Former Trump White House spokesperson Judd Deere, who was a deputy press secretary in the Trump administration and served the ex-president for about three years, has now testified before the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. Deere appears to have spoken with the panel for almost seven hours, according to apparent reports from the scene, suggesting that he provided investigators with substantive information instead of just pleading the Fifth Amendment over and over again. Deere was subpoenaed back in January by the riot panel, which indicated that it wanted information about the formulation of White House responses to the Capitol violence, in addition to details about a January 5 staff meeting at the White House where then-President Trump asked about “ideas for getting the RINOs to do the right thing tomorrow.” “RINO” is a derisive acronym meaning “Republican in Name Only.”
Investigators also appeared to be interested in Deere’s role in promoting false claims that systematic fraud had somehow affected the 2020 presidential election. Hundreds of individuals have spoken to the committee so far, and the panel announced an additional subpoena just this Thursday, formally demanding testimony from Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée, former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle. Public hearings put on by the committee remain on deck for the near future, but witness lists for those hearings don’t appear to be publicly available (or even necessarily decided on).
BREAKING: Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Trump’s eldest son after she abruptly ended a voluntary interview with House investigators last week
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 3, 2022
Testimony from individuals who have been close to Trump has figured prominently in the committee’s investigation so far — investigators repeatedly cited such testimony in recently making their case in a court filing that Trump may be guilty of a few criminal offenses in relation to his attempts to overturn the election outcome. The offenses that were referenced include obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, and in laying out these details, investigators cited points such as comments from former Trump aide Jason Miller, who told the panel of a conversation between Trump and campaign aide Matt Oczkowski, who shared details about the then-president’s impending loss with him. Trump didn’t budge — instead, he “believed that Matt was not looking at the prospect of legal challenges going our way, and that Matt was looking at purely from what those numbers were showing as opposed to broader things to include legality and election integrity issues which, as a data guy, he may not have been monitoring,” as Miller relayed to investigators.
MAJOR BREAKING NEWS (CNN): Oath Keeper Joshua James Pleads Guilty to Seditious Conspiracy, Meaning That We Can Now Say with Certainty That January 6 Was a Seditious Conspiracy
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 3, 2022
As previously reported on this site, one critical element of conclusively showing that Trump violated the law against obstruction of an official proceeding would be to prove that the then-president had “corrupt” intent, and the fact that individuals in Trump’s orbit promoted the truth about the election to the then-president even as he continued down the path of trying to keep Biden out of office could show exactly such intent.
In new letter seeking leniency in his US Capitol riot case, self-proclaimed Trump supporter Sam Fox of Pittsburgh says this…… about Trump on Jan 6:
"For the first time since I watched him dance on Saturday Night Live to Drake, I wondered if this man had truly lost his mind"
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) February 28, 2022
