Jan. 6 panel releases transcripts for 46 additional witness testimonies

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection released transcripts from interviews with 46 additional witnesses on Friday after releasing its first round of transcripts on Wednesday. 

The witnesses from this round of transcripts released include former Attorney General William Barr, former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, former Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien, former acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump ally and attorney Sidney Powell. 

The witnesses also include Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Ivanka Trump. 

Many of the most notable figures whose transcripts were released on Friday served in key positions in the Trump administration as the attack on the Capitol unfolded. 

The first round of transcripts released featured many Trump allies who pleaded their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to at least some of the committee’s questions. They included Trump campaign attorney John Eastman, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Jeffrey Clark. 

The committee also on Thursday released transcripts for a few additional witnesses, including former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former Homeland Security official Chris Krebs and former a White House aide and assistant to the White House chief of staff, Cassidy Hutchinson. 

The Friday release came one day after the committee released its final report on the insurrection. The committee held its final public hearing to announce its conclusions on Monday. 

In the report, the committee made four criminal referrals for former President Trump to the Justice Department over his role in the lead-up to and during the day’s events. The referrals are for inciting, assisting or aiding and comforting an insurrection; obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement. 

The committee also recommended that Eastman faced two charges — obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. 

The Justice Department is conducting its own investigation into Trump over his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the insurrection, and the classified and sensitive documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate that should have been returned to government record-keepers at the end of his presidency. 

The committee is reportedly cooperating and sharing the evidence it has gathered with special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the Justice Department investigations.