Sean Dollman, who worked as chief financial officer for the 2020 Trump presidential campaign, testified this week to the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, according to a new CNN report. The panel’s underlying investigation is continuing as they hold a series of public hearings outlining their findings.
Dollman testified on Wednesday for “several hours,” per CNN. The content of his testimony wasn’t immediately available; according to CNN, the committee declined to comment. In the public hearings recently put on by the panel, they’ve shared a lengthy series of clips from previous testimony provided by a selection of the more than 1,000 people from whom they’ve heard throughout the course of their probe. During a recent court hearing in a seditious conspiracy case against individuals involved with the Proud Boys, a Justice Department lawyer revealed an apparent official expectation that the riot panel will release full transcripts later this year of all their interviews with witnesses.
“The committee will release the transcripts in early September and a report of the committee’s findings will be released around the same time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said in court. In the meantime, it’s already been established the riot panel is closely interested in the Trump fundraising operation after the last presidential race. That fundraising operation was based on brazen lies, raising the possibility that financial fraud of some sort was committed by those involved in it. Despite hundreds of millions coming in after the 2020 election as Trump and prominent Republicans pushed notions of fighting for election integrity, there was, of course, no real-world evidence of systematic fraud affecting the outcome of the presidential race. In addition, those behind the fundraising operation lied about where donor money would go: one example is that prospective donors were told their contributions would go to an “Official Election Defense Fund.” There was no such fund.
“We have already seen how President Trump falsely declared victory on November 3, 2020,” panel leader Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said at a recent public hearing. “How he and his team launched a fraudulent media campaign that persuaded tens of millions of Americans that the election was stolen from him. Donald Trump intentionally ran false ads on television and social media, featuring allegations that his advisers and his Justice Department repeatedly told him were untrue. We have also seen how Donald Trump launched a fraudulent fundraising campaign that raised hundreds of millions of dollars, again based on those same false election fraud allegations.”
It’s not as though the Trump campaign’s supposedly comprehensive, donor-supported litigation operation simply operated under a different name — most of the donor money that came in after the last election, per available information, didn’t even go towards the support of any election-related legal fights. Instead, “many” of the donations were funneled to Trump’s Save America PAC, Vox reports. From there, significant portions of the money supported fellow right-wing organizations tied to Trump through some means. Meanwhile, the committee kicked off a new round of public scrutiny of Trump with its surprise hearing this past Tuesday featuring ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified about startling details, including that Trump apparently pushed for magnetometers involved in the security screening process for his January 6 rally in D.C. to be removed. She says she witnessed that from Trump firsthand. It indicates on Trump’s part a knowledge of and openness to deadly weapons among his supporters.
