aside their views than to have someone say i never heard of bannon, i don t know what the january 6th committee is all about. someone with that lack of knowledge around the world around them probably isn t competent to sit on a jury. ali, let s turn to the developments on the hill. what are you learning about the two witnesses expected to testify but also about this positive covid test from chairman thompson and also the committee says it s not going to impact thursday s primetime hearing. reporter: they say this is not going to impact their scheduling for what we expect to be the last in this series of hearings from the committee. i say that because they are not closing the door on doing more. in fact, what chairman thompson said yesterday, last night, because he was here on the hill prior to this positive diagnosis of covid, he was telling us that the committee s made a decision to do a scaled-back version of the final report and ultimately issue their final-final report
14 degrees in portugal and spain. meanwhile, the wildfires are raging in both of those countries as well as france where the wildfires are intensifying in the southwest corner of the country in the bordeaux region, the wine country there. we know more than 30,000 acres have burned. we know there s more than 1,000 people that have died in portugal and spain because of this heat, and unfortunately, lindsey, right now this heat wave is continuing to spread. we know that germany as well as belgium, they are now bracing for temperatures that could exceed 104 degrees. we see people trying to beat the heat. we hope everyone stays safe. we re following a number of major developments in our nation s capital. on capitol hill, a potential end game for the january 6th committee is starting to take shape. chairman bennie thompson is telling reporters the committee will likely release a scaled-back report of its
findings before the final one. he also just released he has tested positive for covid. this all comes as a source familiar with the committee s plans reveals these two former trump white house officials are set to be thursday s star witnesses. sarah matthews, former deputy press secretary for president trump and matthew pottinger is a former member of the national security council. down the street in a wash courtroom lawyers for steve bannon have been arguing for a delay in his contempt trial. let s bring in nbc news justice correspondent pete williams, capitol hill correspondent ali vitali, anna nef vass, chief correspondent for pbs newshour, and jill wine-banks, former assistant watergate special prosecutor and an msnbc contributor. pete, let s go straight to you. there won t be any delay in the trial. we re past the speed bump and will probably get along with
so donald trump is just like every other american citizen in this situation. reporter: chairman thompson there effectively saying no one is above the law, including former presidents. that s going to be the focus for the final hearing. you see it in these two witnesses that we reported last night, people inside the white house, people like matt pottinger who can speak to the machinations of what was goings-on or rather what wasn t going on inside the white house while the capitol was under attack. that is the key point of contrast. frankly, it s the culmination of the last seven hearings we ve seen, the committee bringing us up in this point in the timeline to january 6th, highlighting their hopes of the chaos of what was happening on the hill versus what wasn t happening in the white house which is donald trump doing nothing to stop it. i want to get to that in a moment with jill. amna, do you see any complications in breaking out this final report? does the committee risk muddyin
american people? the committee has faced questions from the very beginning about motivation and intention and any committee member we ve spoken to and certainly publicly in interview, they made very clear they re going to follow the facts wherever they lead. certainly the timeline has been part of the questions, the midterms looming has been part of the conversation. when you look at the way the whole work of the committee has unfolded, they ve been incredibly methodical, working quietly for months and months before the series of public hearings began. as ali reported, they said there could be more in the future. i think they re trying to ignore a lot of the political conversation around it saying we re following the facts wherever they lead, and very carefully cobbling together all these key witness testimonies. we re hearing from many people who folks didn t know about previously. these were not household names during the trump administration who are now turning out to be key witne