moneyJan. 6 panel is 'aware of' call between White House and rioter, Rep. Raskin says
The House Jan. 6 committee is "aware of" the call between the White House switchboard and a rioter during the attack on the Capitol, panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
Denver Riggleman, a former GOP lawmaker who served on the committee’s staff, alleged in a clip of an upcoming episode of CBS' "60 Minutes," airing later Sunday, that the switchboard connected to the phone of a rioter on Jan. 6, 2021.
“You know, I can’t say anything specific about that particular call, but we are aware of it,” Raskin said. “And we are aware of lots of contacts between the people in the White House and different people that were involved obviously in the coup attempt and the insurrection.”
The call is “one of thousands of details that obviously the committee is aware of," he said. “And our job is to put everything into a comprehensive portrait and narrative timeline of what took place."
Riggleman has said that he only knows about "one end" of the call and not the "White House end." It is still unclear which rioter he was referring to, who placed the call and whether they were in a position of authority, or where it fits in the committee's probe.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., another member of the panel, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that the committee "has looked into" all the issues that Riggleman raised, without offering any further information.
After holding their first round of public hearings this summer, the committee will hold its next hearing Wednesday, just over a month before the midterm elections.
While the news release announcing the hearing did not specify its topic of focus or if there'll be any in-person witnesses, Raskin indicated on "Meet the Press" that the panel's members will share more findings that they've uncovered since the last hearing in late July, "to round out the factual narrative."
“What we’re going to do on Wednesday is fill in those details that have come to the attention of the committee over the last five or six weeks,” he said.
Raskin did not confirm if the panel would release its final congressional report on former President Donald Trump and his allies' effort to overturn the election before the elections in November, but said it plans to complete it during the current sitting of Congress, which turns over in January.
After committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said last week that he expects the hearing to be the last one unless more information emerges, its vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told reporters that she anticipates more hearings after this week.
Raskin agreed Sunday: “I’m hopeful, speaking just as one member, that we will have a hearing that lays out all of our legislative recommendations about how to prevent coups, insurrections, political violence, and electoral sabotage in the future because this is a clear and present danger that’s continuing up right to this day."
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
