capitol riot aftermath
Rep. Jamie Raskin: Jan. 6 committee 'aware of' call from White House to rioter
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said during Sunday's Meet the Press that the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is "aware of" a call being made that day between the White House switchboard and one of the rioters.
He can't "say anything specific about that particular call," Raskin continued, but the panel knows about it and "lots of contacts between the people in the White House and different people that were involved, obviously, in the coup attempt and the insurrection." Raskin said it's up to the Jan. 6 committee to "put everything into a comprehensive portrait and narrative timeline of what took place."
News of the White House switchboard connecting to the phone of a rioter was first revealed by former Republican lawmaker Denver Riggleman during a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night. Riggleman had been a Jan. 6 committee staffer, and told 60 Minutes he knows about "one end" of the call, and not the "White House end," but didn't say which rioter was on the line.
A spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee told NBC News Riggleman has "limited knowledge" of the panel's probe, as he left his position in April, "prior to our hearings and much of our most important investigative work. Since his departure, the committee has run down all the leads and digested and analyzed all the information that arose from his work."
The Jan. 6 committee is holding its next public hearing on Wednesday, its first since July. Raskin said the plan is for the panel to "fill in those details that have come to the attention of the committee over the last five or six weeks." He added that he's "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 right up to this day."