Outgoing Counselor to US President Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, addresses the Republican National Convention in a pre-recorded speech at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, on August 26, 2020.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
Former top Trump White House aide Kellyanne Conway was questioned for hours Monday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, NBC News reported.
Conway, who departed a Capitol Hill office building after 3 p.m. ET, spent nearly five hours behind closed doors speaking with the investigators.
After the deposition, Conway told reporters that she did not plead her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to any of the questions.
Conway, an instrumental part of former President Donald Trump’s successful 2016 campaign and one of his closest advisors in office, also said she is not working on Trump’s 2024 White House bid, NBC reported.
“I’m here voluntarily,” Conway told reporters earlier in the day, when she emerged from the deposition room for a brief break, NBC reported.
An ABC News reporter on Monday morning had spotted Conway entering a conference room used by the select committee. The former White House senior advisor did not respond to questions at that time.
She was accompanied by attorney Emmet Flood, who is reportedly also representing former Vice President Mike Pence and other people involved in Trump-related legal matters.
Flood did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. A spokesman for the Jan. 6 committee did not respond to an inquiry about Conway’s appearance.
Conway left the Trump White House in August 2020, before the November presidential election and Trump’s subsequent efforts to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden. Those efforts came to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, forcing lawmakers to flee their chambers and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power to Biden.
During the break in Monday’s deposition, Conway told reporters that Trump had called her last week.
Conway’s deposition comes as the select committee is expected to be wrapping up its investigation of the riot and compiling a final report on its findings from the year-and-a-half-long probe.
The nine-member panel, led by Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., says it has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and reviewed more than 1 million documents in that time. The committee also held a series of nine public hearings that featured emotional witness testimony, graphic footage of the riot and shocking allegations, many of which were aimed at Trump’s actions and inaction during the insurrection.
The committee subpoenaed Trump for documents and testimony, but the former president filed a lawsuit to avoid cooperating with the panel.
The select committee is set to expire at the end of the current Congress. Republicans, who are set to take over the House from Democrats on Jan. 3 of next year, are expected to disband the committee.