New evidence — and a potential new round of hearings — are on the way from the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) didn’t rule out additional hearings after the next one planned for the near future. On MSNBC, panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) appeared to indicate more info about whistleblowers will come out.
As Raskin told Chris Hayes:
‘I’m with you in that we have somewhat depreciated the meaning of heroism when we call someone a hero just for not participating in a violent insurrection or not supporting the efforts of a coup to overthrow an election. I mean, that’s really the least we should be expecting of public officials. We should be asking these people actually to blow the whistle publicly. I mean, they could’ve gotten in touch with Senator McConnell. They could’ve gotten in touch with Speaker Pelosi. They could’ve gone to the newspapers and TV to say there’s something very troubling happening here. And I think that we may be hearing some more about people who actually tried to do that.’
An implication more whistleblower-related revelations are coming seems pretty clear. Check out Raskin’s comments below:
The House committee has already heard from a former employee at Twitter who testified to the response from company leadership about the potential for violence from what Trump was posting. That former employee insisted any other Twitter user acting as Trump did in terms of instigating violence would have been swiftly removed from the site. The individual, who worked on the content moderation policy team at Twitter, raised repeated warnings inside the company about the possibility for violence, including on the night before January 6 — but Trump’s account wasn’t removed until days later, after the riot happened. In the meantime, Twitter posts from Trump provided apparent continuing inspiration to mob participants.
“My concern was that the former president for seemingly the first time was speaking directly to extremist organizations, and giving them directives. We had not seen that sort of direct communication before and that concerned me,” the ex-Twitter employee said. Their identity was kept hidden by the riot investigation committee. In those comments, the former Twitter employee was discussing Trump’s comments at a presidential debate that members of the violent organization known as the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.” No matter any claimed original intentions on Trump’s part, extremists took those comments as a call to action. The former employee also expressed concerns about a December 19 Twitter post in which Trump told his followers in reference to planned D.C. protests on January 6: “Be there, will be wild!”
“After this tweet on December 19, again, it became clear not only were these individuals ready and willing, but the leader of their cause was asking them to join him in this cause and in fighting for this cause in D.C. on January 6 as well,” that former employee told the committee. As for potential additional hearings, Thompson responded as follows when asked if he could promise a hearing scheduled for July 21 would be the last one in this stage of the probe: “No, I can’t. I’m hoping it is, but something could come up, just like the Hutchinson situation that warranted what we felt was an immediate hearing.” Thompson also indicated the riot panel is likely to conduct a public hearing in conjunction with the release of its planned final report.
