GOP legislator refuses interview; Flynn files suit
WASHINGTON — Two allies of former President Donald Trump took steps Tuesday to try to stonewall the House committee investigating the Capitol attack as Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, filed a lawsuit against the panel, and a House Republican who played a key role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election refused to meet with investigators.
Flynn, who spent 33 years as an Army officer and has emerged as one of the most extreme voices in Trump’s push to overturn the election, filed suit against the committee in Florida, trying to block its subpoenas.
“Like many Americans in late 2020, and to this day, Gen. Flynn has sincerely held concerns about the integrity of the 2020 elections,” his lawsuit states. “It is not a crime to hold such beliefs, regardless of whether they are correct or mistaken.”
The House committee has said it wants information from Flynn because he attended a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers and continuing to spread the false idea that the election was tainted by widespread fraud.
Flynn’s suit comes as Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and closely involved in Trump’s push to undermine the election, said Tuesday that he was refusing to meet with the Jan. 6 committee.
Perry, the incoming chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, called the committee “illegitimate.”
“I decline this entity’s request and will continue to fight the failures of the radical Left who desperately seek distraction from their abject failures of crushing inflation, a humiliating surrender in Afghanistan, and the horrendous crisis they created at our border,” Perry wrote on Twitter.
The committee on Monday sent a letter seeking testimony and documents from Perry, the first public step it has taken to try to obtain information from any of the Republican members of Congress who were deeply involved in Trump’s effort to stay in power despite losing the election.
Flynn and Perry are among a small number of witnesses who have not cooperated with the panel.
The panel has already interviewed around 300 people as it seeks to create a comprehensive record of the Jan. 6 attack and the events leading up to it.