The Jan. 6 witness Trump tried to call is a White House support staffer, reports say
- Rep. Liz Cheney alleged that Donald Trump sought to contact a Jan. 6 witness.
- That witness was been identified in reports by CNN and NBC as a White House support staffer.
The Jan. 6 committee witness whom former President Donald Trump is alleged to have tried to contact is a White House support staffer, reports say.
CNN first reported, citing two sources, that Trump made the call to the witness after the June 28 testimony by another witness, the former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson.
According to the report, the support staffer was in a position to corroborate parts of Hutchinson's testimony, and had been providing evidence to the committee.
NBC News later said it had confirmed CNN's reporting. Neither outlet named the person.
At Tuesday's hearing, committee member Rep. Liz Cheney claimed that Trump sought to contact a witness who had not appeared publicly, in what she characterized as a form of witness tampering.
"That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us, and this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice," Cheney said.
Cheney did not identify the witness.
Legal experts have said that the call described by Cheney might not be enough for a witness-tampering charge, as reported by Insider's Charles R. Davis and Darren Samuelsohn.
"Trump is damn lucky that the witness did not answer the phone," said one former DOJ prosecutor.
The committee has also alleged that an ally of Trump contacted Hutchinson in an attempt to influence her testimony.
In her appearance, Hutchinson claimed that Trump sought to lead a mob he knew to be armed to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and described erratic actions by Trump and the concerns of his top aides that day.
The committee is seeking to corroborate Hutchinson's testimony. Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin said that former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone had backed up large parts of her testimony in an interview with the panel.
A spokesman for Trump, Taylor Budowich, responded to Cheney by attacking her general conduct.
In a tweet he said she was continuing "to traffic in innuendos and lies that go unchallenged, unconfirmed, but repeated as fact because the narrative is more important than the truth." He did not deny that Trump made such a call.