Rep. Thompson details what to expect during primetime Jan. 6 hearings

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - The upcoming hearing hosted by the January 6 Commission is one of the key topics central to the 3rd Congressional District primary.

That committee is chaired by Mississippi Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson. The nine-member bipartisan House Select Committee investigating the January attack on the U.S. Capitol will reveal their findings on what fueled it.

Rep. Thompson was in the midst of all the madness on January 6, 2021, when an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and caused a riot; an attack that delayed the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

“If you look at what happened, that is not how we settle election disputes in this country,” Thompson said. “Under no circumstances to do you tear the place up.”

The Mississippi Democratic Congressman is the Chairman of the House Select Committee, which has been tasked to investigate the insurrection. The panel is comprised of Thompson, six other Democrats, and two Republicans who have worked for months to get the information they need about January 6th.

“We have given depositions of over 1,000 people, we have a couple of 100,000 exhibits we have received,” he explained. “It is a lot of work and now we will tell the story. So, the charge that our committee has been given is to identify the facts and circumstances that caused January 6th and we will do just that.”

The panel will reveal the findings through a series of hearings this month that will include several witnesses and video.

“No question, the witnesses will shock people, the video that has never been seen before will shock people, and that is part of making sure we get it right,” Thompson explained. “We look forward to it and it’s a bipartisan effort.”

Thompson says it’s a united effort to hopefully prevent another violent attack from happening again. “Our Democracy came close to not being what we brought up to believe what it is.”

You can watch the first primetime public hearing on Thursday on WLBT from 7 to 9 p.m.

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