Tag: January 6 Select Committee

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Capitol Insurrection January 6 The Trump Adminstration

White House Switchboard Called A Capitol Rioter During January 6 Attack: Report

 

A senior adviser to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol has revealed that on the day of the riots, the White House switchboard called a rioter as the attack was taking place.

Denver Riggleman, who served as a senior technical adviser to the Jan. 6 panel, told 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker:

“You get a real ‘a-ha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening. That’s a big, pretty big ‘a-ha’ moment.”

Riggleman, a former GOP congressman from the state of Virginia who also served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force, added:

“I only know one end of that call. I don’t know the White House end, which I believe is more important. But the thing is the American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.”

What remains to be seen, Riggleman noted, is who exactly in the White House reached out to a rioter right as the Capitol was under violent attack, and what that individual was trying to communicate:

 “From my perspective…being in counterterrorism. If the White House, even if it’s a short call, and it’s a connected call, who is actually making that phone call?”

That led Whitaker to inquire:

“Is there a simple, innocent explanation for that?”

Riggleman:

“Was it an accidental call? When the White House just happened to call numbers that somebody misdialed a rioter that day, on January 6th? Probably not.”

CBS News also notes that the House Select Committee has done extensive research on communications during the fateful events of Jan. 6 which resulted in the deaths of five people, including a member of the U.S. Capitol Police:

The call was uncovered after Riggleman assembled a small team of data miners and analysts for the committee to comb through 20 million lines of data: emails, social media posts, phone records, and texts, to learn who did what leading up to and on January 6th.

“We were able to do things, I think, in a way that had never been done before with millions of lines of data,” Riggleman said. “And to actually create a graph that shows how these groups actually intermingled.”

Among those groups, Riggleman explained, were “Trump team, Trump family, rally goers, unaffiliated DOJ-charged defendants, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and others, which are state legislators, alternate electors, things like that.”

The House Select Committee resumes its hearings on September 28.

 

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Capitol Insurrection Congress January 6

January 6 Committee ‘Won’t Be Quiet’ In The Weeks Leading Up To Midterm Elections: Report

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is making it clear they will not let the November midterm elections keep them from holding hearings and releasing new findings in the weeks leading up to the November 8 balloting.

Damaging new revelations could be a big problem for Republicans, who have seen their polling lead vanish in recent weeks at the same time President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are polling strongly and could wind up keeping control of both houses of Congress.

According to Axios, Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is signaling that there will be no pullback by the panel:

Thompson told Axios the panel does not want to be “perceived as a partisan committee … we’ve been fairly free of those kind of complaints, and we would not want to interfere with the election.”

But he said the time between an expected Sept. 28 hearing and the election “won’t be a quiet period.” He also said that “the goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election.” The panel may release its interim report in that window.

Committee member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Republicans will complain no matter what happens in the hearings:

“There are those partisans of former President Trump that will denounce anything we do, so we’re not going to jump through hoops to please people who will call anything we do partisan.”

The biggest fear for Republicans: Damaging new information coming out of the hearings that would put the issue forefront in the minds of voters right as they’re headed to the polls.

The panel’s highly publicized public hearings over the summer dredged up events Republicans would sooner forget, searing them into the public consciousness in a way they hadn’t been since early 2021. New revelations could return concerns to the forefront of voters’ minds.

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Capitol Insurrection Congress GOP January 6

Liz Cheney Claps Back At Tom Cotton After He Slams Jan. 6 Hearings – But Admits He Hasn’t Watched Them

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) made Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) look like a complete fool after he criticized the hearings being conducted by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

Cotton appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Monday and slammed the hearings, Mediaite reports:

“It was clear in Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to seat Jim Jordan and Jim Banks as Republican members of that committee, a break with precedent going back to the beginning of the House of Representatives in the 18th Century. And I think what you’ve seen over the last few weeks is why Anglo-American jurisprudence going back centuries has found that adversarial inquiry, cross-examination is the best way to get at the truth.”

Cotton later confessed that he hadn’t actually watched the hearings, but had merely seen “a snippet here or there on the news.”

“I will confess that I did not watch that hearing, and I have not watched any of the hearings, so I’ve not seen any of them out of the context that I see a snippet here or there on the news.”

It’s kind of hard to accurately gauge the fairness or probative value of a congressional hearing if you haven’t seen any of it, and that’s exactly what Cheney reminded Cotton on Twitter, where she absolutely destroyed him:

It should be interesting to see if Cotton attempts a retort to Cheney. If he has even a shred of a brain, he won’t. Then again, he’s already proven that he isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

 

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Capitol Insurrection GOP January 6 Social Media WTF?!

House GOP Tweets And Then Deletes Attack On Jan. 6 Witness Sarah Matthews After Recalling They Recently Hired Her

As former Trump administration staffer Sarah Matthews was still testifying before the House January 6 committee on Thursday evening, the official House Republican Twitter account fired off a nasty attack against her, even though she works for them.

According to HuffPost:

“Just another liar and pawn in Pelosi’s witch-hunt,” the House Republican account tweeted, referring to Sarah Matthews, an aide who was working in the White House during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

She is currently the Republican communications director for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Oops! Nothing quite like slamming one of your own.

It should be noted that during her testimony Thursday, Matthews corroborated what former top aide Cassidy Hutchinson had told the Jan. 6 committee when she appeared last month.

A spokesperson for the House GOP told Politico that the tweet was deleted because, “The tweet was sent out at the staff level and was not authorized or the position of the conference and therefore was deleted.”

The real reason, however, was probably the chiding the GOP received online, including this one from another former member of the Trump administration:

Memo to House GOP: You need to delete your Twitter account and quit lying about how none of you are watching the hearings.

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Congress Elections GOP

House Republicans Planning ‘Payback’ On Cheney And Kinzinger If GOP Wins Midterms

If Republicans win control of the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections, they have plans to punish two GOP members of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Reps. Liz Cheney (WY) and Adam Kinzinger (IL).

According to a report from CNN, Republicans would likely use the House Judiciary Committee to target those they feel didn’t agree to lie and obfuscate for failed, one-term former president Donald Trump:

The GOP’s growing desire to craft a counternarrative on January 6 — and shift the blame away from Trump — comes as the former President is gearing up to soon announce another White House bid. Pursuing that effort could also be politically advantageous for McCarthy, whose expected bid for speaker would be made easier with support from Trump. The former President has sometimes criticized the California Republican over how he has handled the GOP’s defense of Trump during the select committee’s investigation.

Republicans might even try to create their own Jan. 6 committee in a pathetic attempt to spread the “big lie” Trump has suggested proves that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though he has yet to provide a shred of evidence other than conspiracy theories and right-wing talking points while also punishing Cheney and Kinzinger for daring to serve on the current bipartisan panel:

Republicans have already asked the January 6 panel to preserve a broad range of documents in its possession — a signal they’re preparing to force those records to be turned over should they wield powerful committee gavels next year. And privately, Republican sources say there have been discussions about subpoenaing members of the select committee, particularly Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is fighting an uphill battle for reelection, and retiring Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, if both Republicans are private citizens next year.

In other words, rather than doing anything worthwhile if they happen to win control of the House, the GOP will engage in behavior better suited for children. It’s proof-positive that every last Republican needs to be voted out of office in order to save our democracy.