January 6 Panel Wants to Talk to Newt Gingrich

The House January 6 panel is asking Newt Gingrich to voluntarily cooperate with its probe into the 2021 attack on the US Capitol. In a letter sent to the former GOP House speaker, the select committee says it has obtained emails between Gingrich, Jared Kushner, Jason Miller, and other senior advisors of then-President Trump. Gingrich "provided detailed input into television advertisements that repeated and relied upon false claims about fraud in the 2020 election" in those messages, the letter says, per CNN.

"These advertising efforts were not designed to encourage voting for a particular candidate. Instead, these efforts attempted to cast doubt on the outcome of the election after voting had already taken place." The committee also believes Gingrich spoke directly with Trump himself about such efforts, the Hill reports. The letter cites one such email from Gingrich as saying, "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."

That's what the panel wants to talk to Gingrich about, as well as the allegation that Gingrich was part of an effort Trump backers made to submit false electors in some states—an accusation the Justice Department is also probing. The letter also accuses Gingrich of "various other aspects of the scheme to overturn the 2020 election and block the transfer of power, including after the violence of Jan. 6," Fox News reports. The committee is asking for an interview the week of Sept. 19. (More Newt Gingrich stories.)