Trove of Jan. 6 panel depositions offers new insights on fateful day
The House Jan. 6 panel on Thursday released nearly 20 transcripts of interviews it conducted, some of them with members of former President Trump’s family and inner circle.
The new transcripts include interviews from Donald Trump Jr., White House adviser Stephen Miller and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is married to Trump Jr. and served as a chief fundraiser to the then-president’s 2020 reelection campaign.
Though the committee has already released highlights of the interviews in its public hearings and a final report on its yearlong investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the transcripts offer new details and insights into the events on and around that day.
Stephanie Grisham and Alyssa Farah Griffin, who were both former top communications officials within Trump’s White House, spoke of their surprise when Trump said on the morning of Jan. 6 that he planned to march to the Capitol with his supporters.
“He’s actually quite terrified of being in danger. So I think he knew Secret Service would say no. But I know the minute he said that that he was doing that on purpose to rile up the crowd … and I was disgusted by the tactic,” Grisham, who was first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff at the time of the riot, said in her May deposition.
“I remember thinking, like, there’s no way,” Farah Griffin said of her reaction to Trump’s speech. “A, I’ve, like, never seen that man walk very far, but not that that’s even particularly far. But I remember thinking there’s no way Secret Service clears this.”
Farah Griffin, who was White House communications director, also recalled her first time seeing Trump after he lost the 2020 election to President Biden. She said the president had largely stayed in his residence in the days before the election was officially called for Biden.
Griffin said Trump’s exact words to her were: “‘I can’t believe I lost to this effing guy,’” adding, though, that “he did not say effing.”
She said the West Wing was like a “ghost town” for the rest of the Trump presidency, as he worked with a small circle of lawyers and advisers on efforts to undermine and overturn the election results.
Miller, a speechwriter and top adviser to the then-president, said he never discussed Trump’s plans to march to the Capitol. But he noted that the president was in a “focused and resolute state of mind” backstage at the event.
Miller was also asked about Trump’s remarks in that speech calling on former Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the election results, which were reportedly added at the last minute.
“I don’t really recollect any particular line that was added then. Not saying one wasn’t, but I don’t recall one being added at that moment in time,” Miller said.
The committee also released its deposition with Donald Trump Jr., in which he detailed his efforts to pressure Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to convince his father to speak out against the riot.
The House panel has pointed to Trump’s inaction for hours amid the rioting — while he was reportedly watching it play out on television — as evidence of his complicity in the events that day.
“I wasn’t in the White House to help with that, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened,” Trump Jr. told the committee. “But I did think we just needed to be more forward and move out there at that point.”
The transcripts released Thursday also include depositions with Trump attorney Christina Bobb, spokesperson Taylor Budowich, former GOP Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser (D).
Here are the full transcripts released by the committee:
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