The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has proof several members of the House had interactions with rioters prior to the insurrection, according to Rep. Bennie Thompson.
On Sunday (Jan. 2), Rep. Thompson, the chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol siege, spoke to host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the evidence his panel has uncovered.
“We have a lot of information about communication with individuals who came,“ Thompson said. “Now, ‘assisted’ means different things,“ he said. “Some took pictures with people who came to the ‘Stop the Steal‘ rally. Some, you know, allowed them to come and associate in their offices and other things during that whole rally week. So, there’s some participation. We don’t have any real knowledge that I’m aware of of people giving tours. We heard a lot of that, but we’re still, to be honest with you, reviewing a lot of the film that the House administration and others have provided the committee.“
The Mississippi Democratic Rep. went on to say that there were House members who “clearly, obviously” tried to prevent the certification of the election, and the committee has reached out to those elected officials.
Thus far, the Select Committee has requested information from Republican representatives Jim Jordan and Scott Perry. After interviewing more than 300 witnesses, and gathering thousands of documents, the panel is expected to come forward with all the information they have gathered in the coming months.
“Our goal is to produce a report that is as thorough as possible,” Thompson said. “There’s some legislation that we hope to recommend with this report that Congress needs to adopt so that what occurred on January 6th will never happen again … We came critically close to losing this democracy as we’ve come to know it.”
Check out Rep. Bennie Thompson’s interview on “Meet the Press” below: