Steve Mnuchin caught in Jan. 6 lie after reporter confirms talk of 25th Amendment

ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl's best-selling book Betrayal walks through the startling tale of conversations among Donald Trump's cabinet secretaries as they discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.

Testifying to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, Mnuchin said that the conversation he had with Pompeo was brief and that there was no serious plotting around enacting the 25th, which would remove Trump from power.

"The only research I did out of curiosity was I googled it," he told the committee. "It came up. I remember my general counsel asking me if we wanted him to do extensive research on it. I said, no, not at this point."

He confessed that it came up in conversation with Pompeo but he said he "can't recall" the date or details. It flies in the face of Karl's assessment post-Trump presidency.

In the text, Karl writes that Mnuchin talked to other members of the Cabinet about attempting to remove Trump from office by invoking the 25th Amendment. Among the Cabinet officials, Mnuchin spoke to that night was Secretary of State Pompeo."

Mnuchin called Karl's book "completely inaccurate."

When Raw Story reached out to Karl, however, he made it perfectly clear that Mnuchin said what was in the book.

"I stand by my reporting. Mnuchin denied none of it when I interviewed him for Betrayal. None of it. He did, however, confirm he spoke with Pompeo on the evening of January 6," Karl told us via Twitter.

It's unclear whether Karl or Mnuchin recorded the conversation for their own records, but it's one of the discrepancies that those reading the Jan. 6 report and testimony are questioning. Lying to Congress is a crime, but lying to reporters isn't. It's a question of whether Mnuchin was lying to Congress or lying to Karl.

If Mnuchin did the former, it wouldn't be the first time, according to at least one member of Congress. When testifying to Congress about Donald Trump's taxes Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) attacked the secretary for "breaking the law" to cover up Trump's taxes, while unlawfully handing over the personal taxes of Joe Biden's son.

Mnuchin also testified to Congress that he doesn't "recall" whether he discussed overthrowing the president when speaking to Vice President Mike Pence.