Jan. 6 riot probe subpoenas Trump White House spokesman Judd Deere, 14 people linked to false electors scheme
The select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas to 14 people connected to an effort to submit an alternate slate of Electoral College voters for then-President Donald Trump.
The panel also subpoenaed Judd Deere, who worked as a spokesman for Trump’s White House, NBC News reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
The source told NBC News cited Deere’s potential first-hand knowledge of Trump’s conduct before and while the Capitol was under attack on Jan. 6, 2021. That includes Trump “repeatedly asking [during a Jan 5th meeting]: ‘What are your ideas for getting the RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] to do the right thing tomorrow? How do we convince Congress?,'” NBC reported.
When mob of Trump supporters invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, a joint session of Congress was meeting to confirm the Elector College results, which showed that President Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election.
CNN first reported the news of the subpoena for Deere, who did not respond to a request for comment by NBC.
The committee earlier said Friday it wants information from people who met and submitted false Electoral College certificates purporting to show that Trump had won in seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
In reality, Biden had won the popular vote in all of those states, and thus was awarded their slates of electors in the Electoral College.
The committee said it has received information that groups of people met on Dec. 14, 2020, in the seven states mentioned in the subpoenas and “then submitted bogus slates of Electoral-College votes for former President Trump.”
Those people then sent the phony Electoral College certifications to Congress, which were used by multiple Trump advisors to “justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6th, 2021,” the committee said.
The people subpoenaed by the committee served as chairpersons or secretaries of each group of the false electors.
They are: Nancy Cottle, Chairperson, Arizona; Loraine B. Pellegrino, Secretary, Arizona; David Shafer, Chairperson, Georgia; Shawn Still, Secretary, Georgia; Kathy Berden, Chairperson, Michigan; Mayra Rodriguez, Secretary, Michigan; Jewll Powdrell, Chairperson, New Mexico; Deborah W. Maestas, Secretary, New Mexico; Michael J. McDonald, Chairperson, Nevada; James DeGraffenreid, Secretary, Nevada; Bill Bachenberg, Chairperson, Pennsylvania; Lisa Patton, Secretary, Pennsylvania; Andrew Hitt, Chairperson, Wisconsin; and Kelly Ruh, Secretary, Wisconsin.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who is chairman of the panel, said, “We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme.”
“We encourage them to cooperate with the Select Committee’s investigation to get answers about January 6th for the American people and help ensure nothing like that day ever happens again,” Thompson said.
The select committee has interviewed hundreds of witnesses as part of its probe.
Trump recently lost an effort in federal court to block the panel from receiving more than 700 pages of documents from his tenure in the White House.
The Supreme Court denied his request to block that transmission of records.
A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
– Additional reporting by CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger
