The Guardian reports, Trump held secret meetings in days before Capitol attack, ex-press secretary tells panel:
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack that Donald Trump hosted secret meetings in the White House residence in days before 6 January, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The former senior Trump aide also told House investigators that the details of whether Trump actually intended to march to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse rally would be memorialized in documents provided to the US Secret Service, the sources said. [Documents presumably in the possession of the National Archives.]
The select committee’s interview with Grisham, who was Melania Trump’s chief of staff when she resigned on 6 January, was more significant than expected, the sources said, giving the panel new details about the Trump White House and what the former US president was doing before the Capitol attack.
Grisham gave House investigators an overview of the chaotic final weeks in the Trump White House in the days leading up to the Capitol attack, recalling how the former president held off-the-books meetings in the White House residence, the sources said.
The secret meetings were apparently known by only a small number of aides, the sources said. Grisham recounted that they were mostly scheduled by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and that the former chief usher, Timothy Harleth, would wave participants upstairs, the sources said.
Harleth, the former director of rooms at the Trump International Hotel before moving with the Trumps to the White House in 2017, was once one of the former first family’s most trusted employees, according to a top former White House aide to Melania Trump.
But after Harleth sought to ingratiate himself with the Biden transition team after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election in order to keep his White House role, Trump and Meadows moved to fire him before Melania Trump stepped in to keep him until Biden’s inauguration.
Grisham told the select committee she was not sure who exactly Trump met with in the White House residence, but provided Harleth’s name and the identities of other Trump aides in the usher’s office who might know of the meetings, the sources said.
The Guardian previously reported that Trump made several phone calls from the Yellow Oval Room and elsewhere in the White House residence to his lieutenants [Coup Plotters] at the Willard hotel in Washington the night before the Capitol attack, telling them to stop Joe Biden’s certification.
[A] spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on Grisham’s interview that took place the first week of January. Harleth did not respond to questions about the meetings in the White House residence when reached last week by phone.
Over the course of her hours-long interview, Grisham told House investigators that the mystery surrounding Trump’s promise at the Ellipse rally that he would march with his supporters to the Capitol might be resolved in Trump White House documents, the sources said.
The former president’s purported intention to go to the Capitol has emerged as a crucial issue for the select committee, as they examine whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy coordinating his political plan to stop Biden’s certification with the insurrection.
Trump’s promise is significant as it served as one of the primary motivations for his supporters to march to the Capitol alongside militia groups like the Oath Keepers, and was used by far-right activists like Alex Jones to encourage the crowd along the route.
But Trump never went to the Capitol and instead returned to the White House, where he watched the attack unfold on television – after being informed by the Secret Service before the insurrection that they could not guarantee his security if he marched to the Capitol.
The select committee is now trying to untangle whether Trump made a promise that he perhaps had no intention of honoring because he hoped to incite an insurrection that stopped the certification – his only remaining play to get a second term – one of the sources said.
Grisham told the select committee that Trump’s intentions – and whether the Secret Service had been told Trump had decided not to march to the Capitol – should be reflected in the presidential line-by-line, the document that outlines the president’s movements, the sources said.
The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, has told reporters the panel is already seeking information from the Secret Service about what plans they had for Trump on January 6, as well as what evacuation strategies they had for then-vice president Mike Pence.
But the presidential line-by-line, which gets sent to the Secret Service, could also reveal discussions about security concerns and suggest a new line of inquiry into why an assessment about conditions that were too dangerous for the president were not disseminated further.
Grisham also told the select committee about the necessary coordination between the Trump White House, the Secret Service and organizers of the “Save America” rally at the Ellipse on 6 January in order to ensure Trump’s appearance, the sources said.
The former Trump aide suggested to the select committee that Trump was determined to speak at the rally once he heard about its existence, the sources said, and was constantly on the phone to oversee the event’s optics, the sources said.
And then there is this. CNN reports Exclusive: Eric Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle’s phone records subpoenaed by January 6 committee:
The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has subpoenaed and obtained records of phone numbers associated with one of former President Donald Trump’s children, Eric Trump, as well as Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr., sources tell CNN.
It appears to be the first time the select committee has issued a subpoena that targeted a member of the Trump family, in what marks a significant escalation of the investigation into Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection.
The phone records obtained by the committee are part of a new round of call detail records subpoenaed from communication companies, multiple sources tell CNN. These records provide the committee with logs that show incoming and outgoing calls, including the date, time and length of calls. The records also show a log of text messages, but not the substance or content of the messages.
Still, the information can be a critical investigative tool for the committee in piecing together a road map of who was communicating before, during and after January 6.
Both Eric Trump and Guilfoyle played prominent roles in Trump’s “Stop the Steal” efforts, including Guilfoyle fundraising off the lie that the election was stolen. Both spoke at the January 6 rally on the Ellipse that preceded the attack on the Capitol.
The records may also help the committee flesh out the text messages and phone records it has received from others, like former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as fundraisers and rally organizers.
[T]here is no indication the committee has directly subpoenaed either Eric Trump or Guilfoyle for interviews or documents. Nor is there any evidence that the committee has subpoenaed communication records related to Trump’s other children, Ivanka Trump or Donald Trump Jr., or his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
UPDATE: Today the January 6 Committee wants “Princess” Invanka to voluntarily testify to the committee. NBC News reports. Jan. 6 committee asks Ivanka Trump to give voluntary testimony:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol has invited Ivanka Trump to give voluntary testimony.
In a letter sent Thursday to former President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, who served as a top White House adviser, the committee’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said it was seeking information about her communications with the White House surrounding the attack.
The committee said it that has evidence that Ivanka Trump was “in direct contact” with her father on the day of the riot and that she may have “direct knowledge” of the former president’s efforts to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to block Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results.
[T]he committee said it obtained text exchanges and testimony given by White House officials at the time describing efforts to convince the former president to intervene in the riot. The letter cited a text message exchange that it says occurred between a White House staff member and a person outside the White House.
“Is someone getting to potus? He has to tell protestors to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed,” said a person outside the White House staff, according to the committee.
According to the committee, the White House staff member replied: “I’ve been trying for the last 30 minutes. Literally stormed in outer oval to get him to put out the first one. It’s completely insane.”
The letter also cited testimony from Keith Kellogg, who was Pence’s national security adviser at the time and told the committee that Ivanka Trump made multiple attempts to convince her father to step in.
* * *
Thompson requested to meet with Ivanka Trump in early February.
Earlier this month, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the panel has testimony that Ivanka Trump asked her father to intervene as his supporters ransacked the Capitol.
“The committee has firsthand testimony now that he was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television as the assault on the Capitol occurred. We know, as you know well, that the briefing room at the White House is just a mere few steps from the Oval Office,” Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said on ABC News’ “This Week” on Jan. 2.
She said that at any moment, Trump could have walked to the briefing room and appeared on television.
“We know members of his family, we know his daughter — we have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence,” Cheney said.
Rep. Liz Cheney was the number 3 Republican leader at the time of the January 6 insurrection. She was privy to conversations among Republican leadership ad the White House. She is both an informant, and a fact witness herself.
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