used,” Aguilar said in January, according to NBC News.
“The attack on the Capitol and our democracy left five dead, more than 140 police officers injured, and members and staff traumatized. We owe them—and we owe the American people — a fair, thorough and evidence-based investigation into what happened that day so that we can ensure it never happens again,” Aguilar said in a recent statement.
Aguilar also said the committee’s role is to inform the public of what happened in January 2021, according to the NBC report.
Quotable: “If we put together a report that is fact-based, my belief is that the country will pay attention and people will hear the warnings signs for democracy that we are pointing to.”
Rep. Adam Schiff
How he got here: Similar to Raskin, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., 61, rose to prominence leading Trump’s impeachment – in this case the first impeachment when the then-president tried to pressure Ukraine to go after a political rival.
What to know: Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement last year that the Jan. 6 panel’s duty is to “investigate the events leading up to and during the violent insurrection, and to determine how to best protect our fragile democracy moving forward.”
“We will have a full accounting of that deadly day, and we will endeavor to do so with bipartisan sobriety,” Schiff added.
Quotable: “I’d like to think, as (poet) Amanda Gorman so eloquently said, that we’re not broken, we’re just unfinished. Because if we’re no longer committed to a peaceful transfer of power after our elections, if our side doesn’t win, then God help us,” Schiff said during a July 2021 committee hearing.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren
How she got here: Along with both committee members Schiff and Raskin, California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren ,74, was also involved in prosecuting one of Donald Trump’s impeachment trials.
What to know: The House Administration Committee, which Lofgren chairs, has held hearings focused on the reaction to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Lofgren shared that she was “honored” to be asked to serve on the committee, saying in a statement that she will serve with a “profound commitment to our constitution and to finding the truth.”
Quotable: “Well, we haven’t heard all of it yet, but I will say it’s – there was chilling calculation in how to install as president someone who lost the election,” Lofgren told NPR in January about the evidence the committee had reviewed. “That’s a grave threat to our system of government, which, after all, is founded on the American people selecting their own government. It’s a very stunning and sobering picture that has emerged.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism