A senior Wisconsin GOP official who said he was called by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 state election results is scheduled to testify Wednesday with the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riots, they told NBC News two people familiar with the matter.
Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin state Assembly, was subpoenaed by the committee earlier this year after he publicly revealed that Trump called him 20 months after the election to demand that he throw out the results. President Joe Biden won battleground status by some 20,000 votes.
Trump’s call came after the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling restricting the use of absentee ballot boxes in future elections. Trump tried to convince Vos that the ruling should apply retroactively, which Vos informed him was not possible.
The speaker’s refusal to try to dismiss the election results led Trump to campaign against his re-election. Vos, who is the longest-serving speaker in Wisconsin history, ultimately prevailed in his primary, but by just 3 percentage points, the smallest margin in his political career. He recently was re-elected as speaker.
Vos was previously criticized by Wisconsin Democrats for allocating nearly $700,000 to investigate the results of the 2020 state election. The investigation turned up no evidence of widespread fraud, and the speaker later said the election was not stolen.
A spokesperson for the January 6 committee declined to comment on Vos’s scheduled appearance. NBC News has reached out to Vos for comment.
Vos’s interview comes on the heels of a federal judge rejecting Trump’s argument that he has «absolute immunity» in response to a lawsuit alleging he committed civil rights violations in his attempts to challenge the results of the presidential election. of 2020.
The House committee has conducted a series of interviews with former Trump officials in recent weeks.
Kellyanne Conway, who served as Trump’s senior adviser from the start of his term until August 2020, met with the panel for nearly five hours Monday.
On Tuesday, former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato would appear for an interview before the committee, a person familiar with the panel’s plans told NBC News.
The committee is expected to publish a final report detailing the findings of its investigation soon. The panel is not expected to continue beyond January, when Republicans take control of the House.