The House committee investigating the Capitol riot chose to cut evidence connecting former President Donald Trump’s allies to a handful of far-right extremist groups in favor of including testimony from the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Committee chair Bennie Thompson of Mississippi confirmed to The Hill earlier in the week that the committee was prepared to present evidence tying the likes of Rudy Giuliani to groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, but decided not to after securing Mr Cipollone’s deposition.
“It was in the original script, but we pulled some back just because of the timing,” Mr Thompson told The Hill. “The Cipollone deposition was important. And obviously, it’s just a choice we had to make.”
Mr Cipollone, who was deposed under subpoena, said that he and his legal team concluded well in advance of January 6 that Mr Trump had lost the election to Joe Biden and exhausted his legal avenues for contesting it — testimony that the committee chose to feature prominently as part of a strategy designed to show that Mr Trump was not led astray by his advisers but was instead fully responsible for his role in the riot.
But the panel’s decision to make that point seems to have come at the cost of de-emphasising the ties between Mr Trump’s inner circle and a bevy of militant white nationalist and neo-fascist groups in the buildup to January 6.
The committee did not discuss, for instance, the meetings of Trump advisers and allies that took place at the Willard Hotel a block away from the White House that reportedly included Mr Guiluani and John Eastman as well as a member of the far-right paramilitary group 1st Amendment Praetorian.
It also did not focus on the close ties between top Trump advisers Roger Stone and Michael Flynn and groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
The New York Times has reported that Mr Stone had particularly close ties to the Proud Boys and their Florida-based leader Enrique Tarrio and that Mr Stone was in contact with members of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers when he was at the Willard Hotel on January 6. A detail of Oath Keepers were also serving as Mr Stone’s security detail.
Mr Flynn also used 1st Amendment Praetorian members and Oath Keepers as members of his security detail and was also posted at the Willard Hotel on the day of the riot.
Thus far, the committee has not uncovered a plethora evidence directly linking Mr Trump to the extremists beyond dog whistles in his political messaging. But former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Mr Trump directed her boss, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, to contact Mr Stone and Mr Flynn on January 5.
Ms Hutchinson said that she did not know what Mr Trump wanted the men to discuss, and Mr Stone denied that the call ever took place. Still, the timing of the request, given what happened the next day, has struck many observers as noteworthy.
One of Mr Thompson’s colleagues on the committee, Rep Zoe Lofgren of California, echoed his framing of the decision to cut evidence on connections between Mr Trump’s political circle and the far right groups.
“There’s only so much time in these hearings,” Ms Lofgren said on Wednesday. There’s a lot of good stuff. And there was some great stuff that got left off the cutting room floor that hopefully will be released.”
