UPDATE: I’ll have more reporting soon about the other transcripts released Wednesday night by the select committee. The number of transcripts is certainly only going to grow, too, so stay tuned.
But in the meantime, here were some highlights picked out by other reporters poring over the 34 transcripts released tonight by those who invoked the Fifth Amendment when they testified before the committee.
Rhodes invokes the Fifth multiple times in his meeting with the committee; he wouldn’t answer specific questions about the Oath Keepers membership yet somehow still managed to contradict himself when he fielded more generalized questions about how members enter the group.
He wouldn’t answer questions about why he believed Trump might be forcibly removed from office; he wouldn’t answer questions about pro-Trump rallies in Washington in November or December (both were heavily attended by Proud Boys and other extremist groups.)
UPDATE:
From the Stewart Rhodes transcript:
Rhodes told the committee the Oath Keepers worked with the Proud Boys and Three Percenters “ad hoc.”
"We never had alliances with any other organization, no official alliances whatsoever. I wouldn't engage in entangling alliances with anybody else. We just had friendly relations."
Transcripts will take several days, if not weeks, to fully read through but I will pick out some highlights and as I just finished covering the first Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial and the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial kicks off in earnest next month, I’m starting with Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes.
In the Stewart Rhodes interview, he's asked about structure of Oath Keepers and invokes the 5th Amendment very early in t he session
"This would be a different deposition if I hadn't been indicted," he said.
But committee counsel noted that his attorney said he'd answer basic questions on this prior to the meeting.
Rhodes was cagey disclosing details about Oath Keeper board membership, saying he feared that disclosing this information would jeopardize their safety or their employment.
At the top of the interview, notably, Rhodes tells investigators that as president of the Oath Keepers he only drew a salary of $100,000 but in recent years, times were tough and he had to stop taking a salary.
For the record, Rhodes purchased over $17,000 in weapons and other tactical gear from Jan. 6, 2021 to now-President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
He would not answer questions about Oath Keeper assets or real estate, either.
Rhodes wanted to testify before the committee publicly after he was subpoenaed but the panel did not agree to those terms.
Rhodes also answered some questions about the Proud Boys.
“I’m not trying to pick on them,” he says before telling committee counsel that the group is more rowdy than he would ever be, or the Oath Keepers would be.
“We’re stone-cold silent,” Rhodes told the committee, boasting of how Oath Keepers don’t do “street combat” or get into “fisticuffs.”
UPDATE: Wednesday, Dec 21, 2022 · 3:19:30 PM Pacific Standard Time · Brandi BuchmanThe January 6 committee published 34 witness transcripts on Wednesday night. The witnesses are those who invoked their Fifth Amendment right when appearing before the committee.
The transcripts published include those for:
- Christopher Barcenas
- Kathy Berden
- Alexander Bruesewitz
- Patrick Casey
- Dion Cini
- Jeffrey Clark Part 1, Part 2
- Jim DeGraffenreid
- Enrique De La Torre
- John Eastman
- Jenna Ellis
- Kimberly Fletcher
- Michael Flynn
- Nick Fuentes
- Julie Fancelli
- Bianca Gracia
- Alex Jones
- Ryan Kelley
- Charlie Kirk
- David Scott Kuntz
- Antonio LaMotta
- Philip Luelsdorff
- Robert Patrick Lewis
- Joshua Macias
- Shawna Martin
- John Matze
- Michael McDonald
- Stewart Rhodes
- Mayra Rodriguez
- Michael Roman
- Roger Stone
- Enrique Tarrio
- Phil Waldron
- Kelli Ward
- Garrett Ziegler
UPDATE: Wednesday, Dec 21, 2022 · 12:58:26 PM Pacific Standard Time · Brandi Buchman
Per a statement from the January 6 committee —
The select committee anticipates that its final report will be filed and published tomorrow.
Additional select committee records may be released Wednesday night.
-----
After 18 months of rigorous investigation and interviews with over 1,000 witnesses, the final report by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol will finally be published on Wednesday.
Some of the information in the report is expected to be redacted in light of national security concerns as well as concerns about the privacy and safety of witnesses who testified before the panel.
At its last meeting on Monday—incidentally, the two-year anniversary of former President Donald Trump’s tweet inciting extremists to come to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6—the select committee recommended Trump be prosecuted by the Justice Department on no less than four charges. They include obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, conspiracy to make a false statement, and insurrection. On that charge specifically, the committee notes Trump’s “assisting” of that insurrection and the “aid and comfort” he provided to the mob as they surrounded and invaded the nation’s Capitol building.
The Justice Department is already investigating Trump for matters tied to Jan. 6 as well as for his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. Meanwhile, the committee has been sharing its investigative records more freely with the Justice Department after Special Counsel Jack Smith requested their cooperation in early December.
The final report is expected to contain at least eight chapters, with each chapter drilling down on different elements of the greater scheme by the former president and a cadre of his attorneys and allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Chapters will focus on Trump’s disinformation campaign about the results of the election as well as the multiple pressure campaigns he foisted on state officials to reverse victories for now-President Joe Biden. Detailed information about the former president’s fake elector strategy will be featured, as well as Trump’s failed attempt to capture the Justice Department by installing a lackey sympathetic to his claims of rampant voter fraud as Attorney General of the United States.
Sections of the report will focus too on the grinding pressure that Trump and his advisers applied against then-Vice President Mike Pence as they urged him to intervene at the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 and accept phony elector slates.
Other chapters of the report are expected to center on Trump’s summoning of his supporters to Washington, D.C., and then, the span of 187 minutes on Jan. 6 when Trump abjectly failed to respond to requests for help as a mob of his supporters and far-right extremists violently clashed with and assaulted police.
Multiple people died as a result of the violence on Jan. 6. Lawmakers, Capitol staff, and journalists were terrorized. The vice president was forced into hiding, and the mob caused more than $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol building. The report will utilize testimony, emails, phone records, and other investigative materials provided by hundreds of witnesses to detail Trump’s direct and indirect roles in those outcomes.
It will also lay out its findings on the extremist elements involved with Jan. 6, like far-right Oath Keepers, neofascist Proud Boys, and others. The leader of the Oath Keepers, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, and his associate Kelly Meggs, the leader of the Oath Keepers Florida division, were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in November.
There should be information, too, about the financing that flowed to Trump’s rally at the Ellipse. At one of its earliest hearings, the Jan. 6 committee said it obtained evidence of campaign finance violations and that Trump’s family personally benefitted from funds raised by his campaign premised on his “Big Lie” about widespread voter fraud.
While the committee already put on a series of public hearings this summer, laying out the greater scope of its findings, the final report will be far more granular.
The report may offer more comprehensive detail on alleged efforts to witness tamper and obstruct the select committee’s investigation.
There could be more laid out about Trump’s alleged attempt to force his driver to take him to the Capitol after his incendiary speech at the Ellipse.
Questions have loomed large over how much the report will explore intelligence and security failures of Jan. 6 as well as the preparedness of law enforcement agencies. But ahead of the final report’s publication, Politico reported that sources said the final product would also include appendices analyzing “foreign adversaries’ attempts to capitalize on Donald Trump’s election disinformation” while other appendices would provide details on the slow deployment of the National Guard to the overrun Capitol.
Published with permission of Daily Kos
