The U.S. House committee that's investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot has issued a subpoena to former Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox, The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol said Cox was one of six people receiving new subpoenas. The committee felt that the individuals had knowledge of efforts to submit false certificates saying then-President Donald Trump won battleground states.
FridayMusings is sharing a response from Livonia resident Cox as posted on her Facebook page:
On October 18, 2021, Dan George, Senior Investigative Counsel for the so-called “January 6th Committee” called my cell phone. He asked to talk about January 6th. I told Mr. George that I would talk to him because (a) I had nothing to hide and (b) I realized he had a job to do. Later that day he sent me an email thanking me for agreeing to meet with him three days later on October 21st. Not only did I agree to meet with him and his colleagues on short notice, but I agreed to do so without an attorney. My husband, a lawyer, said I was foolish to meet with them without a lawyer. But I did so because I spent 13 years as a cop and still, naively, believe that if you have nothing to hide, what’s the harm in talking to a congressional investigator?
On October 21st, Mr. George and two colleagues arrived in Livonia for our interview. Because they were taking notes, I asked if they objected to me taping our conversation with my iPhone. I thought, what investigator could object to that. But they did. They then left the office.
Two months later, my telephone provider informed me the January 6th committee had subpoenaed my personal cell phone (not a governmental or Republican Party phone) records. Because I used that phone to text family and friends, which sometimes involve intimate conversations, I retained an attorney solely to ask if my phone records could be screened for family calls, which is a common in both criminal and civil litigation. My lawyer told the Committee I was willing to talk whenever requested, but asked they reach out to him first.
So today, despite my cooperation, by Twitter, and without reaching out to my attorney, the January 6th Committee, publicly announced it was issuing a subpoena and wanted to depose me. Not surprisingly, the US Attorneys I worked with as a federal agent never did public announcements like these. If the Committee is truly interested in the facts, does it need to do press releases where the witnesses are cooperative? Real investigations don’t operate that way.
What does the Committee want to know from me? It’s letter states “you reportedly were a witness when Rudy Giuliani pressured state lawmakers to disregard election results in Michigan”. Here is what happened: First, I hosted a public Zoom and Facebook Live video presentation with Mr. Giuliani for over 1,000 persons including multiple members of the press. Nothing was hidden and all was public. Second, after that videotaped presentation, Mr. Giuliani gave a live streamed and live televised presentation to the Michigan Legislature. In fact, three days later, NBC’s Saturday Night Live did a viciously funny skit about that presentation. So the January 6th needs to do a public pronouncement about something that is already in the public realm? That reeks of partisanship and PR stunts.
Let me be clear: when I was Chair of the Michigan Republican Party, it was my job to be partisan and my job to use my voice to advocate for the reelection of President Trump. Is that a surprise to anyone? And so in the weeks after the 2020 election I repeatedly asked for an examination of irregular election procedures because questions needed to be asked. In Michigan, election irregularities are not unusual.
Just three years before the 2020 presidential election, Michigan’s current Democratic Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist alleged numerous election irregularities in his own hometown of Detroit when he lost an election for City Clerk. Here is just one article about Lieutenant Governor Gilchrist’s seeking a recount of all of the Detroit electors just three years before the 2020 presidential election.
https://www.bridgemi.com/.../garlin-gilchrist-seek.... This is from that article: “Detroit made national headlines during last year’s statewide [2016] presidential recount when much of the city could not be recounted because the vote tallies did not equal the number of people who voted.” Sound familiar?
In 2002, when my husband ran for Attorney General, the City of Detroit lost absentee ballot boxes containing over 6,000 votes for over a week after the election. My husband beat now United States Senator Gary Peters by just 5,200 votes before Peters conceded. It could have mattered.
So my requests for investigations of voting procedures in 2020 were based both on personal experience and the experience of Democrats like Lieutenant Governor Gilchrist. I did not need President Trump or the Trump campaign to push me to question ballot irregularities in Michigan. I wonder if the January 6th Committee is also going to subpoena Lt. Gov Gilchrist about questioning election irregularities in Detroit? Or does the First Amendment only protect his questioning, but not mine?
My guy lost. President Biden won. But that does not make raising questions about irregularities a crime. The January 6th Committee knows I don’t know anything about what happened on January 6th. Like most Americans, I was shocked as I watched at home. This PR subpoena is about intimidation of free speech, not about investigating crimes.
