Jan. 6 committee inquiry seeks Rep. Andy Biggs’ cooperation
Rep. Andy Biggs was asked Monday by a select committee to discuss his involvement in strategy sessions at the White House and other matters that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
The formal request of Biggs, R-Ariz., along with two other House members, seeks but does not require them to make clearer their activities on a range of fronts in the days before the unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a letter to Biggs that was shared publicly, the committee said it wants to meet with him next week about a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House that involved former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
The Democrat-led panel also wants to discuss what he knew about the “Stop the Steal” effort organized by Ali Alexander, who credited Biggs as instrumental in pulling it together.
The panel wants to know about Biggs’ effort to persuade state lawmakers the election was stolen and enlist their help in preventing Joe Biden’s victory from being certified.
The committee said Biggs was identified as among a group of Republicans seeking pardons after the attack by the pro-Trump mob and wants to know why such pardons were sought.
The committee noted that Biggs participated in an effort recently determined by a federal judge that more likely than not involved a criminal effort by Trump to obstruct Congress from certifying Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.
If the “plan had worked,” the judge wrote and the committee noted, “it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution.”
In a written statement hours later, Biggs said he would not assist the committee, and assailed it as a “sham,” biased against Republicans and collaborating with the media.
“I will not be participating in the illegitimate and Democrat-sympathizing House Jan. 6 committee panel,” he said. “The committee has been a sham since its origins. Its entire purpose is to destroy President Trump and his supporters, intimidate members of Congress, and distract Americans from real issues that are destroying this country. The committee operates with the same kind of bias present at the Salem Witch Trials. Everyone is guilty and must demonstrate their innocence. They are basing their witch-hunt on dubious media accounts.
“How the media received this letter and had their stories written before it was shared with me is concerning and reveals foul play.”
Biggs also returned to punishment for the two Republicans who are part of the committee, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, saying “leadership should remove (them) from representing the party in this committee.”
The committee also sought the cooperation of Reps. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., and Ronny Jackson, R-Texas.
The committee’s interest in Biggs has seemed inevitable for months as investigators have already turned to several of his congressional colleagues and activist allies over efforts in casting doubt on the 2020 election and urging public action using heated words.
Other Republicans have refused to cooperate with the committee.
Biggs was long among Trump’s most-ardent supporters in Congress, and he has assailed the committee as a Democratic-led attack on Republicans. He has generally defended his actions seeking to set aside electors on Jan. 6, 2021, as something others — including Democrats — have done over the years.
Even so, the Capitol riot crossed a historic line and the committee wants to understand what his role was leading up to that event.
Biggs and Brooks, along with Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., were singled out in a since-deleted video by Alexander as central to that effort. Biggs has said he had no contact with Alexander, but in court papers, Alexander said he testified that “he spoke to Rep. Biggs in person and never by phone.”
The committee has not made a request for Gosar’s cooperation.
Biggs and Gosar quietly sought to convince Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, to participate in a plan to change or challenge Arizona’s election results after they were certified, The Arizona Republic has reported.
The same day as the White House strategy session, Biggs and Gosar participated in a December 2020 videoconference with analysts trying to convince Bowers there were significant anomalies in Arizona’s presidential votecounting. Bowers later concluded their information was wrong.
The Republic first reported Bowers said Biggs called him on Jan. 6, 2021, to ask if the speaker would join a request to decertify Arizona’s electors. Bowers declined.
The committee’s request underscores the prominent roles investigators believe Biggs may have played in helping plan or carry out efforts to thwart the 2020 election results.
So far, other House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have received similar requests from the committee. All have declined to cooperate.
In late December, the committee requested time with Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Biggs has cast the probe as a partisan effort to discredit Republicans who had a right to challenge election results. On Jan. 6, he argued to set aside the 2020 election results, and House Republicans formally sought to erase the voter results in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Biggs suggested fraud tainted the 2020 election even as votes were still being counted.
Biggs has already faced fruitless calls for an ethics or criminal investigation from some groups. More recently, another group sought to disqualify him from running for Congress using a provision of the 14th Amendment to block those who participated in an insurrection. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge dismissed the matter, saying that was for Congress to do, not the public.
The committee has examined the role of alternate slates of electors put forward by Trump loyalists in states Trump lost, including Arizona.
The losing slate of Trump electors signed documents formally sent to the National Archives that were intended, the committee has indicated, to help provide legal justification for Vice President Mike Pence to set aside the electors for Biden from those states on Jan. 6.
On Jan. 28, the committee subpoenaed two people involved in the Arizona effort, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino, to detail their intended purpose in submitting what investigators dubbed “alternate electors.”
In an interview before the subpoena, Pellegrino told The Republic she didn’t like that label. She said she was simply an elector for Trump and cast a vote on Dec. 14, 2020, just as she would if Trump had carried Arizona.
“We were electors for Trump and we were hoping things would change,” said Pellegrino, who has been an Arizona delegate at the past three national Republican conventions. “Just in case, we signed our paperwork to be ready in the event that something was overturned.”
Pellegrino, reached by phone Friday, said that “absolutely nothing” had come of the subpoena from the committee.
“Everything has been taken care of through my attorney,” she said, “Absolutely nothing has come of it. I suggest you pursue another story.”
Cottle did not return a message left on Friday.
Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, whose headquarters hosted the alternate electors’ meeting, refused to say whether she had responded to her subpoena from the Jan. 6 Select Committee when asked about it Thursday following a news conference on border security. Ward, who also signed as an alternate elector, called the matter a “witch hunt.”
The committee has also sought cell phone records from Ward’s provider, T-Mobile. Ward filed suit in federal court to stop that subpoena. Briefings on the matter are due to the judge on May 30.
Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker who has also received a subpoena from the committee, declined to detail how he has responded when asked at the Capitol in late April.
“There’s negotiations with my attorney and their attorney,” he said, before giving remarks at an unrelated news conference. “That’s all I can really say about it.”