After asserting his Fifth Amendment defenses against self-incrimination 21 times in a row in testimony before the committee on January 6, John Eastman, former outside legal counsel to the former President Donald Trump, was asked if he intends to continue to invoke his right to remain silent. .
His attorney, Charles Burnham, spoke out. “If I could,” he said, according to exchange minutes, “Doctor. Eastman would probably claim Fifth to answer that question, but in my view as an advisor, the answer is yes.
The committee then announced they would take a 5-minute break.
Eastman’s testimony transcript, taken last December, is one of 34 such documents released by the committee on Wednesday night, hours after it abruptly announced it would delay its release. Final report on the Capitol attack until Thursday.
Witnesses whose transcripts have been released make up only a small fraction of the more than 1,000 people interviewed during the commission’s six-month investigation into the events of January 6, 2021. Some of Trump’s close associates, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani, have kept it a secret. But nearly all of the published recordings reflect uncooperative witnesses — including Eastman, conspirator Alex Jones, white nationalist Nick Fuentes, MAGA prodigy Charlie Kirk, and national security adviser Michael Flynn — who devoted some, if not all, of their testimony to Thursday’s defense.
Eastman, whose committee criminal transfer to the Ministry of Justice along with his former boss earlier this week, asserted his Fifth Amendment rights so often that he ended up shortening his answer to one word, repeating, “Thursday,” several times.
Others, like Kirk, called Fifth when asked for basic details. When asked his age in the May testimony, Kirk replied, “On the advice of my attorney, I am invoking my Fifth Amendment right not to testify and refuse to answer questions.” Answering a follow-up question—about the state he lived in—quite enough, Kirk then apparently decided that he had shared enough personal information for one day. When asked about his education, he repeated, “On the advice of my attorney, I am invoking my Fifth Amendment right not to testify and refuse to answer questions.”
Republican Agent Roger Stone even less coming, declined to share both his age and where he lives. When the committee asked if he understood the Fifth Amendment protects his right to “refuse to answer questions if the facts would be charged,” he pleaded with the Fifth Amendment.
“I will just say that all we want is the truth, which I believe according to your own assertion in the public record, you have declared yourself not incriminating,” said one committee member. told him, going on to ask if Stone believed he could be open to prosecution by answering their questions honestly.
He begged the Fifth.
Alex Jones is ask in january for more than an hour, with the committee closing the deposit after it became clear that Jones planned to “refuse to answer all questions from the selected committee today, ” as one member said. Still, Jones couldn’t seem to resist teasing House committee member Adam Schiff (D-CA). When asked amid testimony whether he would continue to assert Fifth, he replied that he did it because “Adam Schiff forged documents.”
Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, protested, trying repeatedly to get his client’s attention when Jones continued, “I don’t trust Congressman Schiff. He will forge documents…. I want to tell you everything, but I don’t trust Congressman Schiff.”
“Alex, can we have a moment, please?” Pattis asked.
“Yeah. I don’t even know how to control these, Norm,” Jones replied. “It’s a different system than the one I have.”
Michael McDonald, the chairman of the Republican Party of Nevada, who is accused of participating in a fake election scheme, has asserted his right to remain silent more than 200 times. in his February testimonybased on grade 8. In cases like his, the committee spent time reading text messages and email fragments in the file, in one case showing him a text he had written about Trump, Giuliani and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows wanted to go “totally offensive mode.”
“When do you write as you write, quote, ‘more to come’?” asked one committee member of another text message he sent shortly after the presidential election.
“Based on advice from my attorney, I will invoke Fifth Amendment privilege,” McDonald replied, as he had done dozens of times.
“Okay,” replied the member. “Thank you.”
It’s unclear why the committee delayed the release of its full report into the holiday season which is likely to prove a distraction from politics for much of the public. Among other factors that may have influenced the committee’s timeline are High-level visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington, DC on Wednesday, including an address to the House of Commons in the evening.
