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July 11 (UPI) -- The House Jan. 6 committee's next public hearing on Tuesday will focus on how extremist groups came together and played the primary role in attacking the U.S. Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Some members of the committee on Sunday gave a preview of the next public hearing, which will be the seventh overall.
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The first six hearings focused on some politicians and witnesses in former President Donald Trump's orbit and included detailed testimony -- including revelations from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson two weeks ago about Trump's behavior on the day of the attack, Jan. 6, 2021.
Some of the panel members said that Tuesday's hearing will examine how Trump encouraged the supporters who'd gathered on the National Mall on the day of the attack, which included members of the right-wing extremist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
"We are going to be connecting the dots during these hearings between these groups and those who were trying -- in government circles -- to overturn the election," committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told CNN.
"We do think that this story is unfolding in a way that is very serious and quite credible."
One of the catalysts for the Capitol assault, the panel said, was a tweet from Trump in December that said, "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
"People are going to hear the story of that tweet, and then the explosive effect it had in Trump World, and specifically among the domestic violent extremist groups, the most dangerous political extremists in the country at that point," committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said Sunday on CBS's Face The Nation.
Between his election defeat in November 2020 and the day he left office in January 2021, Trump relentlessly spread false claims that massive voter fraud cost him the election and repeatedly called for action via his Twitter account -- so much so that Twitter ultimately banned him from the platform.
The effect of the messages from Trump -- and his political allies -- and the former president's connection to radical far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys will be the main subject at Tuesday's hearing.
Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, is expected to testify at the hearing.
Most recently, the committee heard from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone during a closed-door meeting on Friday -- during which he corroborated previous testimony about misconduct involving Trump on Jan. 6.
"In our interview with Mr. Cipollone, the committee received critical testimony on nearly every major topic in its investigation, reinforcing key points regarding Donald Trump's misconduct and providing highly relevant new information that will play a central role in its upcoming hearings," Jan. 6 committee spokesman Tim Mulvey said.
Mulvey also said Cipollone's interview included "information demonstrating Donald Trump's supreme dereliction of duty" and "corroborated key elements" of Hutchinson's testimony. Hutchinson was an aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and a former legislative intern in Trump's White House in 2018.
Meanwhile, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is planning to testify before the Jan. 6 committee after Trump said he would waive executive privilege. Several details regarding Bannon's testimony, however, still need to be worked out and Raskin said Bannon's initial testimony probably won't be broadcast live, The Washington Post reported.
Bannon's move to testify came ahead of his criminal trial on a charge of contempt of Congress, which he received last fall after defying a subpoena from the committee. The trial is scheduled to begin July 18.
