Jan 6 panel member says ‘pretty surprising’ new material to be revealed at latest hearing

Zoe Lofgren says ‘mob was led by some extremist groups ... those individuals were known to people in the Trump orbit’

The next hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the January 6 US Capitol attack will include new material concerning the plans of former President Donald Trump and how much information he had about the siege, a member of the panel has said.

The ninth hearing this year will go over the “close ties between people in Trump world and some of these extremist groups,” California Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren told CNN.

She added, “that’s not the only thing the hearing will be about ... we’re going to be going through, really some of what we’ve already found, but augmenting with new material that we’ve discovered through our work throughout this summer”.

The committee’s most recent hearing was held on 21 July. Ms Lofgren said the new information includes Mr Trump’s intentions that day, and “what he knew, what he did, what others did”.

“I do think that it will be worth watching,” she told the outlet. “There’s some new material that, you know, I found as we got into it, pretty surprising.”

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 1pm ET on Thursday 13 October. It was rescheduled from 28 September late last month. The panel said at the time that the delay was caused by Hurricane Ian approaching Florida.

The panel spoke to Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, later that week. The interview went on for about 3.5 hours. It has been reported that Ms Thomas told members of the Trump administration to attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Ms Lofgren told MSNBC that Ms Thomas’s interview wasn’t filmed.

Concerning the connections between extremists and Mr Trump and his allies, Ms Lofgren said, “let’s just say that the mob was led by some extremist groups, they plotted in advance what they were going to do, and those individuals were known to people in the Trump orbit”.

The committee will file a report by the end of the year to the president and Congress outlining its findings and recommendations for changes in policy to ensure the safety of future US elections, Ms Lofgren told CNN on Tuesday.