The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol doesn’t plan to conclude its work any time soon.
After Thursday’s prime-time hearing focusing on President Donald J. Trump’s three hours of inaction during the Capitol riot, the panel is planning a second investigative push.
“The investigation is still ongoing, if not maybe accelerating,” said Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the committee. “We’re gaining so much new information.”
When the panel kicked off its series of summer hearings, tentative plans called for six sessions in June and a final report to be issued by September. But the schedule slipped, and lawmakers found that as soon as they began to air the findings of their more than 1,000 interviews, even more witnesses emerged. The hearings stretched from six to eight — and well into July — and the plan to wrap up with a report in September began to bleed later into the year.
Witnesses have continued to come forward. Throughout June and July, the committee interviewed Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, the chief financial officer of the Trump campaign, Mr. Trump’s labor secretary, and a business executive who helped finance the effort to overturn the 2020 election, among others.
Now lawmakers are discussing using the month of August, when Congress takes a lengthy recess, to prepare a preliminary report of their findings, tentatively scheduled to be released in September. But a final report — complete with exhibits and transcripts — could be released in December, just before the committee is set to dissolve at the start of a new Congress on Jan. 3, 2023.
“We’re in this phase where we have a two-pronged attack here,” Ms. Luria said. “We are working on the aspect of a congressional committee, providing recommendations to prevent something like this from happening in the future. And the investigation is still happening as well. We’re actively pursuing both of those paths simultaneously, in parallel.”
A committee aide said Wednesday that the Thursday hearing was unlikely to be the last. The panel could schedule additional hearings to coincide with the release of the report.
“As we come to the end of this series of hearings, I think we will be providing more information publicly in the not-too-distant future,” Ms. Luria said. “We just haven’t determined the format or the timeline for that, because we’re still learning new information in the investigation.”