The House committee is desperate to find evidence against Trump, now to require phone records of GOP reps who attended the rally before the Capitol riots
The Democrats seem to be very desperate in finding a way to charge the former president Donald Trump for organizing the Capitol riots on January 6. The January 6 committee investigation over the Capitol events is headed one way with one main target and that’s not to discover what really happened there, but to find enough evidence to go over Trump.
What should have been a bipartisan committee, ended up to be a group of Democrats backed up by two anti-Trump Republican members who joined the committee in an effort to save their political careers hoping that somehow Trump will lose the support from the Republican party and both of them will be considered as the drivers of post-Trump Republican party.
Despite the Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger’s efforts to help the other committee Democrat members to conduct their anti-Trump agenda, it seems like their long-term plans are not likely to happen since Trump stands strong backed up by his huge and strong voters base, something that was proven on his latest rallies during the summer.
But as expected, the committee was formed at first place to prolong the investigation and dig as deep as possible, something that will take time. With no clear plans and not enough evidence that Trump was anyhow involved in the Capitol riot so far, the committee’s next desperate step is to seek the phone records of every GOP member that attended the rally before the Capitol storming took place.
As CNN reported, according to multiple sources directly involved in the committee activities, a number of the most loyal Trump fellow colleagues phone records will be requested by the committee in an effort to prove that Trump organized all the events. Some of them spoke at the rally backing up Trump’s false claims over the election results.
That group reportedly includes Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Jody Hice (Ga.), Scott Perry (Pa.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio), whom Republicans once tapped to serve on the committee.
“We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide,” Trump said shortly before supporters marched from the rally to the Capitol during the certification of the 2020 election results.
In an announcement last week, Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) hinted that this might happen when he told the reporters the committee is looking the possibility to obtain phone records that should help them with the investigation. Although he didn’t point out specific names, he informed the reporters that the committee has formed a several-hundred-long list of people including some of the GOP members.
Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.), another Republican once slated to serve on the Jan. 6 committee before his selection was refused by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has indicated that Republican lawmakers would fight any seizure of their records.
“Rifling through the call logs of your colleagues would depart from more than 230 years of Congressional oversight. This type of authoritarian undertaking has no place in the House of Representatives and the information you seek has no conceivable legislative purpose,” Banks wrote in a letter to Thompson on Friday that was also sent to the general counsels of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.