# House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack The **Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol** (2021–2023) was the House panel, chaired by [[Bennie Thompson]] with [[Liz Cheney]] as vice chair, that built the most complete public record of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. It interviewed more than 1,000 people, collected over a million documents, held ten televised hearings in 2022, and ended by referring [[Donald Trump]] to the Justice Department on four criminal charges. It existed because the Senate filibustered the independent commission the House had passed. Its record fed [[Jack Smith]]'s federal indictment of Trump. Since 2025, the committee and its witnesses have themselves been the subject of a Republican counter-investigation and, as of October 2026, of a Justice Department grand jury. ## Why a select committee and not a commission - **2021-05-14** — Homeland Security Chair Thompson and ranking Republican [[John Katko]] announce a deal for an independent, 9/11-style commission with commissioners split evenly between the parties. - **2021-05-19** — The House passes the commission bill 252–175, with 35 Republicans voting yes. - **2021-05-28** — Senate Republicans filibuster it, 54–35, six votes short of 60. - **2021-06-30** — The House creates the select committee instead (H.Res. 503), **222–190**. Only two Republicans vote yes: Cheney and [[Adam Kinzinger]]. ## The boycott that shaped it On July 19, 2021, [[Kevin McCarthy]] named five Republicans: [[Jim Banks]] (as ranking member), [[Jim Jordan]], [[Rodney Davis]], [[Kelly Armstrong]] and Troy Nehls. On July 21, [[Nancy Pelosi]] rejected Banks and Jordan and accepted the other three. McCarthy then withdrew all five. Pelosi added Kinzinger on July 25. The result was a committee with no members chosen by Republican leadership. That gave it a unified staff and a scripted, prosecutorial hearing style. It also handed its opponents the "partisan" frame they have used ever since. | Member | Party | Role | |---|---|---| | [[Bennie Thompson]] (MS) | D | Chair | | [[Liz Cheney]] (WY) | R | Vice chair | | [[Zoe Lofgren]] (CA) | D | | | [[Adam Schiff]] (CA) | D | | | [[Pete Aguilar]] (CA) | D | | | [[Stephanie Murphy]] (FL) | D | | | [[Jamie Raskin]] (MD) | D | | | [[Elaine Luria]] (VA) | D | | | [[Adam Kinzinger]] (IL) | R | | ## What it did **Hearings.** - **2021-07-27** — The first hearing: four Capitol and D.C. police officers describe the attack. - **2022-06-09 → 2022-07-21** — Eight public hearings, the first in primetime. They covered Trump's knowledge that he had lost, the pressure campaign on [[Mike Pence]], the [[Fake Electors Scheme]], the state-official pressure behind [[Donald Trump - find 11780 votes]], the effort to install [[Jeffrey Clark]] at the Justice Department, and the 187 minutes before Trump called off the crowd. - **2022-06-28** — The surprise hearing with [[Cassidy Hutchinson]], [[Mark Meadows]]'s aide. She gave the most damaging single day of testimony, including a second-hand account of Trump in the presidential SUV that later became the focus of the attacks on her. - **2022-10-13** — A further hearing, followed by **2022-12-19**, its final meeting. **Subpoenas and contempt.** The committee subpoenaed Trump-world figures who refused to cooperate, and the House referred four for criminal contempt. | Witness | House contempt vote | DOJ outcome | |---|---|---| | [[Steve Bannon]] | 2021-10-21, 229–202 (9 Republicans yes) | Convicted July 2022; imprisoned July–October 2024 | | [[Mark Meadows]] | 2021-12-14 | Not charged | | [[Peter Navarro]] | 2022-04-06 | Convicted September 2023; imprisoned March–July 2024 | | [[Dan Scavino]] | 2022-04-06 | Not charged | On January 19, 2022, the Supreme Court refused Trump's request to block the [[National Archives]] from releasing his White House records to the committee, with only Justice Thomas noting a dissent. On October 13, 2022, the committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump himself. He sued to block it and never testified, and the subpoena expired with the committee. **Referrals and report.** On December 19, 2022, the committee voted unanimously to refer Trump to the Justice Department for obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and inciting or assisting an insurrection. It referred [[John Eastman]] on the first two charges. It also referred four Republican members who had ignored its subpoenas (McCarthy, Jordan, [[Scott Perry]] and [[Andy Biggs]]) to the House Ethics Committee. The 845-page final report followed on December 22, and the committee dissolved when the new Republican House majority took over on January 3, 2023. ## Afterlife (2023–2026) - **2023-08-01** — Jack Smith's federal election-obstruction indictment of Trump charges conduct the committee had mapped. The case is dismissed after the 2024 election (see [[Trump Indictments Timeline]]). - **2024-12** — Barry Loudermilk's House Administration oversight subcommittee issues a report urging an investigation of Cheney for witness tampering. The charge rests on her contacts with Hutchinson; Democrats answer with an email from Hutchinson's lawyer denying "improper communications." - **2025-01-20** — Hours before leaving office, [[Joe Biden]] preemptively pardons the committee's members and staff and the police officers who testified. Witnesses who were not staff, such as Hutchinson, are not covered. See [[Pardon Power]]. - **2025-01-20** — Trump pardons or commutes the sentences of about 1,500 January 6 defendants (see [[J6 Mass Pardons]]). - **2025-09-03** — House Republicans create a new select subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee to "reinvestigate" January 6 (H.Res. 605), chaired by [[Barry Loudermilk]]. Its formal name is the Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding January 6, 2021. It was added to a procedural rule rather than voted on separately. Speaker Johnson's Republican appointees are Morgan Griffith, Clay Higgins, [[Troy Nehls]] and [[Harriet Hageman]], who unseated Cheney in 2022. The Democrats were [[Eric Swalwell]] (ranking), [[Jasmine Crockett]] and [[Jared Moskowitz]]; one Democratic seat was vacant as of October 2026. - **2026-01** — The subcommittee holds its first hearing, on the unsolved DNC and RNC pipe bombs. NPR's fact-check finds its claims about FBI informants and the National Guard timeline false or misleading. - **2026-03 (reported March 6)** — Loudermilk refers Hutchinson to DOJ for lying to Congress, co-signed by Judiciary Chair [[Jim Jordan]] (CNN). The referral targets her testimony that Trump knew of the potential for violence and pressed ahead. - **2026-04** — The *New York Times* reports that DOJ has opened an investigation. - **2026-09-24** — Hutchinson tells a federal court in Trump's defamation suit against the BBC that she is under DOJ investigation and will invoke the Fifth Amendment; the judge quashes the BBC subpoena. - **2026-10-08** — CBS News, NBC News and the *Washington Post* report that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, led by [[Harmeet Dhillon]], has been presenting evidence to a D.C. grand jury on whether Hutchinson lied to Congress in her committee testimony. **No indictment had been returned as of that date.** Live tracking is in [[Cassidy Hutchinson News Log]]. ## KB significance **The committee did what the second impeachment trial would not.** The Senate tried Trump without hearing a single witness (see [[Trump Second Impeachment]]). The committee heard more than a thousand and produced the evidentiary record the trial never built. That record outlived every remedy it fed: the impeachment, the Smith case and the referrals all ended without a conviction of Trump. **When the investigators are pardoned, the witnesses become the target.** Biden's pardons protected the committee's members and staff, so the counter-investigation moved down the chain: first the Loudermilk report on Cheney's contact with Hutchinson, then a Republican-led subcommittee, then the Loudermilk–Jordan referral of March 2026, and now a grand jury aimed at the one star witness the pardons did not cover. This is the vault's *the referral is the weapon* pattern running in reverse. A committee's referrals once went to DOJ about Trump; now referrals about the committee's witnesses go to a DOJ run by Trump's appointees. See [[Trump Retribution Ecosystem]]. ## Related - [[Bennie Thompson]] · [[Liz Cheney]] · [[Adam Kinzinger]] · [[Cassidy Hutchinson]] · [[Barry Loudermilk]] - [[Cassidy Hutchinson News Log]] — live tracking of the DOJ grand jury - [[January 6 Capitol Attack]] · [[Stop the Steal Timeline]] · [[Trump Impeachments Timeline]] - [[John Katko]] — negotiated the commission the Senate killed - [[Committees Hub]]