华盛顿——一个调查1月6日国会大厦暴动的新的众议院委员会预计将于本月举行首次公开听证会，委员会主席本尼·汤普森说，警察和看守人员将对袭击做出回应，看守人员随后进行了清理。
汤普森，小姐。委员会希望通过听取第一时间响应者的意见来“确定调查的基调”，其中许多人遭到前总统的毒打和辱骂唐纳德·特朗普他们冲过执法部门，闯入国会大厦中断总统认证乔·拜登s胜利。
提到这些警察，汤普森在接受美联社采访时表示，“我们需要听到他们的感受，我们需要听到闯入国会大厦的人对他们说了什么。”
他说，本周举行了一次初步战略会议的小组成员希望组织第一次听证会，以便清楚地表明他们是认真的，并且他们关心“那些保卫国会大厦或清洁国会大厦的人。”
汤普森说，特别委员会正着眼于7月19日这一周的听证会，这很可能是新调查的戏剧性序幕。越来越多对此次袭击做出回应的警察，包括美国国会大厦警察局和华盛顿大都会警察局的成员，已经游说国会对此次叛乱展开独立的两党调查，但该提议遭到参议院共和党人的阻挠。这些官员向淡化暴力的共和党人施压，让他们听听他们的故事，上周，几名官员在旁听席上观看了众议院按照党派路线投票组建特别委员会的过程。
参议院的两个委员会已经调查了这次袭击，并提出了安全建议，但他们没有检查围攻的起源，留下了许多未回答的问题。
众议院议长南希·佩洛西(Nancy Pelosi)已任命8名成员进入特别委员会，其中包括7名民主党人和怀俄明州共和党众议员利兹·切尼(Liz Cheney)。共和党领袖凯文·麦卡锡对另外五项任命有决定权，尽管佩洛西必须批准。
麦卡锡还没有说他将任命谁，或者共和党人是否会参与调查，因为许多人仍然忠于特朗普。一些人试图淡化这场叛乱，否认其背后的政治动机。
汤普森说，该小组欢迎共和党成员，但即使麦卡锡选择不参加，该小组也将继续前进。根据委员会的规则，佩洛西任命的八名成员将足以使委员会达到工作法定人数。他说，缺乏共和党的参与不会削弱委员会正在努力做的事情。
“作为主席，我的职责是让委员会继续前进，确保出现的任何偏差基本上都不会妨碍委员会的工作，”他说。“我打算这么做。”
汤普森说，调查的中心焦点将是为什么当天建立的系统失败了——为什么没有更多的执法人员，为什么军队被延迟了几个小时，因为警察很快就不堪重负，以及为什么预测袭击的重要情报被错过了。
预计该小组还将调查一些暴徒与白人至上主义团体之间的联系。汤普森说，联邦调查局局长克里斯托弗·雷(Christopher Wray)的一项评估认为，出于种族动机的暴力极端主义，尤其是白人至上主义，是对美国安全的最大威胁之一，“告诉我，这个委员会工作的重要性是有史以来最重要的。”
汤普森没有说陪审团是否会传唤特朗普作证，但他说，“我不认为任何人都是禁区。”
如果有证人反对，汤普森重申，他愿意“在法律允许的最大范围内”使用陪审团的传唤权
他说，该小组正在雇佣专业人员，他们将拥有获取和整理大量数据的技能和经验，他们的工作将持续到暑假。在周三的战略会议上，他告诉委员会的同事们，“无论你们计划在8月份进行什么样的休假，都可能需要重新评估。”
汤普森说，该委员会仍在决定有多少工作将秘密进行，因为一些证人可能不想公开作证，一些信息可能是敏感或机密的。
他说，随着委员会开始工作，在时间或其他方面也不会有任何定论。
“我们没有时间表，”汤普森说。“委员会的目标是在调查中尽可能彻底，但也要灵活，以至于我们知道事情会随着时间的推移而变化。”
Police testimony will lead off panel's first Jan. 6 hearing
WASHINGTON -- A new House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol is expected to hold its first public hearing this month with police officers who responded to the attack and custodial staff who cleaned up afterward, chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said.
Thompson, D-Miss., said Friday the committee hopes to “set the tone” of the investigation by hearing from those first responders, many of whom were brutally beaten and verbally abused by former PresidentDonald Trump’s supporters as they pushed past law enforcement and broke into the Capitol to interrupt the certification of PresidentJoe Biden’s victory.
Referring to the police officers, Thompson told The Associated Press in an interview, “We need to hear how they felt, we need to hear what people who broke into the Capitol said to them.”
He said the members of the panel, who held an initial strategy session this week, want to frame that first hearing so that it is clear that they are serious, and also that they care about “those individuals who either secure the Capitol or clean the Capitol.”
Thompson said the select committee is eyeing the week of July 19 for the hearing, which is likely to be a dramatic curtain-raiser for the new investigation. An increasing number of police officers who responded to the attack, including members of the U.S. Capitol Police and Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, have lobbied for Congress to launch an independent, bipartisan investigation of the insurrection, but that proposal was blocked by Senate Republicans. The officers have pressured Republicans who have downplayed the violence to listen to their stories, and several watched from the gallery last week as the House voted along party lines to form the select committee.
Two Senate committees have already investigated the attack and made security recommendations, but they did not examine the origins of the siege, leaving many unanswered questions.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has appointed eight members to the select committee, including seven Democrats and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has discretion over five additional appointments, though Pelosi must approve them.
McCarthy has not yet said who he will appoint or if Republicans will even participate in the probe, as many are still loyal to Trump. Some have sought to downplay the insurrection and deny the political motives behind it.
Thompson said the panel welcomes Republican members, but will be moving ahead even if McCarthy chooses not to participate. Under the committee's rules, the eight members appointed by Pelosi will be enough for the committee to have a working quorum. He said a lack of GOP participation won't diminish what the committee is trying to do.
“As chair, my role is to keep the committee moving forward, making sure that whatever deflections that come up basically would not impede the work of the committee," he said. "And I plan to do that.”
Thompson said the central focus of the investigations will be why the systems that were in place that day failed — why there wasn’t a greater presence of law enforcement, why the military was delayed for hours as the police were quickly overwhelmed and why crucial intelligence predicting the attack was missed.
The panel is also expected to probe the links that some rioters had to white supremacist groups. Thompson said an assessment by FBI Director Christopher Wray that racially motivated violent extremism, and especially white supremacy, is one of the biggest threats to U.S. security “tells me that the significance of this committee’s work is as important as it can ever get.”
Thompson hasn’t said whether the panel will call Trump to testify, but said, “I don’t think anyone is off limits.”
And if any witnesses resist, Thompson reiterated that he is willing to use the panel’s subpoena authority "to the fullest extent of the law.”
He said the panel is hiring professional staff who will have the skills and experience to obtain and sort through vast amounts of data, and their work will continue through the summer break. At the strategy session on Wednesday, he told his colleagues on the committee that “whatever recess you might have planned for August, you might have to reassess it.”
The committee is still deciding how much of its work will be done behind closed doors, Thompson said, as some witnesses may not want to testify in public and some information could be sensitive or classified.
He said there will also be no foregone conclusions — on timing or otherwise — as the committee begins its work.
“We don’t have a timetable,” Thompson said. “The goal of the committee is to be as thorough as we can in the investigation, but also flexible to the point that we know that things change along the way.”
