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A Jan. 6 committee in the House of Representatives released another witness interview transcript on Sunday.
The new release is part of a recent series of transcript drops from the House Select Committee and complements the release of the extensive 845-page report.
The latest drop in the minutes comes as the House majority is set to change from Democrats to Republicans at the start of the new Congress on Tuesday, and the panel will scale back its work.
The minutes released so far reveal new details about how a House committee conducted its investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and what key witnesses told the panel. sheds new light on
Below are some of the highlights from the latest disclosure.
Former President Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, sent 6,600 pages of email records and about 2,000 text messages, according to deposition transcripts that Meadows did not attend in December 2021. Provided to selection committee.
Investigators looked at several items, including an email from Meadows in December 2020, that they wanted to ask about whether Meadows showed up. According to commission records, it was the president’s decision.
The committee also wanted to ask Meadows about specific passages in his book, specific text message exchanges, and activities to the Department of Justice to “encourage investigations into alleged voter fraud.” The committee also planned to ask Meadows about his correspondence regarding deploying the National Guard on January 6. -Trump people, end of quote.
The committee also worked for former Trump administration aide Dan Scavino, former Trump administration official Peter Navarro, and right-wing media personality Steve Bannon, who previously worked in Trump’s White House. , convened a no-show deposition meeting. Brief minutes of these meetings document the failure of witnesses to appear and the correspondence that the Commission exchanged with them or their representatives.
In a recording with Alexandra Pleet, who worked as a spokeswoman for Bannon, the committee asked about their text exchanges. After Joe Biden took office, the two appeared to be discussing a million people surrounding the Capitol.
A committee interviewer quotes Bannon’s text as “utterly silencing the Capitol.”
When asked if she and Bannon still discussed bringing people back to Washington, D.C. after Jan. 6, Preet said, “I don’t remember,” and it was “not my deal.” He also said he believed Trump lost the election.
Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel told the committee that the former president called her on Jan. 1, 2021, asking about her relationship with then-Vice President Mike Pence.
According to the transcript, McDaniel told the selection committee, “I remember him asking me how was my relationship with the vice president. I said I didn’t know him very well. .
McDaniel said he can’t remember if Pence specifically discussed the role he would play in authenticating votes for the Electoral College five days after that call. Afterwards, Trump told her personally that he “in some way told them that the Vice President has the power…the power not to accept electors.” ”
She also said Trump called her on Jan. 7, but they didn’t talk about the attack.
The panel said during the summer hearings that Trump called McDaniel directly in December to tell her about plans for a group of states to submit alternatives to the electoral rolls, referring her to his election attorney John East. Mann, but her full record reveals more details about what was shared between the RNC, Trump’s White House, and the Trump campaign at the time.
In the lead up to January 6, McDaniel was made aware that electoral candidate lists were being considered for non-provisional electors in case legal challenges changed the state’s election results. She added that she was not involved in many of those discussions, and that she had undergone ankle surgery around the time of the Capitol attack.
McDaniel told commission investigators that she called Trump campaign attorney Justin Clarke after that December call. When informed, he testified that he had sent the note to former Trump White House aide Molly Michael.
In response to a fundraising email from the Republican National Committee on the 2020 election, McDaniel said the GOP committee had worked closely with Clark, but after Giuliani took over Trump’s legal efforts, McDaniel said. He said he was “doing his own thing and didn’t really reach out to the Republican Commission.”
Attorneys for the Trump campaign told the committee that Giuliani had requested $20,000 per day for post-election legal affairs, but Giuliani declined the request.
Matthew Morgan, general counsel for former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, told the committee that Giuliani and his team, who took over the campaign’s litigation strategy in mid-November 2020, would hire outside attorneys and firms. Described how the campaign handled the request.
According to a transcript of an April interview published on Sunday, Morgan said, “Rudy Giuliani himself requested an engagement letter, and through his agent, what was seen as a large sum of money.
“And when I presented this to[Trump campaign deputy head of campaign]Justin Clarke, Justin Clarke didn’t think that was the amount the campaign was willing to pay, so I turned to Justin. I asked if I could write such an engagement letter, and then it never happened.
Morgan told the House committee that the request, made through Giuliani’s colleague Maria Ryan, was for $20,000 a day. He declined to answer further questions from the committee about the backlash against the campaign’s demands.
CNN previously reported that Giuliani had requested $20,000 per day in November 2020, citing sources. At the time, Giuliani denied to the New York Times that he wanted the person.
Trump’s White House aides have offered conflicting accounts of how the former president reacted when he learned he would not be taken to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In testimony, Cassidy Hutchinson described Trump’s reaction as an outburst of anger, while Robert “Bobby” Engel, who was the lead agent in Trump’s motorcade on the day of the riots, said others at the White House Trump appears to have simply “shrugged” when told he was not being taken to the Capitol.
When Engel returned to the White House after Trump’s Jan. 6 speech, he was joined by former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato and the president’s special adviser for operations, William “Bo” I stopped by the office Harrison shared.
“It came to our attention that the president asked me where I was going. Are you going back to the White House?” rice field.
“And at that point I remember Bobby telling both Tony and myself that we were in the room and no one else was in the room and the president almost shrugged. “He just stepped forward,” Harrison told the committee.
Harrison told congressional investigators he had never heard of a violent altercation in the car until he saw Hutchinson’s testimony on television. “Also, if something like the one described happened, I would 100% know about it and have heard of it.
As Hutchinson testified, Harrison received a call from Ornato. Ornato essentially said, “Can you believe this?” According to Harrison’s commission records, “Where did this story come from?”
Notably, Harrison told investigators he did not pay legal representation and did not know who was paying the bills.
Harrison’s attorney for the Commission interview was Stephen Passantino, who previously represented Hutchinson and is said to have encouraged Hutchinson to give misleading testimony. Passantino claims to represent Hutchinson “honorably” and “ethically.”
Records show that Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who on January 6 said a House committee was the mastermind behind the phony post-2020 election voter plan, was asked a large number of panel questions at a deposition in October. He refused to answer part of it.
When asked about a variety of topics, including his interactions with Trump and his role in the plan to pit Trump’s electors against Biden’s electors in the states, Chesebrough criticized his Fifth Amendment right to self-incrimination. and exercised both attorney-client privilege that Biden won and pressure for Pence to block Congressional certification of Biden’s victory.
“I think my Fifth Amendment rights cover this whole subject in terms of my involvement with the by-electors,” Chesebro said at one point during the deposition. His lawyers referred to criminal investigations by Fulton County, Georgia and the Department of Justice. Both delve into the fake electoral vote scheme.
Chesebro answered some of the committee’s more abstract questions about how he learned the legal issues that shaped the theories he promoted after the 2020 election. citing that he went to the White House on December 16, 2020, or was in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, as suggested in an email obtained by the committee. refused to say.
He also refused to confirm that it was Kenneth Chesebro, who was mentioned in several emails obtained by the commission that investigators had tried to ask him.
“I think I’ll take the 5th in terms of certifying documents related to the subject I’m taking the 5th,” he said.
