Former Trump White House aide who met with January 6 panel attacks witnesses, lawmakers in profane and sexist rant
By Marshall Cohen and Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN
A former Trump White House aide who met with the January 6 committee earlier this week went on a profane and sexist rant on a livestream after his testimony, where he railed against the lawmakers and attacked other witnesses, according to audio posted to his Telegram.
The aide, Garrett Ziegler, met with the House panel on Tuesday. Lawmakers were likely interested in hearing from him because of his ties to one of the most shocking episodes of the 2020 election saga: A White House meeting where then-President Donald Trump’s outside allies tried to convince him to declare martial law and use the military to seize voting machines.
In the 27-minute livestream, Ziegler used vulgar and misogynistic language to attack Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah Griffin, two women who worked for the Trump White House but have since publicly broken from the former President and cooperated with the January 6 panel.
He also accused the January 6 House select committee of being “anti-White,” without any evidence. (The nine-member panel is led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, who is Black.)
“They’re Bolsheviks,” Ziegler said in the stream, referring to the far-left communists who led the Soviet Union, “so, they probably do hate the American founders and most White people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign. If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?”
The livestream is audio-only, but the voice on the recording matches past videos of Ziegler. CNN has reached out to the January 6 committee and Ziegler’s attorney seeking comment.
At the White House, Ziegler was an aide to Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, who was charged with contempt of Congress for defying the panel’s subpoena. (He pleaded not guilty.)
The New York Times previously reported that Ziegler escorted some of Trump’s most controversial allies into the White House for the now-infamous December 2020 meeting where martial law was discussed. In Ziegler’s online postings, he disputed parts of the Times story.
On his Telegram channel, Ziegler continues to promote debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He falsely claimed in recent posts that “the election was stolen” and that the January 6 attack on the US Capitol “was one of the greatest orchestrated false flags in history.”
The-CNN-Wire
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CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
