Michael Flynn appears before Jan. 6 committee but declines to answer questions
Onetime Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn appeared on Thursday before the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, his attorney confirmed.
The deposition comes after the committee subpoenaed Flynn last year, requesting information about a December 2020 meeting he reportedly attended with then-President Trump in the Oval Office. Topics of discussion allegedly included seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency and invoking certain national emergency powers.
"General Michael Flynn appeared before the January 6th Committee today in compliance with their subpoena and, on advice of counsel, exercised his 5th amendment right to decline to answer the Committee's questions," attorney David Warrington said in a statement.
Warrington claimed that during the deposition, committee staff "insinuated that General Flynn's decision to decline to answer their questions constituted an admission of guilt."
"The committee's decision to depose General Flynn while these issues are before a court was little more than political theater designed to set up a false narrative based on the committee's wrong view of the 5th Amendment," Warrington said, adding that "most of the questions lacked any relation to the legislative purpose" for which the committee was founded.
One person close to the committee told CBS News there is intense interest among some committee members in probing Flynn about his comments in late 2020 about martial law and voting machines.
During a Newsmax appearance in December 2020, Flynn had said Trump could deploy the military to "rerun" the presidential election in swing states.
Flynn is the former national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but was pardoned by Trump in the final weeks of his presidency.
Last week, the committee said in a court filing that it had evidence that Trump and his allies had engaged in a "criminal conspiracy" by trying to block Congress from certifying the election. It was the first time the committee has laid out a potential criminal case against Trump.
— Bob Costa and Ellis Kim and contributed to this report.