Kellyanne Conway appears before Jan. 6 committee

WASHINGTON — Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared Monday before investigators of the House select committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Conway spoke to the committee on the record, two sources familiar with her appearance said. The panel did not publicly issue her a subpoena, and aides refused to comment on whether she was issued one privately. The committee declined to comment on her appearance Monday.

Conway was seen entering a conference room in the O’Neill House Office Building with attorney Emmet Flood, who was a lawyer in former President Donald Trump’s White House.

When she left the meeting room for a break, Conway told reporters “I’m here voluntarily,” and added that Trump had called her last week.

Conway worked as a senior counselor to Trump from the beginning of his term through Aug. 2020. She decided to leave the administration because she said she needed to focus on her family. She also served as a campaign manager for Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.

Advertisement

Although Conway wasn’t working for Trump on Jan. 6, The Washington Post, in a report citing 15 Trump advisers, Congress members, GOP officials and other Trump confidants, said she called an aide who was with the president that day and said she was joining others in urging Trump to tell his supporters to stand down. Conway also told the aide that she had received a call from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office asking for help in getting Trump to call up the National Guard, the Post reported.

The committee is expected to release a final report about its investigation into the 2021 riot before the end of the year, before the new Congress convenes in January. The panel is not expected to exist in the new GOP-controlled House next year.

Before Thanksgiving, the panel interviewed Bobby Engel, who was the lead Secret Service agent for Trump when the riot took place and whose statements could have bearing on the bombshell testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson testified over the summer that she was told Trump tried to grab the steering wheel in an armored SUV and lunged toward his security detail when he learned he would not be taken to the Capitol after his rally on Jan. 6.

At the beginning of November, committee investigators were scheduled to meet with a Secret Service agent who was in the lead car of Trump’s motorcade on the day of the riot.