In its first release of records from its extensive investigation, the Jan. 6 committee published transcripts from 34 witnesses who testified before the probe, including key figures close to former President Donald Trump who invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Though the witnesses—who include the likes of Roger Stone, Jeffrey Clark, Michael Flynn, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, John Eastman, and others—did not offer their testimony freely, the transcripts nonetheless offer greater clarity into the breadth and depth of the committee’s investigation and just how much information investigators managed to amass around some of the probe’s most contentious targets.
The select committee is expected to release its final report—a massive tome reportedly exceeding 800 pages—on Thursday after delaying the release Wednesday. Additional transcripts will be forthcoming, too.
The transcripts released on Wednesday night are listed and linked below. This batch features interviews with Republican National Committee state chapter leaders, Trump attorneys, fundraisers and organizers of the rally at the Ellipse, members of extremist groups, and those involved with the fake elector gambit.
Before adopting its final report, the committee voted unanimously to issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department for former President Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman.
Eastman, who authored a six-point strategy aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election, involved his Fifth Amendment right more than 150 times when he met with investigators. He has been largely on the losing side of a protracted legal battle with the committee over his records and unsuccessfully attempted to shield hundreds of documents that he argued were exclusively protected under attorney-client privilege. Eastman is not only under investigation by the Justice Department but he is also being scrutinized by prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, reviewing Trump’s efforts to submit fake electors there too.
Select committee counsel posed several questions to Eastman about legal memos he wrote regarding so-called “alternate electors” and the role he argued former Vice President Mike Pence could play to halt the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
Though Eastman appeared on podcasts in May and September of 2021 where he openly discussed these matters and others, including his direct conversations with Trump in the runup to Jan. 6, the attorney nonetheless invoked his Fifth Amendment right once in the committee’s hot seat.
He also refused to answer questions about his participation with the Federalist Society as well as his interactions with Trump campaign figures like Corey Lewandowski or other allies elsewhere, like Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department attorney. He also would not provide the committee with any insights when they asked about his contact with state legislatures in Arizona or his contact with Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, or Mike Lee about efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Lee told the National Review this April that Eastman sent him a memo on Jan. 2 featuring strategies to overturn the election.
Appearing before the committee for just under an hour, Roger Stone’s testimony before the probe was terse. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right for questions both simple and complex. He would not answer queries from committee counsel about his age or where he lived. He would not answer questions about whether he believed the violence on Jan. 6 was “justified” and he would not answer questions about his contact with the former president, including whether they spoke on the eve of the insurrection or on the day of it.
He invoked his right against self-incrimination when asked about his trip to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property on Dec. 27, 2021. When asked about the fundraising he is alleged to have done for the “Stop the Steal” movement, he also declined to answer. When shown video clips of himself urging people to “help us pay for the staging, the transportation and most importantly, the security of our peaceful protesters,” Stone also invoked the Fifth.
Any questions about his participation or presence in group chats among Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were also rebuffed. Oath Keeper Joshua James of Alabama, who already pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, was one of several Oath Keepers who served as security for Stone on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6.
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin asked during the interview: “I’d like to ask Mr. Stone whether you believe that coups are allowed in our constitutional system?”
“I most definitely decline to respond to your question based on my Fifth Amendment constitutional protections with all due respect,” Stone said.
Former President Donald Trump nearly installed Jeffrey Clark as attorney general in his bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Records have shown Clark was sympathetic to the president’s views about the election being rigged or stolen. Witnesses who did not invoke their Fifth Amendment right before the committee, like former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue, testified that Clark tried to pass off a memo proclaiming election fraud in battleground states with Trump’s blessing. Clark was nearly installed at Trump’s behest but a threat of mass resignations at the Justice Department with just days to go until the certification kept Trump at bay.
The committee transcript reveals that Clark met with the committee twice. On his first visit in November 2021, he arrived with a list of objections. Most focused on privilege issues. He and his attorney bailed from the first meeting with the committee during a break in the interview despite being told to remain in place. The second interview in February 2022 was no more fruitful than the first. This time, Clark invoked his Fifth Amendment right over 100 times.
When the committee put on its public hearings this summer, the partial clips shown from an interview with disgraced Trump White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn were stark. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, without pause, invoked his Fifth Amendment right repeatedly when asked if he felt the violence of Jan. 6 was justified.
The committee sought Flynn out because of his integral role in efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election and his proximity to Trump as well as other White House officials and architects of the fake elector scheme like Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Investigators asked Flynn numerous questions to no avail about who he may have contacted in or outside of the government in the runup to Jan. 6 about the overturn efforts. He did not answer questions about a reportedly “unhinged” Dec. 18 meeting in the Oval Office where he, attorney Sidney Powell, Giuliani, and Trump discussed the seizure of voting machines. Trump would issue his “will be wild!” tweet urging supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., the next day.
He was mostly mum when investigators prodded him about why he thought Trump may have pardoned him in November 2020.
Flynn was pardoned for lying the to FBI about his contact with Russian officials.
"I think [Trump] saw my whole case as a travesty,” he said during his deposition.
Flynn would not answer questions about work he did with Powell or Giuliani, nor would he answer simple questions about who they were. He invoked his Fifth Amendment when asked about social media posts promoting the Stop the Steal movement, and he would not answer questions about how he or others were (or were not) compensated for their work for Trump on the 2020 election. No answers were provided about his interactions with Patrick Byrne, the Trump-supporting founder of Overstock.com who peddled election fraud conspiracy theory and took several meetings with Trump allies and attorneys.
The leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who goes on trial in July for seditious conspiracy, sat with the committee for a lengthy deposition and though he invoked the Fifth, he was still rather chatty and responded to several questions about his perception of the Proud Boys ideology. The group bills itself as a “Western chauvinist” group. He also spoke some about his relationship to the Oath Keepers, another extremist group that descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Tarrio said he didn’t like Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, citing beef the groups had when they both showed up in Oregon in 2020 to purportedly stave off “antifa” in the area. Tarrio said Oath Keepers had meant to provide buses for those at the event, including Proud Boys, but abandoned the plan abruptly.
The night before the attack, Tarrio and Rhodes met in an underground parking garage. Tarrio described shaking hands with Rhodes begrudgingly. He also played down interactions the Proud Boys had with Oath Keepers like the recently convicted Kelly Meggs. Meggs was convicted of seditious conspiracy along with other charges and at trial last month. Prosecutors showed jurors texts where Meggs spoke of a burgeoning bond between the group. Tarrio told the committee this was just Meggs showing off and name-dropping. Tarrio’s attorney called any alliance between the group “fantasy.”
The committee transcript shows Tarrio’s former attorney J. Daniel Hull taking every moment possible to criticize the panel’s purpose as they asked even the simplest of questions. Hull often interjected as Tarrio spoke, especially at the start of the interview when the committee tried to sort out the Proud Boys organization structure and membership.
“I think a couple of years ago, you estimated to the press that there were about 22,000 members of the Proud Boys, does that sound about right?” committee counsel said.
Tarrio replied: “I mean, I’ve said numerous—throughout the years, I’ve said numerous numbers that I would assume, based on just like, how many Republicans there are in the state or how many Democrats there are in the state and things like that and people that I’ve talked to that self-identify as Proud Boys.”
Hull cut in: “Forgive me, what was the number you just gave. Was it 22,000?”
Committee counsel affirmed that was the number Tarrio gave.
“No, you don’t know,” Hull said.
“I don’t know,” Tarrio said.
Jury selection has already begun in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case. Opening statements begin on Jan. 3, 2023.
Other witnesses in the first batch of transcripts provided fresh insights into Jan. 6 despite invoking their Fifth Amendment right.
As a senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign, Mike Roman, fielded questions, investigators brought up a Jan. 5 email between himself and Trump lawyer Alex Cannon discussing a report shared with them by an RNC employee in Atlanta.
Reviewing voter roll figures in the exchange, Roman remarked: “Only Atlanta overproduced in raw votes. The margin was higher in three of four. Not sure that satisfies the narrative.”
The narrative, this message would indicate, was the voter “fraud” alleged by the Trump campaign.
At other points in the exchange, Roman denied knowing who Cannon was and invoked his Fifth. He invoked it again when questions arose about whether Giuliani had appointed him the lead on “alternate electors” slates for Pennsylvania. He refused to answer questions about what role, if any, legislators like Sen. Ron Johnson may have had advancing phony electors for Trump.
Notably during questioning, committee counsel revealed that pro-Trump electors in Pennsylvania had some concerns about passing off their slates as authentic. Trump lawyer Kenneth Cheseboro told Roman that the bunk electors were worried about their “legal exposure.”
Also notable were insights that shook out in interviews with Alexander Bruesewitz, a leader in the Stop the Steal movement.
As committee investigators asked Bruesewitz about communications it unearthed tied to the movement, they revealed that Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona sent a group message to a “Stop the Steal DM chat” at 5:15 PM while he was locked down in the Capitol during the siege.
“We’re still on lockdown in congressional offices,” Gosar wrote.
Bruesewitz would not answer whether he was in contact with Gosar throughout Jan. 6 or why they were in touch.
He also refused to answer questions about any of his contacts with Women for America First and their planning of pro-Trump rallies in Georgia and Washington, D.C.
Other committee transcripts revealed that Julie Fancelli, the heiress of the Publix supermarket chain, funneled huge sums of money to support the Stop the Steal rally at the Ellipse and other pro-Trump events on Jan. 6.
Fancelli shelled out nearly $3 million for Jan. 6.
She gave Charlie Kirk just over $1 million. Some $250,000 went to Kirk’s Turning Point USA and $750,000 went to Turning Point’s political action committee, Turning Point PAC.
Fancelli gushed over Kirk, calling him her “hero,” and she fawned over Roger Stone and Alex Jones too. She ended up funneling $200,000 to Jones and agreed to fly Stone to Washington on a private jet.
Fancelli’s investment into the rallies of Jan. 6 had been previously reported, but the details were limited. It was reported last year that she had sent about $650,000 to entities behind the Stop the Steal movement, but the $3 million price tag is news and offers a glimpse into just how much the millionaire was willing to cough up for Trump.
This story is developing.
Though the witnesses—who include the likes of Roger Stone, Jeffrey Clark, Michael Flynn, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, John Eastman, and others—did not offer their testimony freely, the transcripts nonetheless offer greater clarity into the breadth and depth of the committee’s investigation and just how much information investigators managed to amass around some of the probe’s most contentious targets.
The select committee is expected to release its final report—a massive tome reportedly exceeding 800 pages—on Thursday after delaying the release Wednesday. Additional transcripts will be forthcoming, too.
The transcripts released on Wednesday night are listed and linked below. This batch features interviews with Republican National Committee state chapter leaders, Trump attorneys, fundraisers and organizers of the rally at the Ellipse, members of extremist groups, and those involved with the fake elector gambit.
- Christopher Barcenas (Republican committee chair, Proud Boy)
- Kathy Berden (National committee chairwoman, Michigan GOP)
- Alexander Bruesewitz (Stop the Steal leader, right wing activist)
- Patrick Casey (Leader ‘America First’ movement)
- Dion Cini (Organizer of Trump boat parade)
- Jeffrey Clark Part 1, Part 2 (Justice Department official, fake elector scheme)
- Jim DeGraffenreid (Nevada GOP member, fake elector scheme)
- Enrique De La Torre (Stop the Steal supporter, alleged ties to Proud Boys, Roger Stone)
- John Eastman (Right-wing attorney, author of memo to overturn 2020 election)
- Jenna Ellis (Trump attorney, fake elector scheme)
- Kimberly Fletcher (President, founder Moms for America; Stop the Steal)
- Michael Flynn (Former Trump national security adviser)
- Nick Fuentes (White nationalist)
- Julie Fancelli (Publix heiress, funded rally at Ellipse)
- Bianca Gracia (Founder Latinos for Trump)
- Alex Jones (Infowars host, conspiracy theorist, Stop the Steal supporter)
- Ryan Kelley (Former MI GOP gubernatorial candidate charged with misdemeanors after climbing Capitol scaffolding)
- Charlie Kirk (Right wing activist, executive director of Turning Point USA)
- David Scott Kuntz (Supporter Three Percenters anti-government movement)
- Antonio LaMotta (Arrested during ballot count in Pennsylvania, guilty of carrying a weapon without license)
- Philip Luelsdorff (1st Amendment Praetorian founder who watched Jan. 6 proceedings with Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman at Willard Hotel)
- Robert Patrick Lewis (1st Amendment Praetorian chairman)
- Joshua Macias (Arrested during ballot count in Pennsylvania, guilty of carrying a weapon without license)
- Shawna Martin (Alleged Q-Anon supporter, member of Panhandle Patriots of Idaho, patrolled outside Capitol on Jan. 6)
- John Matze (Founder, CEO Parler)
- Michael McDonald (Nevada GOP chairman)
- Stewart Rhodes (Founder of Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy)
- Mayra Rodriguez (Submitted fake elector certificate for Trump, Michigan)
- Michael Roman (Senior adviser, Trump reelection campaign)
- Roger Stone (Trump ally, Stop the Steal supporter, alleged member of Proud Boys)
- Enrique Tarrio (Leader of the Proud Boys, awaiting trial for seditious conspiracy)
- Phil Waldron (Former U.S. Army colonel who spread conspiracy theory about voting machine hacking)
- Kelli Ward (Arizona GOP chairwoman, fake elector scheme)
- Garrett Ziegler (Former White House aide)
Highlights
John Eastman
Before adopting its final report, the committee voted unanimously to issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department for former President Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman.
Eastman, who authored a six-point strategy aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election, involved his Fifth Amendment right more than 150 times when he met with investigators. He has been largely on the losing side of a protracted legal battle with the committee over his records and unsuccessfully attempted to shield hundreds of documents that he argued were exclusively protected under attorney-client privilege. Eastman is not only under investigation by the Justice Department but he is also being scrutinized by prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, reviewing Trump’s efforts to submit fake electors there too.
Select committee counsel posed several questions to Eastman about legal memos he wrote regarding so-called “alternate electors” and the role he argued former Vice President Mike Pence could play to halt the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
Though Eastman appeared on podcasts in May and September of 2021 where he openly discussed these matters and others, including his direct conversations with Trump in the runup to Jan. 6, the attorney nonetheless invoked his Fifth Amendment right once in the committee’s hot seat.
He also refused to answer questions about his participation with the Federalist Society as well as his interactions with Trump campaign figures like Corey Lewandowski or other allies elsewhere, like Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department attorney. He also would not provide the committee with any insights when they asked about his contact with state legislatures in Arizona or his contact with Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, or Mike Lee about efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Lee told the National Review this April that Eastman sent him a memo on Jan. 2 featuring strategies to overturn the election.
Roger Stone
Appearing before the committee for just under an hour, Roger Stone’s testimony before the probe was terse. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right for questions both simple and complex. He would not answer queries from committee counsel about his age or where he lived. He would not answer questions about whether he believed the violence on Jan. 6 was “justified” and he would not answer questions about his contact with the former president, including whether they spoke on the eve of the insurrection or on the day of it.
He invoked his right against self-incrimination when asked about his trip to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property on Dec. 27, 2021. When asked about the fundraising he is alleged to have done for the “Stop the Steal” movement, he also declined to answer. When shown video clips of himself urging people to “help us pay for the staging, the transportation and most importantly, the security of our peaceful protesters,” Stone also invoked the Fifth.
Any questions about his participation or presence in group chats among Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were also rebuffed. Oath Keeper Joshua James of Alabama, who already pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, was one of several Oath Keepers who served as security for Stone on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6.
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin asked during the interview: “I’d like to ask Mr. Stone whether you believe that coups are allowed in our constitutional system?”
“I most definitely decline to respond to your question based on my Fifth Amendment constitutional protections with all due respect,” Stone said.
Jeffrey Clark
Former President Donald Trump nearly installed Jeffrey Clark as attorney general in his bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Records have shown Clark was sympathetic to the president’s views about the election being rigged or stolen. Witnesses who did not invoke their Fifth Amendment right before the committee, like former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue, testified that Clark tried to pass off a memo proclaiming election fraud in battleground states with Trump’s blessing. Clark was nearly installed at Trump’s behest but a threat of mass resignations at the Justice Department with just days to go until the certification kept Trump at bay.
The committee transcript reveals that Clark met with the committee twice. On his first visit in November 2021, he arrived with a list of objections. Most focused on privilege issues. He and his attorney bailed from the first meeting with the committee during a break in the interview despite being told to remain in place. The second interview in February 2022 was no more fruitful than the first. This time, Clark invoked his Fifth Amendment right over 100 times.
Michael Flynn
When the committee put on its public hearings this summer, the partial clips shown from an interview with disgraced Trump White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn were stark. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, without pause, invoked his Fifth Amendment right repeatedly when asked if he felt the violence of Jan. 6 was justified.
The committee sought Flynn out because of his integral role in efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election and his proximity to Trump as well as other White House officials and architects of the fake elector scheme like Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Investigators asked Flynn numerous questions to no avail about who he may have contacted in or outside of the government in the runup to Jan. 6 about the overturn efforts. He did not answer questions about a reportedly “unhinged” Dec. 18 meeting in the Oval Office where he, attorney Sidney Powell, Giuliani, and Trump discussed the seizure of voting machines. Trump would issue his “will be wild!” tweet urging supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., the next day.
He was mostly mum when investigators prodded him about why he thought Trump may have pardoned him in November 2020.
Flynn was pardoned for lying the to FBI about his contact with Russian officials.
"I think [Trump] saw my whole case as a travesty,” he said during his deposition.
Flynn would not answer questions about work he did with Powell or Giuliani, nor would he answer simple questions about who they were. He invoked his Fifth Amendment when asked about social media posts promoting the Stop the Steal movement, and he would not answer questions about how he or others were (or were not) compensated for their work for Trump on the 2020 election. No answers were provided about his interactions with Patrick Byrne, the Trump-supporting founder of Overstock.com who peddled election fraud conspiracy theory and took several meetings with Trump allies and attorneys.
Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio
The leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who goes on trial in July for seditious conspiracy, sat with the committee for a lengthy deposition and though he invoked the Fifth, he was still rather chatty and responded to several questions about his perception of the Proud Boys ideology. The group bills itself as a “Western chauvinist” group. He also spoke some about his relationship to the Oath Keepers, another extremist group that descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Tarrio said he didn’t like Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, citing beef the groups had when they both showed up in Oregon in 2020 to purportedly stave off “antifa” in the area. Tarrio said Oath Keepers had meant to provide buses for those at the event, including Proud Boys, but abandoned the plan abruptly.
The night before the attack, Tarrio and Rhodes met in an underground parking garage. Tarrio described shaking hands with Rhodes begrudgingly. He also played down interactions the Proud Boys had with Oath Keepers like the recently convicted Kelly Meggs. Meggs was convicted of seditious conspiracy along with other charges and at trial last month. Prosecutors showed jurors texts where Meggs spoke of a burgeoning bond between the group. Tarrio told the committee this was just Meggs showing off and name-dropping. Tarrio’s attorney called any alliance between the group “fantasy.”
The committee transcript shows Tarrio’s former attorney J. Daniel Hull taking every moment possible to criticize the panel’s purpose as they asked even the simplest of questions. Hull often interjected as Tarrio spoke, especially at the start of the interview when the committee tried to sort out the Proud Boys organization structure and membership.
“I think a couple of years ago, you estimated to the press that there were about 22,000 members of the Proud Boys, does that sound about right?” committee counsel said.
Tarrio replied: “I mean, I’ve said numerous—throughout the years, I’ve said numerous numbers that I would assume, based on just like, how many Republicans there are in the state or how many Democrats there are in the state and things like that and people that I’ve talked to that self-identify as Proud Boys.”
Hull cut in: “Forgive me, what was the number you just gave. Was it 22,000?”
Committee counsel affirmed that was the number Tarrio gave.
“No, you don’t know,” Hull said.
“I don’t know,” Tarrio said.
Jury selection has already begun in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case. Opening statements begin on Jan. 3, 2023.
New insights
Other witnesses in the first batch of transcripts provided fresh insights into Jan. 6 despite invoking their Fifth Amendment right.
As a senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign, Mike Roman, fielded questions, investigators brought up a Jan. 5 email between himself and Trump lawyer Alex Cannon discussing a report shared with them by an RNC employee in Atlanta.
Reviewing voter roll figures in the exchange, Roman remarked: “Only Atlanta overproduced in raw votes. The margin was higher in three of four. Not sure that satisfies the narrative.”
The narrative, this message would indicate, was the voter “fraud” alleged by the Trump campaign.
At other points in the exchange, Roman denied knowing who Cannon was and invoked his Fifth. He invoked it again when questions arose about whether Giuliani had appointed him the lead on “alternate electors” slates for Pennsylvania. He refused to answer questions about what role, if any, legislators like Sen. Ron Johnson may have had advancing phony electors for Trump.
Notably during questioning, committee counsel revealed that pro-Trump electors in Pennsylvania had some concerns about passing off their slates as authentic. Trump lawyer Kenneth Cheseboro told Roman that the bunk electors were worried about their “legal exposure.”
Also notable were insights that shook out in interviews with Alexander Bruesewitz, a leader in the Stop the Steal movement.
As committee investigators asked Bruesewitz about communications it unearthed tied to the movement, they revealed that Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona sent a group message to a “Stop the Steal DM chat” at 5:15 PM while he was locked down in the Capitol during the siege.
“We’re still on lockdown in congressional offices,” Gosar wrote.
Bruesewitz would not answer whether he was in contact with Gosar throughout Jan. 6 or why they were in touch.
He also refused to answer questions about any of his contacts with Women for America First and their planning of pro-Trump rallies in Georgia and Washington, D.C.
Other committee transcripts revealed that Julie Fancelli, the heiress of the Publix supermarket chain, funneled huge sums of money to support the Stop the Steal rally at the Ellipse and other pro-Trump events on Jan. 6.
Fancelli shelled out nearly $3 million for Jan. 6.
She gave Charlie Kirk just over $1 million. Some $250,000 went to Kirk’s Turning Point USA and $750,000 went to Turning Point’s political action committee, Turning Point PAC.
Fancelli gushed over Kirk, calling him her “hero,” and she fawned over Roger Stone and Alex Jones too. She ended up funneling $200,000 to Jones and agreed to fly Stone to Washington on a private jet.
Fancelli’s investment into the rallies of Jan. 6 had been previously reported, but the details were limited. It was reported last year that she had sent about $650,000 to entities behind the Stop the Steal movement, but the $3 million price tag is news and offers a glimpse into just how much the millionaire was willing to cough up for Trump.
This story is developing.