Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich received a letter he probably wishes he never would have today, because he now knows that he’s a target of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
CNN reports:
The committee wants to learn more about communications Gingrich had with senior advisers in former President Donald Trump’s White House about television advertisements that relied on false claims about the election.
In the letter, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) writes:
“The Committee has obtained information indicating that you have knowledge about former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and we write to seek your voluntary cooperation. Some of the information that we have obtained includes email messages that you exchanged with senior advisors to President Trump and others, including Jared Kushner and Jason Miller, in which you provided detailed input into television advertisements and relied upon false claims about fraud in the 2020 election.
“These advertising efforts were not designed to encourage voting for a particular candidate. Instead, these efforts attempted to cast doubt on the outcome of the election after voting had already taken place.”
The letter even contains a direct quote from an email Gingrich sent to Kushner, who was a senior adviser in the Trump administration:
“The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.] . . . If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors.”
Gingrich was also involved in the “false electors” scheme, which is referenced by Thompson in the letter:
“The Committee is also interested in other communications you may have had with the White House, President Trump, the Trump legal team or any other persons involved in the events of January 6th. We ask that you preserve all records of such communications.”
