EXCEPTIONAL: Representative Benny Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the committee since January 6, said on Wednesday that the hearing schedule would continue in July.
Reason: New evidence, including footage from British director Alex Holder, who is due to speak to committee on Thursday. According to Politico, Thompson called the footage he saw “important” but declined to give details.
Deadline may reveal that the three-part series – Unprecedented – was bought by Discovery +. We understand that former BBC CEO Greg Sanderson, who was previously the executive producer of the documentary on British public television Storyville, has worked with Holder on the project.
Holder said in a statement this week that the footage came from the last six weeks of President Trump’s re-election campaign, as well as unprecedented footage from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The series includes interviews with Trump, his daughter Ivanka, sons Eric and Don Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Vice President Mike Pence. Holder said he and his team “fully cooperate” with the summons.
UPDATE: Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed the story and a spokeswoman said: “Alex Holder’s unprecedented three-part documentary on the 2020 election will be released on Discovery + later this summer. With unprecedented footage of the Trump family during the election campaign and their reactions to the election results, the documentaries will offer intimate and unprecedented interviews with Trump, his family and others who have been to the White House.
It was not clear before which streaming service bought the rights to it.
What is certainly a bit of a puzzle, however, is just what is in the documentary and how Holder gained access to Trump and his inner circle.
Some members of Trump’s campaign did not know the project existed at all, and they were surprised when it came into existence. But this is the kind of new twist that potentially gives the committee more weight as they put forward their case against Trump, as their hearings have had the biggest impact so far with the release of audio and video clips.
Some are well known: The New York Times reported on Tuesday that in an interview, Ivanka Trump appeared to support her father’s prosecution of false allegations of election fraud, saying “he must take on this battle.” The Times also reported that the director gained access to the Trump family through Jason Greenblatt, who was then a White House envoy to the Middle East. Robert Costa of CBS News reported that Holder had 11 hours of footage of interviews with the Trump family from September 2020 to January 2021. At CBS Evening News on Wednesday, Costa also featured photos of Holder interviewing Trump and Ivanka Trump.
Holder suggested that one of the reasons so little attention was paid to the project was that due to the sale of the staff, he “did not have the legal authority to release the material or discuss the project publicly.”
Representative Jamie Ruskin (D-MD), a member of the committee, said he found out about the footage when “a person who was familiar with the information contacted me, wrote me a letter and at least that was the way I came to be. on the trail. There may have been other contacts. ” He declined to say whether the director had contacted him.
Holder is perhaps best known as the producer of the documentary Keep Quiet about the leader of the far-right Conservative Party in Hungary, who, after expressing anti-Semitic beliefs, discovers that he is of Jewish heritage. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.
His lawyer did not comment on the decision to co-operate with the commission’s summons. Although there have been previous lawsuits over directors of documentaries transmitting excerpts and other footage from courts and other government bodies, the Committee on January 6th secured the cooperation not only of Holder but also of Nick Questid, who witnessed the first hearing on his project. for the far-right band The Proud Boys.
In December the Committee of Reporters on Freedom of the Press and 55 media organizations called on the commission on January 6 to withdraw a summons for freelance photojournalist phone recordings, arguing that such recordings are protected by the First Amendment.
But Katie Townsend, legal director of the Committee of Reporters, said the situation with these documentary filmmakers was different because they chose to comply.
“It is possible that they decided it was wise to do something, or they took ethical considerations to comply,” she said, noting that the footage was “the only event in American history.”
She added that their co-operation should not set a precedent for future cases.
“Not only does it not set a precedent for other directors, but I don’t think it necessarily sets a precedent for these individual directors,” she said.
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