Transcript redactions are revealing
The January 6th Committee did not release its final report on schedule Wednesday, as likely as not to keep from stealing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spotlight. Zelensky met with President Joe Biden at the White House Wednesday and gave an impassioned request for more armaments before a joint meeting of Congress in prime time.
What the Committee did release were 34 transcripts of witness testimony. There were many invocations of the Fifth Amendment, some by household name witnesses and some by less well-known supporting characters in the Jan. 6 drama.
From her redoubt five hours ahead in Ireland, Marcy Wheeler has had time to review an interview with Peter Navarro aide, Garrett Ziegler. Ziegler is most infamous for being the White House worker who let Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, and Patrick Byrne into the White House for their shouting-match meeting in the Oval Office on December 18, 2020. Team Conspiracy His transcript is the last on the list.
Ziegler’s many non-answers (Fifth Amendment), Wheeler believes, are themselves revealing about elements of the plot about which the Committee already has details. She offers a list:
- How and why he was hired as a policy analyst in the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy as his first job after graduating from St. Louis College
- Whether, for the almost two years he worked for Navarro, he was also working on Trump’s reelection, and then with five others, Navarro directed him to work on overturning the election
- Whether, in November 2020, he attended meetings at the Westin in Arlington and at Trump Hotel; whether he also spent time at Lin Wood’s plantation
- Whether he interacted with analysts working for Patrick Byrne
- Whether he acted as a conduit for Patrick Byrne
- Whether he let Patrick Byrne, Sidney Powell, and Mike Flynn into the White House on December 18, 2020, so they could pitch seizing the voting machines
- Whether he played a role in devising the Green Bay Sweep with Steve Bannon and Navarro
- Whether he had a role in writing the Navarro Report documenting purported election irregularities Congress would use to question the vote
- Whether he traveled to Nevada to investigate bogus claims of bribery
- Whether he talked to Trump about an Operation Pence Card plan sent by Raiklin on December 23, 2020
- What Ivan Raiklin emailed him about a path to victory for Trump in a document sent overnight on December 27, 2020 (and earlier sent to Mark Meadows), which described several scenarios for January 6
- Whether he instructed his wife to leave town before January 6 because he anticipated violence
- Whether he was at the Capitol and the Willard on January 6
- Whether he met with Trump in mid-January 2021 to tell him his people weren’t fighting hard enough for him
The photo at the top suggests how pleased Ziegler was to cooperate with the investigation.
After answering the Committee’s questions in mid-July, Ziegler issued a profane and sexist rant on a livestream:
In the 27-minute livestream, Ziegler used vulgar and misogynistic language to attack Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah Griffin, two women who worked for the Trump White House but have since publicly broken from the former President and cooperated with the January 6 panel.
He also accused the January 6 House select committee of being “anti-White,” without any evidence. (The nine-member panel is led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, who is Black.)
“They’re Bolsheviks,” Ziegler said in the stream, referring to the far-left communists who led the Soviet Union, “so, they probably do hate the American founders and most White people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign. If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?”
But not so unintimidated that he did not invoke the Fifth again and again. Not so Christian that he refrains from using language about women you can listen to for yourselves.
Wheeler continues:
Ziegler was — is — a kid, totally unqualified for the role he had at the White House, which it sounds like he didn’t do anyway, instead at least partly working for Trump’s reelection on the taxpayer dime. But he was also totally wired into most aspects of the coup attempt.
His role in all this is interesting for several more reasons. First, it appears that Ziegler did not turn over the “path to victory” email in response to his January 6 subpoena, which means for all the times he invoked the Fifth, he might still have exposure to obstruction charges.
He is represented by John Kiyonaga — a lawyer who has represented key assault defendants in January 6, including former Special Forces guy Jeffrey McKellop. In fact, prosecutors are considering charging McKellop in January for violating the protective order covering evidence on January 6 by sending evidence from jail to others.
And Ziegler published a copy of both the “Hunter Biden” “laptop” and the diary stolen from Ashley Biden.
There will be much more to come when the full report gets released today(?). With winter storm Elliot sending temperatures into the low single-digit range here by Christmas Eve morning, and into dangerous frostbite range across much of the country (with blizzards), there will be little else for a news junky to do but browse it. If the power just stays on.
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