Giuliani said to be in talks with panel
Committee probing Capitol riot presses former president’s lawyer to testify
Rudy Giuliani is in discussions with the House Jan. 6 committee about responding to its questions, according to three people familiar with the matter.
As former President Donald Trump’s lawyer, he helped lead the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The extent of any assistance that Giuliani might provide remains unclear and the negotiations could easily fall apart, especially as Trump continues to publicly rail against the investigation.
But Giuliani, through his lawyer, has signaled to the committee that he plans to take a less confrontational stance toward its requests than some other members of Trump’s inner circle who are fighting the committee’s subpoenas or have otherwise refused to cooperate.
Giuliani’s discussions with committee officials suggest that he may be seeking to avoid a potentially costly legal fight over a subpoena that was issued to him last month. By engaging with the committee, Giuliani could also make it more difficult for the House to issue a criminal referral of him to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress if he in the end does not comply with the subpoena.
A committee aide said the panel would not comment on negotiations with its witnesses. But the aide said the committee had allowed Giuliani, who was scheduled to appear for a deposition before the panel last Tuesday, to reschedule it at “his request.”
The aide said the committee was pressing Giuliani to “cooperate fully.”
As a key figure in some of Trump’s attempts to stave off electoral defeat, Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, would be in a position to tell investigators how much the former president knew about a series of extraordinary measures that were proposed to him last fall and winter in a bid to maintain his grip on power.
Among those efforts was a scheme to disrupt the normal workings of the Electoral College by persuading lawmakers in contested swing states to draw up alternate slates of electors showing Trump was victorious in states that were actually won by President Joe Biden.
Giuliani was also instrumental in vetting a plan to use the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines in order to examine the data housed inside them for supposed evidence of fraud.
At Trump’s direction, Giuliani asked a top homeland security official if the department could legally take control of the machines — a notion that the official shot down. Giuliani later opposed an even more explosive proposal to have the military seize the machines.
Giuliani was subpoenaed with other members of a legal team that billed itself as “an elite strike force” and pursued a set of conspiracy-filled lawsuits on behalf of Trump in which they made unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the election. They were initially scheduled to testify this week, but were granted delays through discussions with their lawyers.
The subpoena sought all documents that Giuliani had detailing the pressure campaign that he and other Trump allies initiated targeting state officials; the seizure of voting machines; contact with members of Congress; any evidence to support the conspiracy theories he pushed; and any arrangements for his fees.
Fighting subpoenas in court can be expensive, and Giuliani has already suffered a series of difficult — and potentially costly — legal setbacks.
He is facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, accusing him of carrying out “a viral disinformation campaign” made up of “demonstrably false” claims that the company helped flip votes away from Trump. And in June, his law license was suspended after a New York court ruled he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the results of the 2020 election.