Once former President Donald Trump’s formal mouthpiece for 2020 election misinformation, former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has since cooperated with the Jan. 6 probe, turning over text messages to investigators more than two months after her initial subpoena.
Some of those text messages have been public for weeks. Back on Jan. 20, when the committee first issued a request the voluntary compliance of Ivanka Trump (the former president’s daughter and onetime adviser has avoided a formal subpoena for now), McEnany’s messages with Fox News host Sean Hannity were uncovered.
Hannity and McEnany discussed, at least in part, a strategy to handle an unhinged Trump after the insurrection. The commentator told the White House press secretary in one exchange there could be “no more stolen election talk” after the deadly attack.
Hannity then followed that point up with another: “Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real and many people will quit,” Hannity wrote.
“Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce,” McEnany replied.
On Tuesday, ABC News reported that sources familiar with the Jan. 6 probe confirmed those text messages were merely part of McEnany’s larger production of records for investigators.
The committee has been on a hot streak of late, securing one win for transparency after another. The Supreme Court recently shot down Trump’s bid to hide over 700 pages of presidential records related to the attack and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
And in federal court, John Eastman, a key Trump world figure and author of legal memos laying out a strategy for former Vice President Mike Pence to keep Trump in power, has been striking out with his attempt to keep records away from scrutiny.
A judge recently ordered Eastman to produce emails from his time at Chapman University to Jan. 6 investigators. Prosecutors claim he is attempting to slow-walk that production, but as of Monday, a judge ordered Eastman to narrow his review of some 19,000 relevant emails to just those records sent between Jan. 4, 2021 through Jan. 7, 2021. That doesn’t take all other records off the table, but it will help expedite the investigation.
As for McEnany, who sat for deposition earlier this month, it is also now likely that the panel has received pages from a binder she kept as press secretary.
In its presidential records requests, the committee noted to the National Archives and Records Administration last fall that there were several pages from McEnany’s binder related to the Trump campaign’s allegations of voter fraud.
The committee informed McEnany in its original subpoena that it was also interested in public statements and remarks she made spreading misinformation about the 2020 election results.
Kayleigh McEnany Subpoena N... by Daily Kos
McEnany was also with Trump when he traveled to the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and delivered his speech inciting the attack. There have been reports that she also “popped in and out” to join Trump as he idly watched the assault from his perch in the White House.