Former attorney general William P. Barr has spoken with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, the committee chairman said Sunday, a further indication that several former Trump administration officials are cooperating with the panel even as others are fighting efforts to compel their testimony.
"We've had conversations with the former attorney general already. We have talked to Department of Defense individuals," U.S. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi and chairman of the committee, said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation."
The bipartisan House panel is investigating the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob trying to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden's electoral college win, an attack that resulted in the deaths of one police officer and four others and injured about 140 members of law enforcement.
It is unclear what has been discussed between the committee and Barr, who stepped down as attorney general in the weeks before the insurrection. Barr had been closely allied with Trump through most of his tenure at the Department of Justice but resigned in December 2020 after publicly disputing claims of widespread election fraud.
Thompson was asked Sunday if he intended to ask Barr about a draft of a Trump executive order, first reported by Politico last week, that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines in battleground states. Thompson said he did, though he acknowledged the plan was only in draft form and never became operational.
"We are concerned that our military was part of this big lie on promoting that the election was false," Thompson told CBS News. "So, if you are using the military to potentially seize voting machines, even though it's a discussion, the public needs to know. We've never had that before."
The draft executive order is believed to be one of the documents former president Donald Trump went to court to try to block from release. The document was among hundreds of pages provided to the committee by the National Archives last week, after the Supreme Court rejected Trump's arguments. Trump has baselessly claimed for more than a year that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. (There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud affecting the election's outcome.)
So far, it appears the committee, made up of two Republicans and seven Democrats, has not asked Barr about that draft executive order, according to a person familiar with the committee's work, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Barr could not be reached for comment Sunday. The former attorney general plans to publish a book soon about his time in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations, where he will touch on "the 2020 election fallout," among other topics, according to his publisher.
