Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in Washington, DC, on July 25, 2022.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Newt Gingrich referred reporters to his lawyers when asked about the ongoing Jan. 6 investigation.
“I don’t talk about it. At all,” he told congressional reporters at the US Capitol.
House investigators have asked Gingrich to testify about advice he gave Trump’s 2020 election team.
Famously chatty former House Speaker Newt Gingrich clammed up Thursday when asked whether he would cooperate with January 6 committee investigators probing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, repeatedly telling reporters to talk to his attorneys.
—Kyle Stewart (@KyleAlexStewart) September 22, 2022
“I don’t talk about it. At all. Period,” the former Georgia lawmaker told congressional reporters. He reportedly shot down other inquiries about potentially sharing insights into the deadly siege at the US Capitol with “I don’t know”s and “no comment”s.
Gingrich, who was in DC to help House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sell a retooled reelection strategy to rank-and-file Republicans ahead of the fast-approaching midterms, is just one of the dozens of Donald Trump-aligned witnesses House investigators want to hear from before shutting down their sweeping project.
Gingrich returned to the hallways of a bitterly divided Congress, a continuing discord he’s often blamed for creating during his time as House speaker from 1995 to 1999.
Others who have yet to appear for questioning or have fought against testifying publicly include former Vice President Mike Pence, former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, as well as McCarthy and other House GOP subpoena dodgers.
Investigators wrote to Gingrich earlier this month seeking clarification about emails that allegedly showed him urging the Trump campaign to air TV ads repeating false claims about the election.
“The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.] . . . If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors,” purportedly wrote to Trump White House aides seeking to undo Joe Biden’s lawful victory.
Investigators announced Wednesday that they’d finally heard back from another high-profile person of interest, conservative activist Ginni Thomas. The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who landed on the select committee’s radar after messages she sent to various state lawmakers urging them to support Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud became public, reportedly agreed to talk to the committee in the coming weeks.
The committee’s next public hearing is scheduled for September 28.