Republican desperately tries to downplay his involvement in Jan. 6: 'Time is not important'
Newly elected congressman, Max Miller, desperately tried to minimize his involvement in helping organize Jan. 6 when speaking to the House Select Committee investigating the attack on Congress.
Miller, who previously worked for Donald Trump as the advance director, despite his criminal rap sheet, decided to run for Congress in 2022. Miller recently sued former chief of staff to the first lady, Stephanie Grisham, for her allegations of his abuse in her book. He lost the suit.
Miller's testimony released Tuesday evening by the House Select Committee revealed an awkward moment where he seemed confused about the timeline on Jan. 6, Politico's Kyle Cheney highlighted.
At first, Miller attacked campaign press secretary Katrina Pierson, who worked for Trump in 2016.
Pierson listed recommendations for keeping the Ellipse portion of the event intimate and official to control the narrative." Her second recommendation is to limit 2016 surrogates and in parentheses, it reads "vetted and on your team not their own." She also suggested eliminating convicted felons "that could damage the other speakers."
When Miller was asked about the recommendations he said he'd never talked about them. "If she's saying — I'm sorry; if she's saying this, this did not happen, and the answer is no. And this is frightening if — I'll shut up, but the answer is no." He was then asked about Pierson's agenda suggesting to "keep the fringe on the fringe."
He said he didn't remember that either. "I think this is a woman who got one meeting with the president and got very over-excited and exaggerated a lot. in my opinion, from what I understand from that meeting. I'm sorry."
Miller went on to say that the former president had very high expectations for the crowd size attending the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6. Trump has long been obsessed with the size of his crowd, with his campaign frequently posting photos of events to strategically display a rally crowd. The notorious example was the first day of the Trump presidency in which then-press secretary Sean Spicer said that the inaugural crowd was the largest in history because people watched it online.
Trump thought a million people were going to be at the White House on Jan. 6. The D.C. Metro Police Department estimated 10,000 and 30,000 people attended the rally at the Ellipse. The rally's organizers told the Park Police they anticipated about 30,000 or less.
Pierson tried to limit expectations for Trump, which Miller confirmed.
He then tried to downplay his role, and requested that they bring up his call log to jog his memory.
"So, I wanted you to bring that up to show you, look, no one called me, right, when things were going wrong — or whatever happened on that day," said Miller. "I'm trying to put this into perspective for you all, that if I was actually a power player for this event itself, Mark Meadows would have been calling me. Tony Ornato would have been calling me. Dan Scavino would have been calling me. I mean, I just wanted to bring that up, just to share with everyone who's listening and on the committee, it's — I mean, you have to understand, if I was truly integral into this whole event, you better believe that I would have been getting a million fricking phone calls, and my butt would have been at the White House in .2 seconds."
The committee had to correct him that the call log times at 10 am and 6 pm were Greenwich Mean Time. In fact, Miller got many many calls throughout the course of the event.
"Forget the time. Time is not important. I just, you know, whatever," Miller explained.
See the full transcript highlighted by Politico's Kyle Cheney here.
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