WASHINGTON — The Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol on Thursday requested former Speaker Newt Gingrich to take a seat for a voluntary interview about his involvement in former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
In a letter to Mr. Gingrich, the Georgia Republican who held the speakership within the late Nineties, the committee stated its investigators had obtained proof that he was involved with senior advisers to Mr. Trump about tv commercials that amplified false claims of fraud within the 2020 election and different features of the scheme to dam the switch of energy, each earlier than and after a mob attacked the Capitol.
“Among the data we now have obtained consists of e-mail messages that you just exchanged with senior advisers to President Trump and others, together with Jared Kushner and Jason Miller, by which you supplied detailed enter into tv commercials that repeated and relied upon false claims about fraud within the 2020 election,” Consultant Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee, wrote in a letter to Mr. Gingrich.
“These promoting efforts weren’t designed to encourage voting for a selected candidate,” Mr. Thompson added. “As an alternative, these efforts tried to solid doubt on the end result of the election after voting had already taken place. They inspired members of the general public to contact their state officers and strain them to problem and overturn the outcomes of the election.”
The letter to Mr. Gingrich requested that he protect all data and communications he had with the White Home, Mr. Trump, the Trump authorized workforce and others concerned within the occasions of Jan. 6. It requested that he sit for an interview throughout the week of Sept. 19.
Mr. Thompson stated Mr. Gingrich pushed messages explicitly designed to incite anger amongst voters, even after Georgia election officers had confronted intimidation and threats of violence. Particularly, Mr. Gingrich advocated selling the false claims that election staff in Atlanta had smuggled in faux votes in suitcases.
“The aim is to arouse the nation’s anger via new verifiable data the American individuals have by no means seen earlier than,” Mr. Gingrich wrote to Mr. Kushner, Mr. Miller and Larry Weitzner, a media marketing consultant, on Dec. 8, 2020. “If we inform the American individuals in a means they discover convincing and it arouses their anger, they are going to then convey strain on legislators and governors.”
He additionally pushed for a coordinated plan to place ahead pro-Trump electors in states received by Joseph R. Biden Jr.
On Nov. 12, 2020, Mr. Gingrich wrote to Mr. Trump’s chief of employees, Mark Meadows, and the White Home counsel Pat A. Cipollone, asking: “Is somebody accountable for coordinating all of the electors?”
On the night of Jan. 6, Mr. Gingrich continued to push efforts to overturn the election, emailing Mr. Meadows, at 10:42 p.m. after the Capitol had been cleared of rioters, asking if there have been letters from state legislators about decertifying the outcomes of the election.
“Surprisingly, the assault on Congress and the actions prescribed by the Structure didn’t even pause your relentless pursuit,” Mr. Thompson wrote.
Mr. Gingrich didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
