January 6 committee seeking voluntary cooperation from Newt Gingrich
By Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen and Sara Murray, CNN
The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has sent a letter to former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich seeking his voluntary cooperation to discuss his role in promoting false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.
The committee wants to learn more about communications Gingrich had with senior advisers in former President Donald Trump’s White House about television advertisements that relied on false claims about the election.
“Some of the information that we have obtained includes email messages that you exchanged with senior advisors to President Trump and others, including Jared Kushner and Jason Miller, in which you provided detailed input into television advertisements that repeated and relied upon false claims about fraud in the 2020 election,” Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the committee, wrote in the letter.
“These advertising efforts were not designed to encourage voting for a particular candidate,” he continued. “Instead, these efforts attempted to cast doubt on the outcome of the election after voting had already taken place.”
The committee cites another email Gingrich sent to Kushner and Miller on December 8, 2020, in response to a proposed script for a television advertisement about election fraud. The panel said it shows Gingrich “did not only seek to persuade.”
“The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.] … If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors,” the email says, according to the committee’s letter.
The panel also claims that Gingrich was involved in an effort by Trump supporters to submit fake electors in certain states, which has been a significant focus of the committee and is now also part of a Department of Justice investigation.
It also notes that Gingrich wrote to Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone on November 12, 2020, asking: “Is someone in charge of coordinating all the electors?”
The panel also references an email Gingrich sent to Meadows at 10:42 p.m. the day of the January 6 attack, after members had returned to finish certifying the election. “[A]re there letters from state legislators about decertifying electors[?],” he asked, according to the committee.
The committee asks to conduct a voluntary, transcribed interview with Gingrich during the week of September 19.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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