Capitol riot committee could seek Trump interview ‘in not too distant future’

Former president said this week he would make a decision on whether to appear before the committee based on ‘what the request is’

The House select committee investigating the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol could soon consider whether to seek an interview with former president Donald Trump, the committee’s chairman has said.

“We'll be talking about the likelihood of a Trump interview in the not too distant future,” Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson said Thursday while speaking to reporter.

Mr Thompson’s statement regarding the possibility that the panel would seek to interview the former president comes on the heels of his declaration that he would consider heeding such a request.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr Trump said he would make a decision based on “what the request is”.

Mr Thompson called the former president’s answer “interesting,” and said Mr Trump would have no trouble understanding what such an interview would entail for him.

“If he doesn’t know what coming before our committee would be about, then that’s kind of difficult because we’ve been in business over here,” he said.

The panel has been investigating whether he or his staff purposefully used so-called “burner” phones to evade White House record-keeping. Documents by the panel from the National Archives show an hours-long gap in Mr Trump’s phone calls on the day of the riot, the worst attack on the Capitol since 1814.

Though Mr Trump has previously denied knowing the term “burner phone” — a slang term for a disposable phone sometimes used to evade surveillance – his former national security adviser, Ambassador John Bolton, has said Mr Trump was very familiar with both the term and how such phones are used.

Mr Trump told the Post: “From the standpoint of telephone calls, I don’t remember getting very many.”

“Why would I care about who called me? If congressmen were calling me, what difference did it make? There was nothing secretive about it. There was no secret,” he said.