Trump Associate Interviews With Jan. 6 Panel & Confesses To Knowledge Of Violence

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The House committee investigating the Capitol riot has obtained testimony from Jason Funes, who was involved with planning pro-Trump events after the 2020 presidential election — and who apparently told the panel that “the federal government knew that there was going to be a violent attack on the Capitol building and they did nothing to stop it,” per MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin, although the full nature of what Funes meant by that remark wasn’t immediately clear. Previously, the riot panel was reported to have subpoenaed phone records for hundreds of individuals including Funes, who said after information about the subpoena for his records in particular emerged that he was a “willing witness.”

A Twitter account that appears to belong to Funes features posts alleging various versions of the false conspiracy theory that the riot was somehow a set-up. In one from October, he claimed that the ‘2020 Presidential election could NOT have been stolen without the STAGED Jan 6th coup that FRAMED President Trump! The MAGA movement has been infiltrated/hijacked & “stop the steal” Fed assets/traitors helped the Deep State/Biden win…’ — so his claim of knowledge of impending violence could be expected to incorporate that sort of thing, although even that false notion of what went on would presumably implicate the Trump administration, even if not Trump himself. Despite Funes’s apparent belief in conspiracy theories, he could have nonetheless shared critical details with the committee about knowledge among those on the inside of the ex-president’s circles of what turned out to be impending violence. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has cited the question of whether violence was essentially counted upon within Trump’s orbit as a key issue under consideration.

The riot panel has heard from over 550 people and counting so far, with negotiations recently reported to be ongoing between investigators and both Ivanka Trump and Rudy Giuliani, two close allies of the former president who’ve been sought for testimony. The full list of those more than 550 people who have testified to investigators is not publicly available, although the committee is planning public hearings — with a yet to be specified witnesses list — for the near future. The committee has scored significant victories in the course of its probe, including with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow it to obtain records from Trump’s administration. Recently, the court formally declined to hear Trump’s appeal of a lower court ruling against his bid to keep those records secret, although the nation’s highest court had already declined to take the emergency action to keep the records private that Trump had been after, no matter the fact that three of Trump’s own picks currently serve on the court.