Jan. 6 takeaways: Final revelations from investigation
WASHINGTON — Destroyed documents. Suggestions of pardoning violent rioters. Quiet talks among cabinet officials about whether then-President Donald Trump should be removed from office.
Interview transcripts released by House investigators in recent days — more than 100 so far — give further insight into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the weeks leading up to it, as Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election. The nine-member committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, and the lawmakers are gradually releasing hundreds of transcripts after issuing a final report last week. The panel will dissolve on Tuesday when the new Republican-led House is sworn in.
While some of the witnesses were more forthcoming than others, the interviews altogether tell the full story of Trump’s unprecedented scheming, the bloody chaos of the attack on the Capitol and the fears of lawmakers and the Republican former president’s own aides as he tried to upend democracy and the popular will.
Some highlights from the interview transcripts released so far:
WHITE HOUSE AIDE TELLS ALL
Previously little-known White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson drew national attention when she testified in a surprise hearing this summer about Trump’s words and actions around the Jan. 6 attack — his rage after security thwarted his efforts to go to the Capitol that day with his supporters and how he knew that some of his supporters were armed.
The committee has so far released four of her closed-door interviews, revealing new details about what she said she observed in her time as an aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Among other revelations, Hutchinson told the committee she had seen Meadows burning documents in his office fireplace “roughly a dozen times" after the 2020 election.
She said she didn’t know what the documents were or whether they were items that legally should have been preserved. A spokesman for Meadows declined to comment.
Hutchinson also spoke at length about her moral struggles as she decided how much to disclose — even doing research on Watergate figures who similarly testified about working in President Richard Nixon’s White House.
“My character and my integrity mean more to me than anything,” Hutchinson says she decided, returning to the committee with a new lawyer in June after three previous interviews.
PARDONS FOR EVERYONE?
After the insurrection, Trump floated the idea of a blanket pardon for all participants, but the White House counsel at the time, Pat Cipollone, discouraged the idea, according to testimony from Johnny McEntee, an aide who served as director of the presidential personnel office and was interviewed by the panel in March.
Trump then asked about limiting pardons to only those people who entered the Capitol but who did not engage in violence, but that idea was also met with some pushback, McEntee recalled. He said Trump appeared persuaded by the advice and said he was not aware that the idea ever came up again.
Separately, McEntee said that Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told him he was seeking a preemptive pardon from Trump as he faced a federal child sex trafficking investigation. Gaetz did not receive such a pardon and has not faced any charges in connection to the probe.
Hutchinson testified that Meadows’ office became so inundated with pardon requests at the end of Trump's term that some turned to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to help facilitate.
THE 25TH AMENDMENT
The panel interviewed several of Trump’s Cabinet secretaries about discussions of invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment — the forceful removal of Trump from power by his own Cabinet. While some acknowledged it had been discussed, it appears that it was never a likely scenario.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he spoke fleetingly with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the idea after the insurrection.
“It came up very briefly in our conversation,” Mnuchin testified in July. “We both believed that the best outcome was a normal transition of power, which was working, and neither one of us contemplated in any serious format the 25th Amendment.”
Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee he witnessed a brief conversation between the two Cabinet secretaries in the White House and heard the phrase “25th Amendment.” His transcript has not yet been released, but investigators quoted Milley’s interview to both Pompeo and Mnuchin in their interviews.
Pompeo told the committee he didn’t recall the conversation. “I would have viewed someone speaking about the potential of invoking the 25th Amendment as just absolutely preposterous,” he said.