Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the chair of the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol, confirmed to Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday that former Attorney General Bill Barr had been speaking with his committee.
Brennan asked Thompson about the recent reports about a draft executive order from the Trump White House that would have directed the Defense Department to seize voting machines in battleground states in the weeks following the 2020 election, specifically if the committee intended to speak with Barr about this issue.
The order was among the documents that former President Donald Trump had gone to court to block them being turned over to the Jan. 6 committee, but ultimately the Supreme Court ruled against Trump, allowing the National Archives to release the documents.
The draft executive order included instructions to appoint a special counsel “to institute all criminal and civil proceedings as appropriate based on the evidence collected,” and called on the Secretary of Defense to release a “final assessment” up to 60 days later, which would have been after Trump’s term was scheduled to end on Jan. 20, 2021. A number of political commentators have denounced this document as a “very clear violation” of federal law and the Constitution, and while it was never signed by Trump and was likely still in draft form, serves as a window into the conspiratorial mindset in the final days of the Trump
“To be honest with you, we’ve had conversations with the former attorney general already,” Thompson told Brennan. “We have talked to Department of Defense individuals. We are concerned that our military was part of this Big Lie on promoting that the election was false. 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.”
Thompson vowed that if the committee can “document” evidence that “any of these individuals who [were] participating in trying to stop the election…we will share it with the public.”
He added that the committee does not yet know if anyone within the military was actually working on how to possibly seize voting machines. “We have information that between the Department of Justice, a plan was put forward to potentially seize voting machines in the country and utilize Department of Defense assets to make that happen.”
“Something beyond this draft executive order?” asked Brennan. “There was actually an operational plan?”
“Well, no, not an operational plan,” Thompson replied, but the mere existence of the draft executive order “is reason enough to believe that it was being proposed.”
“Our job is to get to the facts and circumstances of how far did they go,” he continued. “We do know that
Barr resigned on Dec. 23, 2020, after a tenure as attorney general in which he had been one of Trump’s staunchest allies, but in the weeks following the 2020 election, Barr notably split from the president regarding his baseless claims of election fraud, and fell out of Trump’s favor.
“We will move forward on that investigation, and we will look and see specifically how far that plan went,” said Thompson.
“That’s incredible,” said Brennan, asking if Barr would testify and if they would seek testimony from other members of the military.
Thompson said part of the committee’s plan was to “continue to engage all those individuals that we deem necessary and important to our investigation, some we’ll talk to, some we’ll do in deposition under oath, others we’ll offer hearing opportunities.”
Watch the video above, via CBS.