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Sarah Matthews testified that White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany shunned Trump after the election.
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Matthews said Trump pressured McEnany to talk about conspiracy theories involving Dominion.
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McEnany was concerned about violating the Hatch Act from the White House podium, Matthews said.
After the 2020 presidential election, the White House press secretary tried to evade then-President Donald Trump for trying to convince her to discuss election fraud claims from the White House podium, according to testimony provided to the committee on Jan. 6 by a former aide to Trump.
The aide, Sarah Matthews, served as White House deputy press secretary at the time of the 2020 election. The House committee investigating the Capitol riot has released a new transcript of her testimony, in which Matthews describes how the press secretary of the White House, Kayleigh McEnany, led the president in the weeks following the election.
“I know that after the election she actively tried to avoid the president,” Matthews said of McEnany, according to the transcript, adding that Trump “wanted her to give briefings about the campaign from the podium, and wanted her to talk about the campaign.” would talk.” Dominion.”
Dominion Voting Systems, which provides election technology, has been at the center of electoral fraud conspiracy theories pushed by Trump and his allies. Dominion has since filed defamation lawsuits against several Trump allies, including Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell and Sidney Powell, as well as Fox News.
But McEnany, instead of addressing the claims about Dominion in an official White House briefing, “tried to limit her interactions with Trump,” according to Matthews.
Matthews testified that McEnany confided in her that she was avoiding the president precisely because he made those requests. She also said that McEnany was not comfortable addressing the Dominion claims because it would be a “flagrant violation of the Hatch Act to do so from the White House podium.” The Hatch Act prohibits executive branch employees from participating in political activity in their official capacity.
Matthews added that McEnany continued to conduct media interviews about the allegations of voter fraud, feeling she could “bridge the gap between her government position and doing things in a personal capacity”. At the time, McEnany was both White House press secretary and Trump campaign spokesman.
During an appearance on Fox News at the time, host Neil Cavuto interrupted an interview with McEnany as she raised baseless allegations of voter fraud. In another Fox News interview after the election was called for Biden, McEnany said Trump would attend his “own” inauguration.
The transcript of Matthews’ testimony was released by the committee on Thursday, Jan. 6, along with the testimony of Chris Krebs, Mark Esper and others.
Read the original article on Business Insider
