Stephen Miller, who served as a top aide to President Donald Trump, was questioned for hours Thursday by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the Capitol.
Miller was a senior adviser for policy during the Trump administration and a central figure in many of the Republican's decisions. He filed a lawsuit last month seeking to quash a subpoena for his phone records.
Miller was interviewed virtually for about eight hours, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private testimony. A second person also confirmed that Miller appeared before the committee. A spokesperson for the committee said the panel had no comment, and Miller did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Miller is the latest in a series of sit-downs the committee has scored with those in Trump’s inner circle as lawmakers question people who were with Trump on the day of the Capitol breach or were his confidants in the weeks leading up to it.
His appearance comes weeks after Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, also agreed to sit down with congressional investigators, months after the committee had first reached out.
Members of the panel said Kushner’s testimony in late March, which lasted more than six hours, was helpful. Ivanka Trump, who was with her father in the White House on Jan. 6, was questioned for eight hours last week as congressional investigators tried to learn m more about her father’s effort to delay certification of the 2020 election results in favor of Joe Biden. Trump had raised questions about voter fraud tainting the outcome.
The nine-member panel subpoenaed the former Trump adviser in November along with Steve Bannon and former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the panel's chairman, has said that Miller helped prepare Trump's remarks for a rally that preceded the Jan. 6 breach and was with Trump when he spoke.
The House voted last week to hold former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for their monthlong refusal to comply with subpoenas. The move was the third time the panel has referred people in the former president's orbit to the Justice Department for potential prosecution for contempt. The first two referrals, sent late last year, were for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Bannon.
The contempt referral against Bannon resulted in an indictment, with a trial set to start in July. The Justice Department has been slower to decide whether to prosecute Meadows.
The panel is examining every aspect of the breach, including what Trump was doing while it unfolded and any connections between the White House and Trump supporters who entered the Capitol building.
Members plan to release information in the coming months as the committee begins to hold public hearings; it reportedly plans to release a series of reports on its findings.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly denounced the committee's work as a highly partisan attempt to smear him and hurt him politically.
Trump has consistently insisted that the election outcome was illegitimate because of widespread and systemic fraud.
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