Jan. 6 Committee Interview Lists Legislators In Meetings About Illegal Fake Elector Plot — Gaetz, Gohmert, Others
The January 6th Committee has released a 248-page document in response to Mark Meadows’ lawsuit, which asks the court to block subpoenas. The Committee’s release is a motion for summary judgment, and it lays out all the reasons the Committee feels that Meadows’ request should not be granted under the law — including pages and pages of evidence they’ve uncovered in their investigation.
Parts of the full document are filed under seal, and so not included in the public release, and the central focus of the document is the evidence — text messages, passages from Meadows’ own book, information obtained in interviews, and more — documenting his involvement, and the reasons that his claims of executive privilege don’t stand up to legal scrutiny.
Also included, however, is one interview that could implicate a list of Members of Congress.
The interviewee is Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an assistant to President Donald Trump, and Coordinator for Legislative Affairs, among other titles she held within the White House during his term, as documented by OpenPayrolls.
In nearly 20 pages of transcript, Hutchinson gives testimony on meetings in which the faux elector plot was discussed, with a focus on whether the participants knew that this was illegal.
The Commitee began with the question:
“At any of these meetings with individuals from outside the White House or the executive branch, did the White House Counsel’s Office express an opinion as to whether the plan to have electors for President Trump meet and cast electoral college votes in States that President Trump had lost was legal?”
Hutchinson answered in the affirmative.
The questioning continued, and while Hutchinson was clear that she couldn’t give specific quotes, she said that the question of legality, for various potential plans, was brought up many times, in contexts ranging from “Don’t raise that to Mr. Trump, it’s not appropriate, and it’s not a legal theory that we want to entertain right now” to “That’s not legal, we’re not putting ourselves in that line of fire.”
The questioning honed in on the issue of alternate elector slates.
“And so, to be clear, did you hear the White House Counsel’sOffice say that this plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes for Donald Trump in States that he had lost was not legally sound?”
Hutchinson affirmed this, and answered a question about the timeline, saying that this came up in a meeting that she believes was in early to mid-December, but could have been as early as late November.
Asked who was in the meeting, she listed Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and some of his associates, as well as Pat Cipillone, a member of the White House Counsel’s Office who she says expressed that the alternate elector plot would not be legal to carry out.
What about other meetings?
Q: Which Members of Congress were present during meetings at which the White House Counsel’s Office expressed their opinion that this plan related to alternate electors was not legally sound, as opposed to just discussions about followup or furtherresearch?
Hutchinson’s full answer can be read begining on page 98 of the document, but in short, she names the following Members of Congress: Scott Perry (R-PA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
Others who were present for similar meetings, discussing plots from the seizure of voting machines to the implementation of martial law, included, according to Hutchinson, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Mo Brooks (R-AL).
(Notably, Greene testified in court, under oath, on Friday that she could not recall having a conversation with Trump about implementing martial law.)
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