Jan. 6 panel refers Rep. Andy Biggs to House Ethics Committee over subpoena

Rep. Andy Biggs was among four Republican members of Congress referred Monday to the House Ethics Committee for failing to comply with a subpoena from the panel that investigated the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The move means that Biggs, R-Ariz., could face investigation by the bipartisan ethics committee and comes as he has thrown into disarray the battle for the House speakership with another member referred to the ethics committee, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Biggs was characteristically defiant in a statement released late Monday after the final scheduled public meeting of the Democrat-led, bipartisan select committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. The panel also made a historic criminal referral to the U.S. Justice Department of potential crimes involving former President Donald Trump stemming from the insurrection.

“An eleventh-hour referral to the House Ethics Committee proves the sham J6 committee never truly needed our testimony,” Biggs said.

“They only wanted the testimony to have the ability to edit and misconstrue our statements to further their own false narratives, as they did with so many other witnesses.

“This referral is their final political stunt. It's inappropriate to use the House Ethics Committee — a committee with more pressing matters to attend to — to help reach the J6 Committee’s pre-determined conclusions.

“The J6 Committee has defamed my name and my character, and I look forward to reviewing their documents, publishing their lies, and setting the record straight in the 118th Congress.”

The committee released a 154-page introduction to its final report that implicates Biggs as a significant player in Trump’s plans to thwart the 2020 election results.

That report suggests Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., also should have to account for his presence at a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House.

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The committee noted at length how Trump helped direct fake electors in key states, including Arizona, to help create a legal pretext to setting aside certified results being tallied in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

The committee’s report acknowledged there is legal uncertainty involving the intent of those participating in that scheme that needs further investigation.

Biggs’ role in helping push Trump’s efforts to stay in office received the most attention among Arizona participants.

“Representative Biggs was involved in numerous elements of President Trump’s efforts to contest the election results,” the introduction said. “As early as November 6, 2020, Representative Biggs texted (White House Chief of Staff) Mark Meadows, urging him to ‘encourage the state legislatures to appoint [electors].’

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“In the following days, Representative Biggs told Meadows not to let President Trump concede his loss. Between then and January 6th, Representative Biggs coordinated with Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem to gather signatures from Arizona lawmakers endorsing fake Trump electors. He also contacted fake Trump electors in at least one State seeking evidence related to voter fraud.”

The committee recommends that everyone who attended the Dec. 21, 2020, planning meeting with Trump at the White House “should be questioned in a public forum about their advance knowledge of and role in President Trump’s plan to prevent the peaceful transition of power.”

A footnote in the report identifies those attendees as including Biggs and Gosar.

The report also references the testimony that Biggs sought presidential pardons, though it falls well short of clearly establishing that.

Report:Pardons were sought for Arizona's GOP U.S. House members, with Biggs seeking his directly

In her bombshell testimony, Cassidy Hutchinson, a special assistant to the president, identified Biggs as among those who sought a pardon. The report issued Monday notes several examples of information that corroborated her account.

But it couldn’t rule out whether it was Biggs or Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who had sought a pardon. The report said White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee, “It’s possible that Representative Brooks or Biggs, but I don’t remember.”

In June, Biggs emphatically denied seeking a pardon.

“The unAmerican January 6 Committee continues to pursue me with the false allegation that I sought a presidential pardon,” Biggs said. “To the extent Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House staffer, believes I requested a presidential pardon, she is mistaken.

“Like the many selective leaks from this illegally formed Committee, today’s video testimony from Ms. Hutchinson was deceptively edited to make it appear as if I personally asked her for a presidential pardon."

Hutchinson's recollection has already proven mistaken on at least one matter involving an Arizona member. She said she believed that Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., also attended the Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House. Lesko has maintained she did not and her name doesn't appear in logs tracking visitors to the White House.

The committee report mentioned Lesko for having promoted “unfounded objections to election results” and for recognizing the looming danger in comments to her Republican colleagues the day before the riot.

“I also ask leadership to come up with a safety plan for Members [of Congress],” Lesko said in comments that were first reported by the New York Times. “We also have, quite honestly, Trump supporters who actually believe that we are going to overturn the election, and when that doesn’t happen — most likely will not happen — they are going to go nuts.”

In May, the select committee subpoenaed Biggs, along with McCarthy and Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. None complied with the request, which sought information relating to "meetings at the White House, those who had direct conversations with President Trump leading up to and during the attack, and those who were involved in the planning and coordination of certain activities on and before Jan. 6," according to the committee.

Before issuing the subpoena, the panel asked Biggs in a letter that was shared publicly to meet with it about a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House that involved Meadows.

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The panel wants to discuss what Biggs knew about the "Stop the Steal" effort organized by Ali Alexander, who credited Biggs as instrumental in pulling it together.

The panel wants to know about Biggs' effort to persuade state lawmakers the election was stolen and enlist their help in preventing President Joe Biden's victory from being certified.

The committee has said Biggs was identified as among a group of Republicans seeking pardons after the attack by the pro-Trump mob and wants to know why such pardons were sought.

The committee noted that Biggs participated in an effort determined by a federal judge that more likely than not involved a criminal effort by Trump to obstruct Congress from certifying Biden's victory.

If the "plan had worked," the judge wrote and the committee noted "it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution."

At the time of the subpoena, Biggs described the committee's efforts as political and intended to hurt Republicans.

"Today’s actions by the illegitimate January 6 Committee are pure political theater,” he said in May. “The subpoenas and news of their issuance were leaked to the media before the impacted Members.

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“The January 6 Committee’s ongoing, baseless witch hunt is nothing more than an effort to distract the American people from the Democrats’ and (President Joe) Biden’s disastrous leadership. The border is in crisis, inflation is skyrocketing, crime is rampant, and Democrats are focused on fabricating their own facts to take down Republican leaders.”

Apart from the referral to the Ethics Committee, Biggs has not backed down on an insurgent challenge to McCarthy, who is running for House speaker in the incoming GOP-controlled House.

Republicans won a narrow majority of the House in the November elections and they have long made plain they had little interest in continuing the investigation of the riot. The ethics referral comes in the last weeks of the current Congress under Democratic control.

Biggs has already faced fruitless calls for an ethics or criminal investigation from some groups over his involvement in the efforts to block the certification of Biden's victory.

One group sought to disqualify him from running for Congress using a provision of the 14th Amendment to block those who participated in an insurrection. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge dismissed the matter, saying that was for Congress to do, not the public.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rep. Andy Biggs referred to House Ethics Committee over subpoena