On Thursday, this parliamentary committee will present its first conclusions during public hearings.

A point on their investigation, in six questions.

During its hearings, the commission promised “to provide the American people with a summary of its findings on the coordinated campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.”

Since the start of its investigation, the so-called “January 6” commission, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, has heard nearly 1,000 witnesses, including two children of the former president, to shed light on the actions of Donald Trump after the 2020 election.

She claims to have gone through more than 100,000 documents, including emails, text messages and official photos from the White House, and sent around a hundred subpoenas.

Four of Donald Trump’s closest aides and five elected Republicans, including House Conservative leader Kevin McCarthy, have refused to comply with these subpoenas.

– What to expect from the hearings?

SMS, official documents and supporting videos, a series of lawyers and key witnesses will present the different scenarios envisaged by Donald Trump and his entourage to reverse the course of the 2020 presidential election, until the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Among those different scenarios was a proposed White House executive order that ordered the nation’s top military official to seize election machines across the country.

The members of the commission also want to understand why Donald Trump took 187 minutes before calling on the mob attacking the United States Congress to go home.

Some of the evidence in the hands of the parliamentary inquiry has already leaked in recent months.

Among the most explosive documents, a rain of text messages between Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, and conservative celebrities imploring him to push the president to calm the crowd on Capitol Hill.

Fanciful text messages sent by the wife of the most conservative Supreme Court justice to Mark Meadows, begging him to fight against the results of the 2020 presidential election have also leaked: “Help this great president hold Mark!!! ( …) The majority of people know that Biden and the left are trying the biggest heist in history,” wrote Ginni Thomas in a message.

– How to monitor audiences?

A sign of the importance that these elected officials want to bring to their revelations, the first hearing was organized at prime time: 8:00 p.m. local Thursday (00:00 GMT Friday).

For this first, the commission invited to testify a Capitol police officer, Caroline Edwards, “the first member of the police force to be injured by the rioters” on January 6, as well as a documentary author, Nick Quested, whose team documented the Capitol assault.

This initial presentation will be supplemented until June 23 by five other hearings whose list of invitees has not yet been made public.

– Will there be any charges?

The so-called “January 6” commission does not have the power to proceed with indictments itself. But she would still have to turn over her evidence to federal prosecutors and can recommend prosecution.

At the same time, a crowd of federal agents is embarking on a huge investigation to find the demonstrators who directly participated in the assault on the Capitol.

To date, more than 800 people have been arrested and the majority have been charged, according to data from the US Department of Justice.

– Will this survey make an impression?

Supporters of this parliamentary committee consider its work essential in order to guarantee that one of the darkest episodes in American history is never repeated.

But the majority of Republicans denounce the work of this group of elected officials, the main interested party Donald Trump castigating a “witch hunt”.

The commission therefore faces a major challenge, that of constructing a story capable of capturing the attention of the general public and convincing it.

However, opinion polls place this investigation very low on the list of concerns of American households.

“Inflation, gas prices, school shootings and abortion are all issues that Americans are most concerned about,” Democratic analyst Mike Hernandez told AFP.