A former aide to ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has named several GOP lawmakers who, along with Donald Trump, devised a series of illegal schemes to prevent Joe Biden from taking office, Politico reports, citing court documents filed late Friday by the House select committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection.
According to the report, the filing includes a deposition from Cassidy Hutchinson that included names of lawmakers who were “frequently present in meetings” regarding overturning the election as well as discussions about how to “replace the leadership of the Justice Department with figures who would sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election.”
“Lawmakers who attended meetings, in person or by phone, included Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and numerous members of the House Freedom Caucus,” Hutchinson revealed to the committee, according to Politico.
As noted by Politico, “the new evidence underscores the expansive cast of elected Republicans who had ultimately enlisted themselves in Trump’s last-ditch effort to cling to power. Members traded theories about ways to push then-Vice President Mike Pence to single-handedly stop Biden’s election, they parried with the White House Counsel’s Office on the boundaries of the law regarding presidential electors, and they met directly with Pence’s staff to encourage him to take direct action on Jan. 6, when Congress convened to count electoral votes.”
“They felt that he had the authority to — pardon me if my phrasing isn’t correct on this, but — send votes back to the States or the electors back to the States,” Hutchinson told House investigators.
“Some of the GOP lawmakers were present in December meetings, Hutchinson recalled, when members of the White House Counsel’s Office raised significant legal doubts about a plan for pro-Trump activists to submit ‘alternate’ electors in states won by Joe Biden,” Politico’s Cheney and Wu reported, adding, “Others attended a Dec. 21 meeting where Rudy Giuliani, then the president’s personal lawyer, and some associates advocated a plan for Pence to unilaterally refuse to count Biden’s electors and instead send the election back to various GOP-controlled state legislatures to replace Biden’s electors with Trump’s.”
Read the full report on Politico.
