money ‘Big Lie’ Proponents Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell Among Latest Jan. 6 Subpoenas
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot issued a wave of fresh subpoenas on Tuesday to “Big Lie” proponents Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Boris Epshteyn, it said in a statement.
The committee has also obtained the phone records of Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancee, according to CNN. The move is believed to be the first subpoena related to a Trump family member.
Giulini, Powell, and Ellis were some of the most vocal proponents of overturning the 2020 election result, leading to widely ridiculed press conferences at the Republican National Committee headquarters in D.C., and the prestigious Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania.
Epshteyn, meanwhile, had been in contact with President Donald Trump the day of the Capitol riot.
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“The four individuals we’ve subpoenaed today advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results, or were in direct contact with the former President about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the committee’s chairman.
“We expect these individuals to join the nearly 400 witnesses who have spoken with the Select Committee as the committee works to get answers for the American people about the violent attack on our democracy.”
Epshteyn, who did not immediately reply to a request for comment from The Daily Beast, Tweeted a statement Tuesday evening decrying what he called a “Stalinist witch hunt against President Trump and his supporters.”
In a statement provided to The Daily Beast, Powell’s attorney Howard Kleinhendler said his client “looks forward” to testifying before the committee and “will comply to the full extent required by law and legal ethics.”
Kleinhendler said Powell plans to provide the congressional inquiry with “significant evidence in support of the election fraud statements and claims she presented on behalf of the electors and clients she represented.”
Giuliani and Ellis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The troupe of Republican lawyers had launched multiple lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election seeking to overturn the results, with arguments ranging from dead voters to voting technology created at the direction of the long-dead Hugo Chavez.
Epshteyn had also been part of a “command center” at Washington’s Willard Hotel that had sought to deny the congressional certification of Biden’s win. He has since stated that he still believed Vice President Mike Pence had the ability to send the election results back to the states.
Nearly every challenge had been defeated in court, with the three lawyers each facing separate repercussions for their involvement.
Giuliani had his law licenses suspended in New York and Washington, D.C. last summer, with a New York Supreme Court grievance committee blasting his “demonstrably false and misleading statements” regarding the 2020 election.
A federal judge in Michigan also issued sanctions against Powell and her longtime legal partner L. Lin Wood in August for even presenting their baseless claim.
“This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” U.S. District Judge Linda Parker wrote in an opinion. “It is one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election. It is another to take on the charge of deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated. This is what happened here.”
Ellis has since quit the Republican Party, arguing it was not conservative enough because it didn’t support Trump’s lies.
Giuliani and Powell were both also named in $1.3 billion defamation lawsuits by Dominion Voting Systems, which argued the two—along with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell—falsely claimed the company rigged the election for Joe Biden. The two have repeatedly tried to have the lawsuits dismissed.
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