1/6 panel postpones hearing with ex-Justice Dept. officials

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol has postponed a hearing that was to feature Trump-era Justice Department officials.

The hearing had been set for Wednesday, but the committee on Tuesday morning said that it had been postponed. It did not give a reason or a new date for the hearing.

The next hearing is set to take place on Thursday.

The witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing were to include Jeffrey Rosen, who was the acting attorney general at the time of the Capitol insurrection, as well as two other former top officials, Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel. Lawyers for all three men did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

They were expected to testify about a tense Jan. 3, 2021 meeting at the White House in which then-President Donald Trump weighed whether to replace Rosen with a lower-ranking official, Jeffrey Clark, who had expressed a willingness to champion Trump’s bogus claims of voting fraud. Trump abandoned the idea when multiple Justice Department and White House lawyers told him that they would resign if that happened.