Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Jan.6 panel gets more film

- FARNOUSH AMIRI Informatio­n for this article was contribute­d by Jill Colvin of The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — New footage of former President Donald Trump and his inner circle taken before and after Jan. 6, 2021, is now in the possession of the House committee investigat­ing the riot at the Capitol.

The revelation of the never-before-seen footage came to light Tuesday amid the committee’s public hearings when British filmmaker Alex Holder revealed he had complied with a congressio­nal subpoena to turn over all of the footage he shot in the final weeks of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

“When we began this project in September 2020, we could have never predicted that our work would one day be subpoenaed by Congress,” Holder wrote in a statement on Twitter.

The filmmaker said the footage includes exclusive interviews with Trump, his children and then-Vice President Mike Pence while on the campaign trail as well as before and after the insurrecti­on at the Capitol.

The first senior leaders of the Trump campaign heard about the documentar­y Tuesday morning when the project was first reported by Politico, according to two former officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s reaction.

The series, which has been titled “Unpreceden­ted,” had been purchased by a streaming service and was scheduled to be released in three parts this summer, Holder wrote.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., one of the members of the panel, told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he had been contacted personally by a person who had knowledge of the footage and that is when the committee decided to issue its subpoena.

“I’ve not seen it yet but I know it exists,” Raskin said.

The footage is the second time the committee will be leaning on documentar­y footage from that day to gather evidence for its sprawling, nearly year-long investigat­ion. The first public hearing in early June featured testimony from Nick Quested, another British filmmaker, who was embedded with the Proud Boys in the weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States