The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack is scrutinizing phone calls former President Donald Trump made on that day and on the 5th before the riots, The Guardian reports. The twice-impeached one-term President has recently asked the Supreme Court to reverse a federal appeals court panel decision that tossed out Trump’s effort to stop congressional Jan. 6 investigators from obtaining his White House records. That looks unlikely, and the committee appears to be amping up its investigation.
“Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, has said the panel will open an inquiry into Donald Trump’s phone call seeking to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on Jan. 6 hours before the insurrection,” the outlet reports.
The Guardian revealed late last month that Trump made several calls from the White House to top lieutenants at the Willard Hotel just hours before the attack and talked about ways to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win from taking place on Jan. 6.
“The former president first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term,” the outlet reported in November.
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“But as Trump relayed to them the situation with Pence, the sources said, on at least one call, he pressed his lieutenants about how to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January in a scheme to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to Congress,” the report continues.
“The chairman said the select committee intended to scrutinize the phone call – revealed last month by the Guardian – should they prevail in their legal effort to obtain Trump White House records over the former President’s objections of executive privilege,” the report states.
“That’s right,” Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the committee, said when asked by the outlet whether the select committee would look into the former President’s phone call. Johnson suggested that House investigators had already started to consider ways to investigate Trump’s demand that Biden not be certified as President on Jan. 6.
Rep. Liz Cheney suggested recently that a criminal referral could be issued for Trump over his actions during the Capitol riot.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
