By Michael Balsamo and Mary Clare Jalonick | Related Press
WASHINGTON — The Home Jan. 6 committee is interviewing Hope Hicks, a longtime aide to former President Donald Trump, in line with an individual aware of the assembly.
Tuesday’s interview comes because the investigation is winding down and because the panel has subpoenaed Trump for an interview within the coming weeks. The particular person requested anonymity to debate the closed-door assembly.
Hicks didn’t play a serious function within the White Home response to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, through which a whole bunch of Trump’s supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. The longtime Trump communications aide was nonetheless working there on the time however left the White Home within the days afterward.
Nonetheless, Hicks had been one in every of Trump’s most trusted aides. And she or he was looped in on some texts and emails that day forward of the then-president’s speech exterior the White Home and earlier than the violence unfolded, in line with CNN, which obtained copies of texts turned over by former White Home chief of workers Mark Meadows.
Hicks isn’t any stranger to investigations of her former boss. She was a key witness in former particular counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, delivering vital info to the particular counsel’s workplace about Trump’s makes an attempt to hinder that investigation. However she declined to reply questions on her time within the White Home to Home Democrats who have been investigating the previous president in 2019, after Mueller’s report got here out, citing privilege issues.
The New York Instances first reported Hicks’ interview.
The Jan. 6 panel has interviewed greater than 1,000 witnesses, together with a number of White Home aides, and has established that Trump was repeatedly advised by a few of his closest advisers that he had misplaced the 2020 election. However he continued to unfold false claims of widespread election fraud, and his supporters who stormed the Capitol repeated them.
The nine-member panel issued a letter to Trump’s legal professionals late final week demanding his testimony, both on the Capitol or by videoconference, “starting on or about” Nov. 14 and persevering with for a number of days if mandatory. The letter additionally outlined a sweeping request for paperwork, together with private communications between Trump and members of Congress in addition to extremist teams.
Trump has not but responded to the subpoena.
The committee held 9 hearings this yr and is predicted to return out with a closing report by the tip of the yr.
