Police testimony will lead off panel's first Jan. 6 hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol is expected to hold its first public hearing this month with police officers who responded to the attack and custodial staff who cleaned up afterward, chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said Friday.

Thompson, D-Miss., says the committee hopes to “set the tone” of the investigation by hearing from those first responders, many of whom were brutally beaten by former President Donald Trump’s supporters as they pushed past law enforcement and broke into the Capitol. The rioters screamed at officers and verbally abused them as they fought their way inside and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

“We need to hear how they felt, we need to hear what people who broke into the Capitol said to them,” Thompson told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. “And so we want to frame that first hearing so that everybody would know the committee is serious, but also that we take those individuals who either secure the Capitol or clean the Capitol — that we care about them.”

Thompson said the select committee is eyeing the week of July 19 for the hearing, which is likely to be a dramatic curtain-raiser for the new investigation. An increasing number of police officers who responded to the attack, including members of the Capitol Police and Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, have lobbied for Congress to launch an independent investigation of the insurrection, but the proposal was blocked by Senate Republicans. The officers have pressured Republicans who have downplayed the violence to listen to their stories, and several watched from the gallery last week as the House voted along party lines to form the select committee.

Two Senate committees have already investigated the attack and made security...