The House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot has received 11 hours of previously unseen interviews and footage featuring former President Donald Trump and his family in the months leading up to and the immediate aftermath of the 6 January insurrection, reports indicate.
According to CBS's Bob Costas, the documentary footage the panel subpoenaed from British filmmaker Alex Holder includes more than 10 hours of interviews, including statements from Mr Trump.
That footage is in addition to many hours of footage Mr Holder shot that are not direct interviews with Mr Trump and his family.
The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reportedly saw a portion of the footage, which included an interview with Ivanka Trump. Ms Haberman said the footage showed Ms Trump saying her father had to "continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted" to ensure the "sanctity of our elections."
“I think that, as the president has said, every single vote needs to be counted and needs to be heard, and he campaigned for the voiceless,” Ms. Trump said in the footage. “And I think a lot of Americans feel very, very disenfranchised right now, and really, question the sanctity of our elections, and that’s not right, it’s not acceptable.”
Haberman noted that Ms Trump's words stood in stark contrast to her words during her deposition to the House committee, when she said she accepted then-Attorney General Bill Barr's perspective that the election had not been stolen.
The footage came as a shock to Mr Trump's former aides and officials, according to numerous news reports on Tuesday.
One staffer reportedly replied "what the f*** is this," when asked about the footage by Rolling Stone.
According to Haberman, few people outside of Mr Trump and his family knew the documentary was being filmed.
Mr Holder, the documentarian, said he would cooperate fully with the panel and has already turned over the footage requested. He said he maintained complete editorial control over the project and said he was not paid by the Trumps to produce the film.
The documentary is reportedly titled Unprecedented and was purchased by a major streaming platform. It will be released sometime this summer as a three-part series.
The committee is currently focused on producing evidence to back its claim that Mr Trump was part of an illegal scheme to replace state electors with electors who would be loyal to him. Had that scheme worked, Trump loyalist electors would have undermined the will of the electorates they represented by casting votes for him, even if the state’s residents chose to elect Joe Biden.
