Trump’s alleged comment appears to have been corroborated, at least in part, by some of the testimony delivered to the committee by Cassidy Hutchinson, a onetime legislative aide to Trump.
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“It was not immediately clear how much detailed information Ms. Hutchinson provided. She has cooperated with the committee in three separate interviews after receiving a subpoena,” the Times noted.
According to the Times, a lawyer for Meadows responded to the report and said he had “every reason to believe” that the claim was untrue. Separately, a spokesman for Trump, Taylor Budowich, only responded by railing about the Jan. 6 committee running a “smear campaign.”
Hutchinson was first subpoenaed in November. In March, when the committee pursued records from Meadows in court, it revealed a partial transcript of her deposition.
She told investigators that during one planning call before Congress met to certify the electoral votes on Jan. 6, lawmakers like Reps. Scott Perry, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert (among others) were fervently calling for Congress to stop the count and suggested that Pence had the authority to do so.
He did not.
Hutchinson went on to say that Rep. Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, supported the idea of “sending people to the Capitol” on Jan. 6.
Perry was one of many Republican lawmakers hit with a request for cooperation over the course of the insurrection probe’s investigation. But after stonewalling the committee for weeks, a round of formal subpoenas were sent to him and others including Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Kevin McCarthy, leader of the House GOP.
RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 panel subpoenas five members of Congress, including Kevin McCarthy
The Jan. 6 committee begins its hearings on June 9 and according to a draft schedule first obtained by The Guardian, the first hearing will air during primetime at 8PM ET.
There will be six hearings—for now. Investigators like Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, have indicated there could be more later.
After the first hearing on June 9, the next hearings will be held on June 15, June 16, June 21, and June 23. Like the first hearing, the last scheduled meeting on June 23 will air at 8PM. All of the other dates will feature testimony that starts at 10 AM.
The morning hearings are expected to last between two and three hours and for primetime slots, about an hour and-a-half to two hours is being allocated.
Raskin told Daily Kos recently that the committee hearings would offer unique, new, and chilling insights into the attack. He said he hopes the information they will present will arm the nation with “intellectual self-defense” against aspiring and existing authoritarians still in the midst.
The committee may also draw attention to another detail tacked onto the end of the Times report Wednesday: Meadows, witnesses have testified, used a fireplace in his office to burn documents.
Though the public hearings are fast approaching, the committee is still seeking cooperation from witnesses and conducting interviews. Just last week, the committee hit Rep. Barry Loudermilk with a request for his voluntary cooperation.
The panel asked the Georgia Republican last week to share information about a tour that he gave through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5.
Loudermilk balked, saying on May 19 that he gave a “constituent family with young children” the tour because they were meeting with him in House office buildings.
“The family never entered the Capitol building,” Loudermilk said. “No place that the family went on the 5th was breached on the 6th, the family did not enter the Capitol grounds on the 6th, and no one in that family has been investigated or charged in connection to January 6th.”
A day later on May 20, however, Loudermilk said that he “took a family with young children and their guests who were visiting Washington to lunch in a cafeteria in one of the House office buildings” and he noted that “some were actually wearing red baseball caps.”
There was “nothing unusual or nefarious about this family’s visit to see their congressman,” he said.
But in an interview that Loudermilk gave to WBHF radio on Jan. 6, he said he had roughly a dozen people “come by and visit.”
His account from that day doesn’t exactly line up with his remarks in the past week.
On Jan. 6, Loudermilk told WBHF:
“We had them in our office. They were definitely peaceful people. People that we’ve met at church. They were supporters of the president. They just wanted to be up here as if it were another rally.”
Loudermilk did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
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