U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado was involved in the “beginning stages” of talks with senior White House officials that ultimately led to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to decertify the 2020 election results, a former top aide told congressional investigators.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former assistant to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, identified Boebert as one of a small group of Republican lawmakers who met with Meadows as early as the last week of November 2020 to “raise the idea” of former Vice President Mike Pence intervening to prevent the certification of election results by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. The ensuing assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters that day led to the deaths of five people and Trump’s eventual second impeachment trial.
Hutchinson named Boebert in testimony before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol in February. Portions of her testimony were made public this week as part of a legal filing made by lawyers for the committee in a lawsuit brought against it by Meadows in an effort to block several subpoenas.
Under questioning from committee investigators, Hutchinson recalled several meetings in the weeks after Thanksgiving in which “campaign officials and a few members of Congress” discussed the possibility of Pence aiding an effort to overturn the election results on Jan. 6.
“Mr. Scott Perry, Mr. Jim Jordan ... Ms. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are the four members that immediately jump out to me,” Hutchinson said.
“I recall those individuals being involved in the earlier stages at this time,” she added. “I’m sure there were other individuals involved, but those are ones that I remember specifically being involved that Mr. Meadows had outreach to.”
Boebert, a controversial first-term lawmaker from Silt, has been scrutinized for giving tours of the Capitol to a “large group” of people on the day before the insurrection, and for sending tweets that some characterized as relaying “intel” about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the attack. On the morning of Jan. 6, she tweeted, “Today is 1776.”
Today is 1776.
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) January 6, 2021
Hutchinson also said that “Ms. Ellis” was among the campaign officials who had early meetings with Meadows about the issue – an apparent reference to Colorado attorney Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign. Ellis wrote a memo sent to Meadows on Dec. 31, 2020, in which she argued Pence had the power to overturn the election, ABC News reported last year.
Constitutional scholars have overwhelmingly rejected the argument that vice presidents have any authority to influence the counting of electoral votes in the congressional certification process, and conspiracy theories alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been exhaustively debunked by state and local officials, experts, law enforcement authorities and the courts.
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