Jan. 6 panel asks Newt Gingrich to testify

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol wants to talk to Newt Gingrich about his “efforts to overturn the election results” before and after the violent breach.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat that chairs the committee, sent a letter to the 79-year-old former GOP House speaker Thursday asking him to voluntarily testify before lawmakers.

Thompson said the panel had obtained emails between Gingrich and top advisors to former President Donald Trump in which the former Georgia representative gave input on televised advertisements that repeated Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

“’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,” Gingrich wrote in an email to Jared Kushner, Jason Miller and political consultant Larry Weitzner, according to Thompson.

Thompson alleged Gingrich “continued to push efforts to overturn the election” on the evening of Jan. 6, after the siege failed to prevent the certification of President Biden’s victory, according to an email sent to Trump’s chief of staff.

“You emailed Mr. [Mark] Meadows at 10:42 p.m., after the Capitol had been cleared of rioters and members of Congress had returned to finish certifying the election results, and asked, ‘[a]re there letters from state legislators about decertifying electors[?]’

“Accordingly, you appear to have been involved with President Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of the election results, even after the attack on the Capitol,” the chairman wrote.

Gingrich made headlines earlier this year when he compared the committee to a “lynch mob” and called for its seven Democrats and two Republicans to be jailed.