The Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to ramp up its probe of Donald Trump’s inner circle, issuing subpoenas to 10 people close to the former president.
Trump’s ex-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s name notably appears on that list.
“The investigation and public accounts have revealed credible evidence of your involvement in the events within the scope of the Select Committee’s inquiry,” the letter to McEnany states.
Rattling off the former secretary’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election, the letter quoted McEnany alleging that there are “very real claims” of fraud that the Trump re-election campaign brought. McEnany sowed fears about mail-in voting, erroneously asserting those ballots were “particularly prone to fraud,” the letter said.
Describing an episode recounted in Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s book “I Alone Can Fix It,” the letter placed McEnany with Trump when the former president traveled to the Ellipse at the so-called “Stop the Steal” rally. The then-press secretary reportedly “popped in and out” to join Trump as he watched the attack on the U.S. Capitol later that afternoon.
Aside from McEnany, the other recipients of the subpoenas include:
- Trump’s ex-Senior Advisor Stephen Miller;
- Ex-personal assistant Nicholas Luna;
- Molly Michael, ex-Special Assistant to the President and Oval Office Operations Coordinator;
- Benjamin Williamson, ex-Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows;
- Christopher Liddell, ex-White House Deputy Chief of Staff;
- John McEntee, ex-White House Personnel Director;
- Keith Kellogg, ex-Vice President Mike Pence’s National Security Advisor;
- Cassidy Hutchinson, ex-Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs; and
- Kenneth Klukowski, ex-Senior Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.
The Committee’s Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has been doling out subpoenas at a furious pace, adding Tuesday’s batch of 10 on top of another stack of six issued Monday to people associated with Trump’s so-called “war room” inside the Willard Hotel, a short distance away from the White House.
“The Select Committee wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand,” Thompson said in a statement. “We need to know precisely what role the former President and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election. We believe the witnesses subpoenaed today have relevant information and we expect them to comply fully with the Select Committee’s investigation as we work to get answers for the American people, make recommendations on changes to the law to protect our democracy, and help ensure that nothing like January 6th ever happens again.”
Two of the most high-profile recipients of the subpoenas are John Eastman, the author of the so-called “coup memo,” and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the ex-National Security Advisor who was prosecuted during the Russia investigation and subsequently pardoned by Trump. Another recipient of the subpoena, ex-New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, also received a Trump pardon and was associated with the FightBack Foundation, a Texas non-profit associated with post-election conspiracy theorist Lin Wood.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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