He was at the center of the coup and people are talking
Donald Trump’s top election-subversion wingmen have stonewalled the Jan. 6 select committee for months, but investigators have found a reliable workaround: their deputies and assistants.
Time and again, the panel has managed to pierce the secrecy of Trump’s inner circle by turning to the aides entrusted with carrying out logistics for their bosses, according to interviews with lawmakers and newly public committee records.
Some of the select panel’s most crucial information has come from Trumpworld staffers, who were often in the room or briefed on sensitive meetings, even if they weren’t central players themselves. It’s a classic investigative strategy that’s paid dividends for select committee investigators, many of whom are seasoned former federal prosecutors.
“We are definitely taking advantage of the fact that most senior-level people in Washington depend on a lot of young associates and subordinates to get anything done,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the select committee. “A lot of these people still have their ethics intact and don’t want to squander the rest of their careers for other people’s mistakes and corruption.”
Aides like Cassidy Hutchinson, a close adviser to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Ken Klukowski, who advised former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, have helped the select committee fill in gaps about Trump’s private meetings, calls and efforts to overturn the 2020 election that investigators could otherwise only obtain from the principal players themselves.
These interviews have given committee members confidence that they’ll be able to tell the full story of Trump’s attempt to stop the transition of power — even though central figures like Clark, Meadows, outside adviser Steve Bannon and attorney John Eastman have declined to provide substantive testimony.
While appearances by Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner drew headlines in recent weeks, select committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the panel has spent much of its energy lately on figures who are not “household” names but “had knowledge and information about what went on leading up to January 6. And we appreciate them for coming forward with it.”
As Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) put it, “the beauty of emails and meetings is that not many of them are principal to principal. Many of them include staff.”
In addition to providing evidence of what Trump’s key allies were doing in the weeks before Jan. 6, lesser-known aides have also helped the select committee reconstruct a minute-by-minute account of what occurred in the White House on the day of the riot, while a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol. Even in instances where those staffers weren’t providing direct testimony about their own bosses, they were witnesses to important encounters and caught glimpses of Trump or overheard other communications that have proven valuable.
For example, some aides have told the panel who they saw in and around the Oval Office that day and divulged specific times Meadows was making phone calls or had retreated to his private office — details that have helped the committee establish new lines of inquiry.
Hutchinson’s testimony offered granular details about numerous meetings and phone calls that Meadows convened to discuss options for preventing Joe Biden from taking office. She identified a long list of Republican members of Congress who participated in those meetings — several of whom have themselves refused to cooperate with the investigation.
In addition, Hutchinson described pushback from the White House counsel’s office to legal theories pushed by lawmakers and Trump allies on how to thwart election results, and she was able to identify when many key figures met with Trump himself.
“Almost all, if not all, meetings Mr. Trump had, I had insight on,” Hutchinson told the committee.
In excerpts of her testimony released by the committee, Hutchinson also described Meadows’ post-election trip to Georgia, where he met with aides to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger amid Trump’s effort to pressure the state to reverse his defeat. Plus, she described Meadows’ movements on Jan. 6 — from his early efforts to contact Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rudy Giuliani to his time with Trump.
“When I had gotten to the West Wing, he was in the Oval dining room,” Hutchinson said of Trump.
“How do you know that?” committee investigator Dan George asked in her February interview.
“Because I heard it announced on my radio which announces the president’s logistical movements,” Hutchinson replied.
And she’s not the only one who provided information about Meadows’ actions that day. The committee has previously released an excerpt of testimony from Ben Williamson, a longtime Meadows aide who followed him from Capitol Hill to the White House. During that interview, the excerpt shows, investigators sought to piece together when the White House was aware of the violence at the Capitol.
“I just wondered, Mr. Williamson, do you remember seeing bike racks being breached?” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chair, asked Williamson during a January interview.
“Yes, on the TV, correct, congresswoman,” Williamson replied, adding that he talked to Meadows after that breach.
Cooperation from Meadows’ aides has also changed the select committee’s posture in its legal battle to force the former chief of staff to testify. Doug Letter, the House’s top lawyer, told a judge in federal court last week that the cooperation from Meadows’ associates had helped the Jan. 6 panel dramatically narrow its remaining questions.
“We know so much more than we did then,” Letter said during a hearing on Meadows’ lawsuit to block the select committee’s subpoena for testimony and documents.
These people always think the staff is not only loyal but stupid and they don’t really understand what’s going on. They are almost always wrong. They know everything and often a lot more than their bosses — they talk to each other.
This piece in the Washington Post about Meadows’ part in the coup is simply devastating. If you have a chance to read the whole thing, I highly recommend it. The man is not very bright and he got caught up in something that was way above his abilities to process:
Meadows granted those peddling theories about a stolen election direct access to the Oval Office and personally connected some with the president, according to congressional reports and interviews with former White House officials. He pressed the Justice Department to investigate spurious and debunked claims, including a bizarre theory that an Italian operation changed votes in the United States — an allegation a top Justice official called “pure insanity,” according to email correspondence released by congressional investigators. He also pushed the Justice Department, unsuccessfully, to try to invalidate the election results in six states through federal court action.
Now Meadows’s actions are at the center of probes by both the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and the Justice Department, which is examining whether to press contempt-of-Congress charges against him and is conducting its own inquiry into the events surrounding the insurrection. North Carolina officials, meanwhile, are looking into whether Meadows himself potentially committed voter fraud by registering to vote in 2020 at a mobile home he reportedly never stayed in.
“Meadows was someone obviously central to the operations of the Trump White House and deeply implicated in Trump’s specific attempts to strip Biden of his electoral college victory after the election,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee,said in a statement to The Post. “He was above all a loyal servant to Donald Trump regardless of the dictates of the law and the Constitution.”Advertisement
A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Some former White House officials also say Meadows bears responsibilityfor enabling Trump’s destructive push to stay in power.
“Anybody who participated in telling the president, ‘We can take this back,’ has a role in all of this,” said former press secretary Stephanie Grisham in an interview. “He was allowing people to come into the White House who had this false information. … He was participating in these meetings that were causing the president to really believe in voter fraud.”
Meadows could not be reached for comment. In an April 30 speech urging Christians to vote, Meadows sounded emotional as he referenced his wife, Debra, in the audienceand said “God is humbling us.” He did not mention the investigation of his actions.
I have to wonder if he’s heard from Dear Leader lately. I’d guess not.