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Donald Trump and Sean Hannity (archive image)
Photo: JIM WATSON / AFP
Shortly before the first anniversary, there are still many unanswered questions about the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021.
The focus of the reappraisal is ex-President Donald Trump and his circle of advisors and confidants.
One of them is Sean Hannity.
The responsible committee of inquiry has now asked the conservative TV presenter to give a voluntary testimony.
The presenter of the channel Fox News communicated around the events a year ago directly with Trump, his then chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top officials.
That makes him a witness, said the chairman of the panel, Democratic MP Bennie Thompson, and his Republican deputy, Liz Cheney, on Tuesday.
The committee of inquiry had "immense respect" for the freedom of the press, it said.
The voluntary and thematically narrowly limited survey should not be about Hannity's journalistic work, but about his political contacts with the White House at the time.
In the letter to Hannity, the committee also quoted several SMS messages from the well-known television man, which the committee had received through the disclosure of documents and communication content by third parties - for example through information from Meadows.
Hannity was considered a close confidante of Trump.
According to the US media, Trump spoke to the moderator on the phone frequently.
Hannity also appeared once at a campaign rally with the Republican.
According to the US media, however, Hannity Trump is said to have asked during the attack on the Capitol to publicly moderate his supporters.
Trump doesn't want to hold a press conference
The attack on the Capitol marks the first anniversary on Thursday.
Supporters of Trump had stormed the seat of the US Congress in Washington to prevent the confirmation of the election victory of the Democrat Joe Biden.
Five people were killed in the attack.
The attack on the center of US democracy, in which many MPs and senators feared for their lives, shook the country.
Biden wants to comment on the events of the past year in the Capitol on Thursday, and several commemorative events are also planned in parliament.
Trump, in turn, had announced that he would hold a press conference on the anniversary in Florida - but canceled it on Tuesday.
Instead, Trump said he would speak about many of the important topics at his next major event on January 15 in Arizona.
jok / dpa
