Despite the House Jan. 6 committee saying they “fully” expected him to comply with its subpoena amid reports that he’s in talks to testify, Rudy Giuliani cast doubt on his cooperation Tuesday night, claiming the “illegal” committee “can’t subpoena anybody.”
Last month, the committee—which is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and the events surrounding it—issued subpoenas to Giuliani and three other Trump allies, including “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump legal team member Jenna Ellis.
Prior to the Capitol attacks, the trio launched multiple unsuccessful lawsuits to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, basing their legal arguments on unhinged claims of widespread voter fraud tied to dead voters and voting machines flipping votes at the direction of dead communist dictators. (Powell and Giuliani now face billion-dollar defamation lawsuits from voting tech firms Dominion and Smartmatic.)
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In recent days, however, reports indicated that Giuliani was planning on taking “a less confrontational stance” towards the committee’s subpoenas compared to others within the Trump orbit. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that despite helping lead Trump’s efforts to overthrow the election, Giuliani was in discussions with the committee to be deposed.
During his appearance on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said “our expectation is he is going to cooperate because that's the law” and “we fully expect that in accordance with the law, we'll hear from Rudy.” A day later, after Giuliani rescheduled an interview request, the committee remained optimistic that he’d appear.
“Mr. Giuliani’s appearance was rescheduled at his request. He remains under subpoena and the Select Committee expects him to cooperate fully,” a committee aide told CNN on Monday. Giuliani’s lawyer Robert Costello had previously told CNN the subpoena deadline had been extended as negotiations continued over the scope of Giuliani’s cooperation.
Appearing Tuesday evening on Newsmax, amid Trump continuing to publicly rail against the Jan. 6 probe, the former NYC mayor signaled to the MAGA channel’s audience that he may altogether ignore the committee’s legal demands to appear.
“How can you have any confidence in this committee which, by the way, is illegal?" Giuliani declared. “I mean, it doesn’t have a minority membership.”
While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did pull assigned GOP members from the committee after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected some of his picks, there are two Republicans on the panel—Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). Of course, the Republican National Committee recently censured them over their participation in the probe.
“It really can’t subpoena anybody,” Giuliani added.
The former Trump attorney, who infamously told Trump supporters just before the Jan. 6 attack that he wanted “trial by combat” over the election results, then dismissed that day’s violence as overblown.
“It’s one—I mean, going through the whole thing we’re watching it in, you know, in retrospect, and in real-time,” Giuliani exclaimed, before mockingly blaring: “Jan. 6 is nothing more than Russian collusion with another name and a new lie and a new set of crazy exaggerated, ‘It’s worse than Sept. 11. It’s worse than Pearl Harbor. It’s worse than the Civil War! It’s worse than the end of the world!’”
He then added: “You can tell when they’re lying: they exaggerate.”
Giuliani, Kinzinger, and Costello did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
