Former AG William Barr Has Been In Communication With Jan. 6 Committee

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack has been in communication with former Attorney General William Barr regarding a recently released draft of an executive order involving the Defense Department.

Barr, whose last day at the Justice Department was December 23, 2020, said that he did not have any useful information pertaining to the January 6 attack.

The draft, which was never signed by then-President Donald Trump, would have required the Defense Department to seize voting machines in an investigation into what Trump and his allies call a “rigged” election. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), who is the committee chair, shared an update on the committee’s findings on CBS’ Face The Nation.

“We’ve had conversations with the former attorney general already,” Thompson said. “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 said that the committee had not obtained any proof that there was a finalized plan to follow through.

“The draft itself is reason enough to believe that it was being proposed,” he said. “Our job is to get to the facts and circumstances of how far did they go.”

The draft was delivered in a stack of documents from the National Archives. Trump tried to stop the committee from getting ahold of them, but in an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court decided not to block the documents from being released. Over 700 pages of records were sent to the select committee.