Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a member of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, on Sunday would not confirm whether the panel plans to subpoena Ginni Thomas after reports revealed text messages from Thomas urging then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to pursue Big Lie efforts in the weeks after the 2020 election.
Appearing on CBS, Kinzinger was pressed on Thomas’ texts to Meadows urging efforts to overthrow the election. The text messages the Washington Post and CBS News obtained between Thomas and Meadows were among the 2,320 that the former Trump official provided to the Jan. 6 Select Committee during his short-lived cooperation with the panel. In one of her reported texts to Meadows, Thomas told Meadows to “not concede” while pushing bogus claims of election fraud.
Kinzinger replied that as a member of the committee, he cannot confirm nor deny the existence of Thomas’ text messages to Meadows.
“I’ll tell you, though, we have thousands of text messages from lots of people. We have a lot of documents. And we are going to, in a methodical, fact-driven way, get to the answers here,” Kinzinger said. “We’ll call in whoever we need to call in.”
“I think the bottom line for the committee is this, was there an effort to overturn the legitimate election of the United States?,” Kinzinger continued. “What was January 6 in relation to that? And what is the rot in our system that led to that and does it still exist today?”
Kinzinger was then asked whether the committee plans to subpoena Thomas and question her.
“Look, I think, again, we want to make sure that this isn’t driven — even though it’s in the political realm, it’s not driven by a political motivation — it’s driven by facts,” Kinzinger said. “So when it comes to any potential future calling in of Ms. Thomas, we’ll take a look at what the evidence is and we’ll make a decision and you all will know as soon as we do.”
Kinzinger added that he doesn’t want “get into speculating too much.”
“I think it is important that we have answers for the American people in a factual way here,” Kinzinger said.
Later in the interview, Kinzinger said he is “not convinced” that the committee has obtained all relevant material it has requested from Meadows. Kinzinger stressed that it’s now up to the Justice Department to prosecute Meadows for contempt, following a court filing last month from lawyers for the committee that alleged former President Trump and his allies “engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.” In its court filing, the panel urged the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s efforts to push the Big Lie.
Kinzinger’s remarks come amid reports that the committee is in talks about whether to call Thomas to come before the panel, according to CBS News and CNN. The Committee’s meeting scheduled on Monday will reportedly include discussion of inviting Thomas to speak with the panel and issue a subpoena if necessary, according to CBS.
Watch Kinzinger’s remarks below:
