Kushner Recalled to Jan. 6 Committee Trump Wanted to Trademark the Phrase ‘Rigged Election!’
The House Jan. 6 Committee released more transcripts Friday of witness testimony from the committee’s months-long investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The latest releases included transcripts of former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner as well as Ginni Thomas – the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
CNN’s Phil Mattingly, guest hosting for Jake Tapper, interviewed political correspondent Sara Murray on Friday who had gone through some of the lengthy transcripts to get her take on what new information was revealed.
“Also, according to emails provided the committee Jared Kushner wanted to trade, Donald Trump wanted to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election!” Days after the election day in 2020. Walk us through that,” asked Mattingly.
“Yeah. So, you know, Donald Trump throughout the course of his career, throughout his candidacy, has wanted to trademark all kinds of slogans,” Murray began, adding:
Of course, as we know, this is days after the election has been called. He decides he wants to trademark the phrase ‘rigged election.’
This comes up in emails Jared Kushner has provided to the committee. It comes up in Jared Kushner, his interview. He gets an email from Dan Scavino saying, hey, Donald Trump wants to trademark ‘rigged election.’ Essentially, what am I supposed to do about this? I don’t know how to get this trademark. Jared Kushner passes that information along to a couple other people to try to get the ball rolling on the former president’s request.
“Normal times, don’t forget the exclamation point, by the way, very important here,” jested Mattingly in response.
“One actually very interesting part is the interview with former deputy White House chief of staff Tony Ornato. Obviously, he was a central figure in some of Cassidy Hutchinson’s most explosive allegations. What did he say about the events of January 6th?” asked Mattingly.
“So, you know, he was asked about a whole host of things by the committee, in part because Cassidy Hutchinson had provided this explosive testimony. We previously reported that he did not corroborate the incidents that she had talked about that happened. You know, allegedly Trump getting very irate, lunging at people in the motorcade. He didn’t corroborate any of that,” Murray replied.
“He was asked about what was happening on January 6th, about efforts people were trying to get him to make, you know, encourage Donald Trump to make a public statement. And Tony Ornato basically was like, it was so crazy. I can’t really remember very much,” Murray continued, adding:
He says, ‘I’ll be honest with you, it was a very chaotic time in trying to get the information.’ It was usually late information or it wasn’t accurate or it was the fog of war and it was misrepresented. And it was a very a very chaotic day. So I don’t recall those specific details. We should also note that while or not, his attorney has said that he was cooperative with the committee. The committee wrote in their report multiple times that they did not believe his testimony was credible.
Watch the full clip above via CNN
