WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection delayed publishing its final report Wednesday, but provided new details with the release of 34 transcripts of depositions taken during its investigation.
Many of the released transcripts are from lesser-known figures who played behind-the-scenes roles in the attempt by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though the list includes some of the biggest names involved, such as California attorney John Eastman, the architect of the legal theory embraced by Trump positing that the vice president could reject certain states’ electors.
Nearly all pleaded the Fifth Amendment at some point throughout their testimony in response to questions asked by committee members and staff, showing what information the panel hoped to learn and what dots they were trying to connect. For example, the committee asked Trump confidant Roger Stone whether he discussed Jan. 6 and strategies heading into that day during a Dec. 27, 2020, meeting with Trump at the former president’s Florida home.
Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., asked Stone whether he ever called Trump on the former president’s personal cellphone. Stone invoked the Fifth Amendment. She asked whether he thought violence “was justified” on Jan 6, 2021. He invoked the Fifth Amendment again.
Stone even invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when asked his age and address.
The committee wanted to know from Eastman what emails and phone numbers he used to discuss the 2020 election, where he has stored any documents related to the election and whether he would provide specific documents, such as a seven-page paper he wrote that Rudy Giuliani shared with Georgia legislators during a Dec. 3, 2020, state Senate judiciary hearing. The House Jan. 6 committee asked whether he had reached out to state lawmakers after the 2020 election.
Investigators also asked detailed questions about the memo Eastman wrote about the vice president’s role in certifying election results. They noted that he had discussed his memo in media interviews with the permission of the president, though he was invoking the Fifth Amendment in speaking with investigators.
Eastman was the only named person besides Trump referred by the committee to the Department of Justice for potential criminal charges stemming from the panel’s investigation.
Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn invoked the Fifth Amendment to nearly every question, including what his role was in planning and strategizing to find evidence of fraud after the 2020 election.
Flynn did, however, answer when asked whether he knew the reason Trump pardoned him.
“Because I think he saw my whole case as a travesty of justice,” Flynn said.
Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded the Fifth when asked about a number of individuals who were included on her privilege log of materials she withheld from the committee, including documents related to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and adviser Steve Bannon.
Ellis did answer questions about the efforts she took to obtain materials to fulfill the committee’s subpoena, but declined to answer more detailed follow-ups. For example, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right when asked why, of the 350 text messages she exchanged with Meadows between Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 13, 2021, only 35 of them were listed on her privilege log.
Ellis gave the committee a number of affidavits and declarations related to election fraud allegations, but invoked the Fifth when asked whether she or anyone else affiliated with Trump attempted to investigate the allegations in those documents. She also declined to answer committee questions about whether there was a plan to create a fake slate of electors as early as September 2020.
Among the lesser-known individuals whose transcript was released was former White House employee Garrett Ziegler, who acted as a conduit for the people scrambling to prove fraud had occurred after the 2020 election, and his boss, former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
Ziegler invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to nearly every question posed by the committee, including those about the so-called Green Bay Sweep, a procedural strategy crafted by Navarro and Bannon to enlist Republican members of Congress to force lengthy debates over the validity of certain state election results on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to pressure state lawmakers into reexamining the results and possibly handing Trump the election.
Wednesday’s release is just a portion of the more than 1,000 depositions taken during the committee’s 18-month investigation, which concludes when the final report is issued. Republicans are not expected to reconstitute the committee when they take control of the House on Jan. 3.
The final report, which the committee says it intends to make public Thursday, is expected to include additional evidence to what the committee presented during its nine public hearings this year, along with detailed descriptions of the scheme pushed by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results using state legislatures and the courts.
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(Times staff writer Freddy Brewster contributed to this report.)
