December 15
By Kaia Hubbard
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol announced it will meet Monday for a business meeting ahead of the release of its widely-anticipated end-of-year report as it wraps its nearly 18-month-long investigation.
The panel, which is set to dissolve soon after the completion of its report and under a Republican-controlled House in the new year, is expected to release its report next week after Monday’s 1 p.m. meeting, where it’s set to be formally adopted.
With the announcement, it remains unclear whether the meeting will function similarly to the many public hearings the committee has previously conducted. Its last public meeting in October, where the committee took the bold step of voting to subpoena former President Donald Trump, was likewise billed as a “business meeting,” giving the panel the ability to conduct a vote on “further investigative action.”
Questions about whether and how the committee will make a criminal referral for the former president – or others – have circulated in recent weeks. Such a move would be largely symbolic, especially with a DOJ investigation already underway. And the committee may be just as effective with its widely anticipated end-of-year report that – like its many hearings – will likely argue that Trump and others close to him committed crimes in their effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told reporters on Tuesday that the panel would release its final report to the public on Dec. 21. Others have noted that the report may be released even sooner. And announcements about criminal referrals are expected to come during Monday’s meeting.
The meeting is set to be conducted in the newly renamed Speaker Pelosi Caucus Room, after Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, introduced a resolution to designate the room as such following Pelosi’s announcement that she will step down from her decades-long leadership in the new Congress.