Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) on Tuesday said the upcoming hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will include new, “pretty surprising” material.
The Thursday hearing will not only focus on ties those in former President Donald Trump’s orbit had to extremist groups, Lofgren said, but also look at what the president’s intentions and actions were overall.
“We’re going to be going through, really some of what we’ve already found, but augmenting with new material that we’ve discovered through our work throughout this summer,” Lofgren told CNN’s “Situation Room.”
“It will be worth watching. There’s some new material, you know, that I found as we got into it, pretty surprising,” Lofgren continued.
Pressed to specify who in Trump’s circle was in touch with those far-right organizations, Lofgren offered: “The mob was led by some extremist groups. They plotted in advance what they were going to do and those individuals were known to people in the Trump orbit.”
Outside of the committee, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group, and four other members are currently on trial on seditious conspiracy charges for their actions related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Last week, a former member of the Oath Keepers, testified in court that Rhodes was in touch with a Secret Service agent in the months leading up to the Capitol riot.
Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 committee has received over a million communications exchanged between Secret Service agents before and on Jan. 6, though that information does not include text messages, according to NBC News.
“While no additional text messages were recovered, we have provided a significant level of details from emails, radio transmissions, Microsoft Teams chat messages and exhibits that address aspects of planning, operations and communications surrounding Jan. 6,” Secret Service spokesperson Special Agent Steve Kopek told the outlet.
Lofgren also told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the committee has been working on the report it plans to complete by the end of this year and on recommending “policy changes to make us more secure in the future.”
The panel postponed the hearing, originally slated for Sept. 28, after Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida.
A day later, Ginni Thomas, the wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, appeared in person to a closed-door Jan. 6 hearing during which she said she had not discussed any issues around the 2020 presidential election with her husband.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee’s chairman, also said Thomas testified she believed the fraudulent claim that the election was stolen.
Meanwhile, Thompson on Tuesday said he received a “suspicious package” in his Washington office.
“All the staffers in my office are safe,” he wrote on Twitter, linking to an NBC News article detailing the incident.
The U.S. Capitol Police also issued a statement, without mentioning Thompson, saying congressional staff found a “letter with concerning language.”
“We just screened it and determined it not to have anything dangerous inside,” they said, adding that the force is working to identify the sender.