Jan. 6 panel in possession of new Trump documentary footage

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This article was published 20/06/2022 (920 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON (AP) — New footage of former President Donald Trump and his inner circle taken both before and after Jan. 6, 2021, is now in the possession of the House committee investigating the deadly attack on the Capitol.

The revelation of the never-before-seen footage came to light Tuesday amidst the committee’s public hearings when British filmmaker Alex Holder revealed he had complied with a congressional subpoena to turn over all of the footage he shot in the final weeks of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

“When we began this project in September 2020, we could have never predicted that our work would one day be subpoenaed by Congress,” Holder wrote in a statement on Twitter.

The filmmaker said the footage includes exclusive interviews with Trump, his children and then-Vice President Mike Pence while on the campaign trail as well as before and after the insurrection on the Capitol.

The first senior leaders of the Trump campaign heard about the documentary was Tuesday morning when the project was first reported by Politico, according to two former officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s reaction.

The series, which has been titled “Unprecedented,” had been purchased by a streaming service and was scheduled to be released in three parts this summer, Holder wrote.

The news of the footage also came as members of the committee held its fourth public hearing, this time focused on how Trump’s relentless pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election led to widespread threats against local election workers and state officials.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., one of the members of the panel, told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he had been contacted personally by a person who had knowledge of the footage and that is when the committee decided to issue its subpoena.

“I’ve not seen it yet but I know it exists,” Raskin said.

The footage is the second time the committee will be leaning on documentary footage from that day to gather evidence for its sprawling, nearly year-long investigation. The first public hearing in early June featured testimony from Nick Quested, another British filmmaker, who was embedded with the Proud Boys in the weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election.

The statement from Holder also stated that he will be going before the committee to provide testimony on Thursday.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.