The Jan. 6 House Select Committee is expected to convene its first hearing to examine the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since 1814 on Thursday.
The event that includes the nine-member panel and two witnesses who will testify will become the highest-profile occupants of the ornate Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room since the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee used it for hearings in the mid-20th century.
Jan. 6 Hearings
It comes 74 years after Hollywood luminaries such as acclaimed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo were blacklisted after failing to answer that committee's questions about whether or not they had "now or ever been" members of the Communist Party. One of the film industry's finest will once again be a star witness in the exact same room.
On Tuesday, the select committee announced that one of the first two witnesses to testify in what is expected to be a series of at least eight hearings would be Nick Quested. He is the award-winning documentarian who earned an Oscar nomination for his film "Restrepo" in 2010, as per Independent.
The second witness was identified to be Caroline Edwards, a U.S. Capitol Police officer who was one of the first to be on the receiving end of blows delivered by supporters of former President Donald Trump, who stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden's 2020 election win.
The two witnesses will testify during the second hour of the two-hour hearing, following opening presentations by the select committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and vice-chair Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
According to The Hill, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who is a member of the House Select Committee, said on Wednesday that the panel's upcoming hearing will show a "multi-pronged effort to overturn a presidential election."
Capitol Hill Riot
In a Twitter thread, Schiff said that the panel's first hearing would present new information on the riot, adding that the committee hopes to demonstrate how a group of individuals tried to overturn a presidential election.
The Democrat's post noted that they would show the multi-pronged effort to overturn a presidential election and how one strategy to subvert the election led to another, culminating in a violent attack on our democracy.
Schiff said that the incident that happened at the Capitol was an important story and was one that must be told to ensure that it never happens again in the future. The lawmaker added that he hopes the panel's findings and the series of hearings on the insurrection will show the public "how close we came to losing our democracy" and "why it's still deeply at risk."
The hearing will come after the committee has spent nearly a year investigating the events that led up to the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot. In the last 11 months, the panel has interviewed hundreds of witnesses and pored over thousands of hours of video footage and more than 100,000 pages of documents.
The hearing will be televised in prime time and is the first in a series of hearings that will run throughout June. The first session will begin at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, and a live video will be provided for those who wish to watch the proceedings, the New York Times reported.
