January 6 committee could bring October surprise for the midterms

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The House select committee investigating the riot on January 6 will likely not release its report about the attempted insurrection before the election, Axios reported. But that doesn’t mean it could not make news before 8 November.

Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters that he didn’t want the committee to be “perceived as a partisan committee ... we’ve been fairly free of those kind of complaints, and we would not want to interfere with the election.”

At the same time, the chairman said that the time before 28 September, before the House leaves for campaign season, “won’t be a quiet period” and “the goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election,” though the committee might have an interim report during that time.

“There are those partisans of former President Trump that will denounce anything we do, so we're not going to jump through hoops to please people who will call anything we do partisan,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a committee member, told Axios.

But three of the committee’s members will also not be in Congress come 3 January. Representatives Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois chose not to seek reelection while vice chairwoman Liz Cheney lost her primary.

“This effort is not political, so I am indifferent to when the election is,” Ms Murphy, a Democrat, said. Representative Zoe Lofgren said that the committee is “just working at our own pace” and will release the report “when we’re ready.”

“We can't make our determination based on dates on the calendar, we've got a job to do,” Representative Pete Aguilar said. “It's too important to just circle one date to November.”

Mr Thompson also told reporters that the committee’s mandate expires on 31 December this year.