Former President Donald Trump attempted to speak with a witness who has yet to publically testify in front of the House select committee that has been investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack for the past year, according to committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming).
Trump allegedly reached out to the upcoming witness following former Mark Meadows‘ aide Cassidy Hutchinson‘s testimony, which was one of the most powerful in influencing public opinion and shedding light on Trump and his allies’ plan to overturn the 2020 election.
“That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us,” Cheney revealed during closing statements in Tuesday’s public hearing.
She added that the committee alerted the Justice Department of the alleged call. Trump could be criminally charged if they find he tampered with the witness.
“We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Cheney said.
“We would have to know a lot more about it,” committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) added in an appearance on CNN. “The point is that the committee takes really seriously the ability of witnesses to come in like Cassidy Hutchinson and tell us everything they know without fear of reprisal or coercion…. There’s been a pattern of this happening. And we don’t accept it.”
Trump’s team has declined to directly respond to Cheney’s statement, but the former president’s director of communications Taylor Budowich wrote on Twitter, “The media has become pawns of the Unselect Committee. Liz Cheney continues to traffic in innuendos and lies that go unchallenged, unconfirmed but repeated as fact because the narrative is more important than the truth.”
