The House Judiciary Committee is seeking interviews with four current and former Justice Department officials tied to the subpoenaing of phone records for multiple members of Congress following January 6, 2021, a move that comes one day before Republicans question former special counsel Jack Smith.
The interview requests target Smith’s top deputies, Raymond Hulser, Kenneth Polite, Timothy Duree, and Molly Gaston, and are scheduled for December 30.
“We believe you possess information vital to our constitutional oversight responsibilities,” House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan wrote in letters obtained by CNN.
Emails the Justice Department provided to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley show Gaston wrote on May 17, 2023, that she was consulting internally on “some narrowly-tailored subpoenas that we plan to issue for toll records belonging to Members of Congress.” Gaston said the records were sought based on an investigation suggesting that “on or about January 6, 2021, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani reached out to these Members to ask or pressure them to delay the certification of the electoral college vote,” including contacts on the night of January 6 before Congress reconvened. The proposed subpoenas covered January 4 through January 7, 2021. Hulser responded in the email chain, “cleared. Thanks for doing this.”
Senate Republicans disclosed in October that the FBI, as part of Smith’s January 6 investigation, used court orders in 2023 to obtain phone records for nine Republican lawmakers: Sens. Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Josh Hawley, Dan Sullivan, Tommy Tuberville, Ron Johnson, Cynthia Lummis, Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Mike Kelly.
Smith is set to testify privately in a closed-door interview Wednesday on Capitol Hill regarding his prosecutions of President Trump related to challenges to the 2020 election and the handling of classified documents.
