Rep. Louie Gohmert called on the January 6 Select Committee to release the full deposition of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson in which she claimed that Mr. Gohmert, and other GOP lawmakers, sought presidential pardons in late 2020.
The Texas Republican flatly denies seeking a pardon for himself. But Mr. Gohmert said he made several pardon requests for U.S. service members whom he says were wrongfully convicted of crimes while deployed in war zones.
Mr. Gohmert said that either the committee deceptively edited clips of the deposition to make it appear as if Ms. Hutchinson told the panel he requested a personal pardon rather than pardons for others, or that Ms. Hutchinson was mistaken.
“The way the video testimony was presented makes it sound like my pardon requests for very deserving military members, former military, and one civilian servant in late 2020 in written letters and packages of information was asking for a pardon for myself,” Mr. Gohmert said in a statement this week to The Washington Times.
“Not only have I never asked for a pardon for myself, I have not done anything for which I need a pardon,” he said.
The committee and Ms. Hutchinson’s counsel did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Gohmert wants the panel to release the full raw video and transcript of her testimony.
Mr. Gohmert and 11 other GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, were part of the Congressional Justice for Warriors Caucus and first sent a pardon request to the White House in February 2020 on behalf of Army National Guardsman Sgt. Derrick Miller.
Miller was released on parole in 2019 after being convicted of murdering an Afghan civilian during a battlefield interrogation in Afghanistan in 2010.
The letter, along with pardon requests for other military service members which The Washington Times viewed, was part of a pardon package that was sent again to the congressional White House liaison on Dec. 4, 2020.
Mr. Gohmert’s staff said he hand-delivered the same pardon package to then-President Trump at a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting.
The Jan. 6 Committee displayed during last Thursday’s hearing an email from Rep. Mo Brooks, Alabama Republican, to Mr. Trump with the subject line “Pardons,” in which Mr. Brooks requested pardons for “every congressman or senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”
The committee then aired a videotaped deposition in which Ms. Hutchinson testified that Mr. Brooks “advocated for there to be a blanket pardon from members” involved in the Dec. 21, 2020, meeting. The lawmakers were supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts to get Congress to reject the certification of votes of swing states won by President Biden.
The committee then pressed during the deposition whether any other members asked for pardons.
“Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well,” Ms. Hutchinson replied.
In addition to calling on the committee to release the full tape of the deposition, Mr. Gohmert also wants Ms. Hutchinson to “publicly clarify her comments if she feels her words were misrepresented or her deposition was inappropriately edited.”
“If she simply made a mistake in her recollection, then a public apology would be the least she could do given the vicious attacks and smears that have arisen from her deposition,” he said.
Mr. Gohmert said he also wants “a retraction and clarification from the January 6th Committee as well as an apology,” and says that it is not only “unprofessional” but also “potentially actionably illegal to facilitate these malicious lies about anyone.”
He asserted possible “criminality” involved in how the Jan. 6 committee attempted to “pervert justice,” and said the action should be investigated by a new Attorney General who is “concerned about principled justice.”
Thursday’s hearing was part of a series of public appearances to unveil findings after the committee‘s nearly year-long investigation.
During its prime-time debut earlier this month, Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican and the committee’s vice chair, said Mr. Perry was among “multiple” Republican lawmakers who sought presidential pardons in the weeks following the attack on the Capitol.
“Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon,” she said. “Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”
Mr. Perry’s spokesman called Ms. Cheney’s claims a “laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie.”
The committee held another hearing Tuesday to release what it calls newly uncovered evidence about the Jan. 6 riot.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.