The January 6 Committee “fraudulently portrayed an innocent DOJ attorney as complicit in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, and did so with malice,” The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland concludes after reviewing evidence debunking the January 6 Committee’s false narrative about former Department of Justice lawyer Ken Klukowski at last Thursday’s public hearing.
Klukowski, who is Breitbart News’ senior legal analyst, issued a statement on Saturday calling on the January 6 Committee to release the full transcript of his sworn deposition which debunks the Committee’s false portrayal of him as “a go-between in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.”
Klukowski calls the Committee’s accusation “both false both in its broad outlines and its details.”
“Since the Committee first contacted me, I have cooperated without hesitation, provided it with hundreds of documents, and sat for many hours of recorded depositions,” he writes. “The information produced from those efforts fully contradicts the Committee’s statements regarding my actions, yet the Committee has chosen to keep such information to itself rather than share it with the public.”
Klukowski’s statement then debunks the Committee’s narrative that he was “sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to act as a link between Jeff Clark and John Eastman on election matters, or to otherwise seek to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”
He also refutes the Committee’s suggestion that he agreed with John Eastman’s controversial theory that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to unilaterally reject electors on January 6, as well as the Committee’s false impression that he had a significant role in crafting a letter dictated and outlined by his boss Jeff Clark.
The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland interviewed Klukowski about his statement and was able to corroborate his assertions after reviewing the public record and speaking with Andrew Kloster, the White House official responsible for coordinating Klukowski’s transfer to the DOJ’s Civil Division, which, as Klukowski told the Committee, was in the works “long before Jeff Clark was the acting head of that Division.”
Cleveland writes:
“Ken’s transfer had nothing to do with the election,” Kloster confirmed, telling The Federalist his discussions with Klukowski occurred months earlier.
Kloster then took aim at the House committee: “The January 6th investigation is all about attacking mid-level and senior staff like Ken, to ensure that we don’t have a farm team in 2024, no matter who the president is. This isn’t about truth, but about making it impossible for conservatives to successfully enter and leave government.”
Not only did Kloster confirm Klukowski’s account, as did the various documents accessible to the Jan. 6 Committee concerning the timing and purpose of the transfer, the public record confirms Klukowski sought litigation experience in the civil division. Specifically, in the brief 36 days that Klukowski served in the civil division—a fact Cheney presented as suspicious—Klukowski argued and won two federal appeals (completely unrelated to election issues) in the Ninth Circuit, including a complex and important case involving abstention.
Cleveland contacted Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY)’s office to ask whether the January 6 Committee planned to release the full transcript of Klukowski’s testimony and if not, why not. She also inquired whether Cheney “disputed any aspect of Klukowski’s statement, which when compared to the Jan. 6 Committee’s Thursday proceedings leaves but one conclusion: The committee fraudulently portrayed an innocent DOJ attorney as complicit in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, and did so with malice.”
She received no response from Cheney’s office.
Cleveland notes that the Committee’s “atrocious slurs” against Klukowski are particularly egregious because “the immunity provided by the Speech and Debate Clause prevents Klukowski from obtaining any sort of recompense from those who slandered him.”
For his part, Klukowski told The Federalist, “I was concerned the committee might make cynical assumptions during its investigation of January 6, but I was stunned that the committee would make claims about me for which it had a mountain of evidence establishing, for certain, those statements were false.”
Read Cleveland’s full report at The Federalist here.
Rebecca Mansour is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.