Jan. 6 committee member says they're looking into Trump paying legal fees of witnesses
The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election is investigating financial aspects of Donald Trump's rally and the subsequent violence at the Capitol. But Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said that there is more than just those pieces of the probe.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace's "Deadline White House" on Wednesday, Lofgren explained there is also a concern about Trump paying the legal fees of some of the witnesses who appeared.
"With Donald Trump's obstruction of the criminal investigation that is at the core of the Mar-a-Lago search, a question of his obstructive conduct, vis-a-vis, investigations that touch him or threaten him and the patterns are familiar and the committee has shared evidence with the public and I wonder if that conduct is ongoing on the part of the president and his allies," asked Wallace.
"It is something that we are alert to, and I think we have publicly mentioned the concern that the Trump world has paid for lawyers for some of the witnesses and the possibility for coercive action in that case," Lofgren explained. "So that's something that is of great interest to the committee and we are, I think, learning some more things about that that we will at the proper time reveal."
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Wallace also noted that one of the biggest bombshell revelations was Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony about what Trump did in the secret service vehicles after the rally speech at the Ellipse. Anthony Ornato announced that he was leaving the Secret Service this week and that he would be cooperating with the investigations, but Lofgren said that she's not sure about whether Ornato has spoken again with committee members about testifying publicly.
"We do have a lot of concerns about the Secret Service. There were a lot of things that seemed like pretty weird coincidences and they were told to preserve all of the records 11 days later. They erased all of the records. We were trying to get information in a collaborative way for almost a year, and it wasn't until we subpoenaed them that really an avalanche of new information started to come in. So, yeah, we have a lot of concerns about the Secret Service. I don't want to disparage many fine employees of the department who risk their lives defending people and chasing bad guys, but there is a concern about some aspects of the services' behavior and we need to uncover it."
Lofgren made it clear that there is at least going to be one other public hearing in September, though it's unclear if it will address these financial connections. Congress returns from the August Recess after the Labor Day holiday on Monday.
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