WASHINGTON ( Associated Press) – Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Sunday they may summon former Vice President Mike Pence and Virginia “Ginny” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, about her role. Looking forward to hearing. Illegal conspiracy to reverse the 2020 election.
Lawmakers indicated they would release more evidence about Donald Trump’s alleged attempt to defraud supporters by shutting down false claims of stolen presidential elections. He also promised to provide the Justice Department with relevant materials for his criminal investigation by the end of the month. The department complained in a letter last week that the committee was complicating its investigation by not sharing transcripts from its 1,000 interviews.
“We’re not taking anything off the table in terms of witnesses who haven’t testified yet,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, describing a pence subpoena as “definitely a possibility.”
“We still, I think, would love to have many high-profile people before our committee,” said Schiff, D-California.
For example, the committee has been able to document much of the end of Trump’s call for Pence on the morning of the rebellion on January 6, 2021, when the then-president made his final plea to withhold Joe Biden’s certification for Pence. Was. Victory when Pence presided over the Electoral College count in Congress. Members have not yet directly documented what Pence said in response.
The committee’s chair, Representative Benny Thompson, D-Miss., recently said that the committee was still “engaged” with Pence’s attorneys, while also suggesting that the testimony of many of Pence’s close aides should not be acceptable to him. Attendance may not be necessary.
Committee members are expected to learn more about Ginny Thomas’s own effort to keep Trump in office and a potential conflict of interest over her husband as a result of the cases before the Supreme Court on Jan.
Republican State Representative Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House, is due to testify Tuesday at a committee hearing that focused on state officials contacted by Trump and the White House as Trump tried to reverse the results. . Bowers is likely to be asked about emails he received from Thomas urging him and other state officials to set aside Biden’s 2020 victory and choose their own voters.
“We have questions for him and we may have questions for him too,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said.
Thomas has publicly indicated that she “cannot wait” to appear before the committee after receiving her request by letter last week.
As well as emailing Arizona officials, Thomas, who had attended a rally held just before the Capitol riots, also wrote to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election, calling for Biden’s victory. was encouraged to work to reverse it. Recent emails obtained by the committee also show that Thomas had email communications with John Eastman, who played a key role on Trump’s behalf in efforts to pressure Pence to reverse the election.
Schiff said, “I think the committee would be interested, among other things, had this been discussed with Justice Thomas, noting that he was deciding matters that would give us some of this information.” Or not.”
Last January, Thomas was the only member of the court who supported Trump’s bid to withdraw documents from the January 6 committee.
Lofgren said the committee would release additional evidence gathered on the “larger rip-off,” which the committee alleges may have fraudulently rigged the fundraising by falsely claiming Trump was election plagiarism.
Rep. Adam Kizinger, R-Ill., said that in the end, the public will have a clearer picture of the “failure of the oath” by Trump.
“I think what we are presenting to the American people will certainly rise to the level of criminal involvement by a president,” he said.
Kinzinger also said that she and her family have received threats because of her role on the committee. He spoke of his concern that “there is violence in the future. … and until we catch people telling the truth, we can’t expect anything else.”
Schiff appeared on Nation World News’s “State of the Union”, Lofgren was on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and Kinzinger spoke on ABC’s “This Week”.
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For full coverage of the January 6 hearing, visit https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.
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