Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on Sunday shed light into the information former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham provided to the Jan. 6 committee during her interview with the panel last week.
Grisham’s meeting with the committee last week came after she had a phone call with Raskin, who encouraged the former Trump White House aide and chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump to meet with the panel. Raskin told CNN that during his call with Grisham, she “names a lot of names I had not heard before” and “identified some minds of inquiry that had never occurred to me.”
Pressed on what he meant by Grisham opening up lines of inquiry that hadn’t occurred to him during an interview on ABC News, Raskin reiterated that the former White House aide shared a number of names he hadn’t heard before and “had some ways of looking at it.” Raskin did not specify any of the names Grisham disclosed to the committee.
Raskin went on to say that the “overwhelming majority” of people, both within the Trump administration and outside, have come forward to produce evidence that they have that is relevant to the committee’s investigation into the events surrounding the deadly Capitol insurrection.
“And, of course, that’s their legal duty when Congress comes calling, but it’s also a kind of civic duty and honor to do that,” Raskin said.
Raskin noted that the people who give the committee the most trouble are those who are closest to former President Trump.
“It’s only a problem the closer you get to Donald Trump and you have a handful of people who think they’re above the law,” Raskin said, pointing to former Trump aides that have stonewalled the committee such as Roger Stone, Steve Bannon and Mark Meadows.
“But in general, we’re getting terrific participation and we’re really connecting all of the dots,” Raskin continued.
Earlier in the interview, Raskin was asked whether there is evidence supporting the notion that Trump was complicit or actually participated in the insurrection. Raskin replied by pointing to the House’s impeachment of the former president for “incitement of insurrection” as well as a 57-43 vote in the Senate to acquit Trump, with seven Republicans voting to convict the former president, last year.
“The question is to what extent he was implicit in organizing it,” Raskin said. “And that’s exactly what the Select Committee is looking at, as we are fulfilling our charge under House Resolution 503 to determine all of the facts composing the events and the causes of the events on Jan. 6.”
Raskin added that the committee will conduct further hearings to uncover more findings and that it plans to release a reports that it hopes will be a “comprehensive and fine-grained portrait” of everything that happened, including Trump’s central role in the Capitol attack.
Raskin’s remarks were issued the same day that fellow committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) touted that the panel can already “put out a powerful and substantive narrative” based on the information it has received thus far. Kinzinger, however, also stressed that the committee would still like to find out more information about what Trump may have known about Jan. 6, 2021 before his supporters stormed the Capitol on the day of the joint session of Congress certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
On Thursday, Grisham told CNN that she and a group of officials who worked in the Trump administration are meeting the following week to “try and stop” Trump.
“I can say that next week a group of former Trump staff are going to come together, administration officials, are going to come together and we’re going to talk about how we can formally do some things to try and stop him and also, you know, the extremism, that kind of violence and rhetoric that has been talked about and continues to divide our country,” Grisham told CNN in an interview.
According to Politico, former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor, former national security official Olivia Troye and one-time White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci are in the group of former Trump administration officials that plans to meet this week.
Grisham, who was serving as first lady Melania Trump’s communications director and chief of staff, resigned on the evening of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and endangered lawmakers’ lives on the day of the joint session of Congress certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Watch Raskin’s remarks below:
