1

4 SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE

5 JANUARY 6TH ATTACK ON THE U.S. CAPITOL,

6 U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

7 WASHINGTON, D.C.

10

11 INTERVIEW OF: MATTHEW FORBES POTTINGER

12

13

14

15 Thursday, April 7, 2022

16

17 Washington, D.C.

18

19

20 The interview in the above matter was held via Webex, commencing at 10:01 a.m.

21 Present: Representatives Murphy and Cheney.

 2

2 Appearances:

5 For the SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE

6 THE JANUARY 6TH ATTACK ON THE U.S. CAPITOL:

8 , SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL

9 SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL

10 INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL

11 , CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL

12 INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL

13 PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBER

14 CHIEF CLERK

15

16

17 For MATTHEW POTTINGER:

18

19 JOHN BELLINGER, Ill

 3

2 All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is -

3 I'm a senior investigative counsel here on the House Select Committee to

4 Investigate the Attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Joining me in the room i s -

5 . , a senior investigative counsel, as well as , professional staff member.

6 Joining via WebEx is _ r , investigative counsel, and Representative Liz Cheney.

7 Ms. Cheney. I just want to say --

8 Go ahead.

9 Ms. Cheney. I -- that's fine. I just wanted to say good morning both to

10 Matt and to John. Nice to see you both.

11 Mr. Pottinger. Hi, Congresswoman. It's Matt. Yeah, thanks -- thank you.

12 Ms. Cheney. Hi, Matt.

13 And I'll be -- we're on our way to votes, but I'll be in a place more -- more sturdy

14 and stable in just a few minutes, so --

15 Mr. Pottinger. Great.

16 Ms. Cheney. It's great to be with you. Thank you.

17 Mr. Bellinger. Hi. It's John.

18 Ms. Cheney. Hi, John.

19 Mr. Bellinger. Nice to hear your voice.

20 Ms. Cheney. Thank you. Yours, too.

21 Mr. Bellinger. And I -- John -- well, why don't we finish the introductions. I just

22 have one question for you about how we will know when others join us. I guess you will

23 let us know, or we'll watch the participant list.

24 Yeah, I do -- I try my best to make the record. lets

25 them in virtually, so usually it happens in realtime.

 4

1 Mr. Bellinger. Great.

2 So also, we appreciate you appearing voluntarily today. I'll

3 just go through the -- kind of the formal intro, but could you, Mr. Pottinger, state your

4 name and -- for the record.

5 Mr. Pottinger. Sure. It's Matt Pottinger. Matthew Forbes Pottinger in the

6 long form. And I'm coming to you from my home in Utah today.

7 Great, and Mr. Bellinger.

8 Mr. Bellinger. John Bellinger of Arnold & Porter, counsel for Mr. Pottinger, and

9 I'm in Arlington, Virginia today.

10 Great. Is anyone else joining from your side, Mr. Bellinger.

11 Mr. Bellinger. No, that's all.

12 Great.

13 We are conducting this interview on WebEx, and I want to make sure we go

14 through certain housekeeping items before we start. One is that we did provide you, I

15 think, seven exhibits in total. I want to make sure, Mr. Pottinger, you have a copy of

16 those in front of you as we go through them, or we can have them appear on the video

17 screen.

18 Do you have --

19 Mr. Pottinger. Yeah, I did glance through them, and I have hard copies of some

20 of those right now --

21 Okay.

22 Mr. Pottinger. -- before my printer failed, but if I need to see them and don't

23 have it in front of me, I'll ask you to put it up on screen.

24 Perfect. There's a court reporter. is joining us,

25 and will create a verbatim record of what we discuss. With that in mind, it's important
 5

1 that you answer questions verbally. The court reporter cannot properly record

2 nonverbal responses.

3 Although this interview is not under oath, you are required to answer questions

4 before Congress truthfully. The requirement applies to questions posed by

5 congressional staff in an interview, and specifically, 18 USC Section 1001 does apply

6 during this interview, which makes it a crime to make any materially false statements

7 during a congressional investigation. Do you understand that, Mr. Pottinger?

8 Mr. Pottinger. I do. Thank you.

9 We want to make sure you answer all of our questions in the

10 most complete and truthful manner possible. If you need to take a minute to consult

11 with counsel or take a minute for any reason, please be happy -- we're happy to allow

12 you to do that. And if you don't understand any question that myself or - o r

13 any member may pose to you, please feel free to ask us to clarify.

14 Mr. Pottinger. Thank you.

15 Anything else before we begin.

16 Okay. Great. Perfect.

17 And, Mr. Bellinger, are you on mute or not on -- you can unmute yourself, right?

18 mean, sorry. Mr. Bellinger? Sometimes --

19 Mr. Bellinger. I can unmute myself, so I will probably generally stay on mute,

20 unless --

22 Mr. Bellinger. -- I have to interject, which I don't generally expect to.

23 ~ Great.

24 EXAMINATION BY COUNSEL FOR THE COMMITTEE

25 BY
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1 Q Okay. Mr. Pottinger, I know you went to college in Massachusetts. I want

2 to start there. Did you grow up in Massachusetts?

3 A I did. I moved around the country quite a bit. My stepfather was an Air

4 Force officer and an engineer. So when he finished active duty, we moved to a number

5 of places, finally settling in Massachusetts, where I went to junior high school and high

6 school and college.

7 Q Great. If you could just kind of walk through your career up until the point

8 of when you joined the NSC, that would be helpful for us just by way of background?

9 And also, I think our chief investigative counsel, has joined as well via

10 WebEx, so --

11 A Great, great. Yeah, so, you know, in brief, I studied East Asian languages in

12 college -- Japanese and Chinese -- and ended up majoring in a languages and literature

13 and history -- East Asian languages, literature, and history, and became a journalist after I

14 graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

15 I worked in Washington, D.C., for about a year before studying in Taiwan to

16 improve my Mandarin. And then worked for the Reuters News Agency in the late '90s

17 based in Beijing. And then spent another five years covering China for the Wall Street

18 Journal.

19 I -- so I lived -- lived in China over the course -- you know, the better part of a

20 decade all-told. And then decided, in my early 30s, in 2005, that I wanted to serve as a

21 U.S. Marine. So I obtained an age waiver, and -- and went into officer candidate school,

22 spent the next five years on active duty based in Japan, and making combat deployments

23 to Iraq and to Afghanistan -- three deployments -- serving as an intelligence officer in

24 direct support of infantry battalions and other units during my time in.

25 Q Can I just interrupt one second? What -- what prompted you to want to
 7

1 join the military in your early 30s?

2 A Yeah, if it wasn't temporary insanity, it was simply an opportunity to serve at

3 a time when I thought the country was in crisis. The war in Iraq was going not -- not

4 according to what we'd expected. I certainly was influenced by having grown up in a

5 military family. As I mentioned, my stepfather was a West Point graduate and an Air

6 Force officer. And -- and so I decided that, you know, you serve at times when the

7 country needs you to serve, so I --

8 Q I'm wondering if your stepfather -- I'm wondering if your stepfather asked

9 you what took you so long?

10 A My family was mostly befuddled by the -- by my decision, but -- but he was

11 certainly proud and supportive and -- yep.

12 Q I know you received a number of military awards. I wonder if you could

13 just talk us through which, and what tour you received those awards from?

14 A Let me think. I -- for my first deployment to Anbar Province in Iraq, I was

15 awarded a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for helping track down a

16 high-value target -- a high-value individual -- a member of Al-Qaeda who had killed a

17 significant number of Iraqi civilians, and as well as Marines and Iraqi service personnel.

18 He was a suicide car bomb maker and logistician, and we tracked him down and killed

19 him. So I was awarded a medal for that deployment.

20 I was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for my service in my first deployment to

21 Afghanistan. That was for a range of actions that my Marines and I took in support

22 of -- also, in part, intelligence operations, tracking down IED-making cells and teams.

23 was awarded a defense -- another medal. I'm actually forgetting what the --

24 Q I think it's the Defense Meritorious Service Medal?

25 A Service Medal -- that's it. Thank you. And that was for my third
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1 deployment for actions that I took part in, to train up female engagement teams, which

2 was a new concept that we had implemented to help have female Marines support

3 infantry operations by giving them the ability to interact with Pashtun women, when it is

4 a -- is taboo for men -- male Marines and -- and male Afghan national security forces.

5 To interact with local women is considered taboo, so we trained up a -- really, a

6 female infantry together with female interpreters to interact. And that was very helpful

7 to our efforts to maintain reasonable relations with people in southern Afghanistan, and

8 also to collect intelligence, and to directly support infantry operations there.

9 And I had also written an investigative report -- sort of a self-report into why our

10 intelligence operations were inadequate, and why they were failing to help us win the

11 war, which -- which I published with my coauthors.

12 Q From my notes, it looks like you were in the military for five years. That's

13 quite a lot of -- is that right?

14 A I served five years on active duty, and then another seven years as a Reserve

15 officer doing duty mostly at the Pentagon and a little bit at the Defence Intelligence

16 Agency, and up until my White House service, once I was serving the White House. With

17 a young son and another one on the way and a very demanding job, I was -- I ended up

18 leaving the Marine Corps, and I could no longer maintain the Reserve duty commitments,

19 given my other commitments.

20 Q And what year was that?

21 A Must have been 2017.

22 Q Okay?

23 A Or I think it was -- yeah, probably late -- late 2017.

24 Q At some point after your active duty ended, did you join a consulting firm?

25 A After my active duty, I moved to New York in 2010, and I started my own
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1 business, which -- and just a small company called China Six, LLC, which was an

2 investigative research firm. I would hire Chinese journalists, really, and investigators to

3 help American clients investigate Chinese companies to see whether they were legitimate

4 or fraudulent. And so our clients were American corporations and financial firms.

5 Q And right prior to joining the NSC in 2017, what was -- where were you

6 working?

7 A Yeah, so I ran my own firm for three or four years, and then was hired by

8 one of my clients to come in-house and to work for them full time -- also doing analysis

9 and investigative research around the world. And that was a -- a financial firm that's

10 based -- headquartered in New York called Davidson Kempner Capital Management.

11 And I was there up until after the 2016 election, when I was asked to come

12 provide some advice to the transition team. And then was asked to join the NSC staff,

13 and I accepted that offer, and joined on day one of the Trump Administration in early

14 2017.

15 Q Great. And what -- who invited you to help with the transition team?

16 A Yeah, it was two people. One was Michael Flynn, who I had served with in

17 Afghanistan when he was the J2. He was a major general, basically the senior

18 intelligence officer for the -- our war in Afghanistan, and I worked for him and his

19 commander -- our commander, General Stanley McChrystal.

20 Mike Flynn called me after the 2016 election to seek my advice on matters related

21 to North Korea, as well as China, and Taiwan. And then his deputy, K.T. McFarland, who

22 is someone that I knew from New York. I'd known for several years. And she called

23 me and asked to me to come in. I wrote some policy papers for them, basically

24 recommending strategies for North Korea and for China, and for the Inda-Pacific region,

25 and K.T. and Keith Kellogg, who came onboard -- Keith was the one who actually gave me
 10

1 the call asking me to join the -- the NSC.

2 Q Great. And what was Keith Kellogg's position then?

3 A Keith -- Keith was -- had worked on the campaign. And then during the

4 transition, he was really leading in -- in sort of a Chief of Staff role. He ended up

5 becoming a NSC Chief of Staff at the -- at the outset of the administration, and later went

6 to work for Vice President Mike Pence as his national security -- his senior national

7 security advisor.

8 Q So, Mr. Pottinger, you're one of the few people who were with the National

9 Security Agency for the entire Trump Administration. So can we just start with what

10 your position started with, and then what it ended up with? And then maybe generally

11 just some -- your thoughts on what the role was of the National Security Council?

12 A Certainly, certainly. So on day one, I began as what was called a Special

13 Assistant to the President. It's a commissioned job. I was a commissioned officer to

14 the President, and my title was the senior director for Asia. So I had responsibility for

15 the whole region, most of Asia, not including central Asia or India, but everything east of

16 there, all the way really to Hawaii were the -- was the geographic region I was responsible

17 for coordinating policy.

18 So we ended up writing a new strategy -- a few strategies that were interlocking.

19 We wrote a national security strategy during 2017. I played a key role in that. We also

20 wrote what was called the Inda-Pacific Strategic Framework, which was a

21 classified -- since declassified -- but at the time, classified strategy governing the whole of

22 government approach to the broader Inda-Pacific region.

23 And then -- so that -- the coordinating policy across the various departments and agencies

24 was a primary role, helping write our new strategies, and also staffing the President of the

25 United States, as well as National Security Advisor and Vice President of the United States
 11

1 on their diplomacy and phone calls and visits with foreign leaders from the Asia-Pacific

2 region. So those were the primary roles that I played. I was in charge of a small staff

3 that grew over the course of my time there.

4 In late 2018, I was promoted to be a Deputy Assistant to the President, but still in the role

5 of senior director for Asia. The National Security Advisor at the time, H.R. McMaster

6 had promoted me to a slightly more senior level, which just involved more responsibility

7 for coordinating that policy.

8 And I remained in that role until September of 2019, when a new National Security

9 Advisor -- the fourth full-time National Security Advisor of the administration, Robert

10 O'Brien, Ambassador Robert O'Brien, was appointed to be National Security Advisor.

11 And he and the President appointed me to be Deputy National Security Advisor. So I

12 served in that role from mid, late-September 2019 until my resignation on the 6th of

13 January. And then my actual departure from the White House the next morning, the

14 7th of January, 2022.

15 Q Okay. Thank you for that. So just so I'm clear, it sounds like under

16 General Flynn, which was obviously a very short period when he was the National

17 Security Advisor, you started as the director over Asia, and that stayed through

18 Mr. McMaster and through Mr. Bolton, correct?

19 A Yes, that's correct.

20 Q And then Deputy Assistant to the President would be above that, and then

21 Deputy National Security Advisor is a step above that, correct?

22 A That's right. As deputy -- as Deputy National Security Advisor, my -- my

23 rank rose to the level of Assistant to the President, which is the highest rank for a staff

24 officer in the White House.

25 Q During that time, did you see any changes in priorities or -- based on the
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1 different leadership or any changes the former President himself made?

2 A Well, the -- every National Security Advisor has -- has different styles and

3 some different priorities. In the main, the strategy remained fairly consistent with the

4 national security strategy that was unveiled in December of 2017.

5 With respect to China and the Inda-Pacific region, we continued to follow the

6 Inda-Pacific Framework all the way through the end of the administration. It ended up

7 being declassified. Robert O'Brien and the President made a decision to declassify that

8 strategy at the end of the administration. And I think it's a -- it's an accurate reflection

9 of what our priorities were really for the entire administration.

10 Iran policy was developed over the course of 2017, 2018, and remained consistent

11 through the end.

12 So in the main, the national security strategy, and its priorities and objectives were fairly

13 consistent throughout, even though, as you mentioned, we had four National Security

14 Advisors.

15 Q Did you have any visibility into kind of the domestic policy house and the

16 threats that were happening internally in the country, or was your focus mostly on the

17 Inda-Pacific area?

18 A Yeah, I -- during -- particularly during my time as senior director for Asia

19 working in the Old Executive Office Building, the Eisenhower Building, my exposure to

20 domestic policy was mainly through -- you know, was sort of passive. You know, I would

21 learn things from reading the press. You know, in those jobs, the -- the amount of work

22 that you have focused on your area is a -- is significant, to put it mildly, and you end up

23 staying fairly focused on the things that you're --

24 Q Yeah, of course?

25 A -- you know, required to focus on to get the job done. So there was not a
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1 lot of dabbling in domestic policy. When my office moved to the West Wing, when I was

2 Deputy National Security Advisor, I still stayed heavily focused on running the NSC at that

3 point. As the Deputy National Security Advisor, my job -- I think it's consistent for most

4 Deputy National Security Advisors, but in this White House, in particular, there was a

5 pretty clear delineation of roles, where the National Security Advisor was focused on the

6 President and staffing the President. The deputy, myself, was heavily focused on the

7 policy process, running the Deputy Committee meetings, which became the

8 primary -- not the most senior, but the forum that was most heavily engaged in making

9 foreign policy and national security policy. And then also, you know, running a staff of

10 more than 200 people -- our -- all the staff of the National Security Council. I was very

11 much focused on operationally running that body.

12 BY-.

13 Q So during the Trump Administration, was Homeland Security under the NSC

14 or was that separate within the White House?

15 A So the -- when we would hold -- the National Security Council staff has the

16 unique role of coordinating all of the departments and agencies on matters of foreign

17 policy. So national security, that's outward-facing beyond our shores.

18 And in those roles, when I would convene Deputy Committee meetings, there was

19 the deputy head of the Department of Homeland Security in those meetings, yes. And

20 Department of Justice, State Department, CIA, really -- really, the full panoply of the

21 deputy cabinet officers were the people that I would convene to address matters of

22 foreign policy.

23 So when it came to questions of domestic policy, there were different fora and different

24 bodies for coordinating that. For example, immigration policy was something that we

25 spent very little time on in the National Security Council. But when it came to the things
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1 like COVID, or threats from state actors, preparing for foreign threats to our election

2 cycle, those were things that I was very much engaged in.

3 Q Was there a Homeland Security advisor within the White House?

4 A Yes, and it -- the position rotated a couple of times. It was Dr. Julia

5 Nesheiwat was the Homeland Security advisor when Robert and I were the National

6 Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor. And -- and she was -- did have

7 responsibility for helping coordinate things like resilience, and coordinating with the

8 Homeland Security Department, yes.

9 Q But she was not part of the NSC staff; is that right?

10 A No, she -- actually, we did consider her part of the NSC staff. We did. So

11 that -- yeah, we did.

12 BY

13 Q So I think what you described was that the National Security Advisor -- so

14 that would be Mr. O'Brien -- would be staff to the President, and then essentially you're

15 running the policy shop for the NSC; is that fair to say?

16 A I think so, mm-hmm.

17 Q And then how -- how are those decisions that come out -- the policy making

18 conveyed to the President, and what was his involvement in that process?

19 A Yeah, so the way that the process works is that significant decisions on

20 foreign policy would be discussed and deliberated by the Deputy's Committee that I

21 chaired. And then if there was consensus about the direction the policy should go, that

22 would be reflected in our -- our summary of conclusions, which is a written summary of

23 what was determined in the meeting. And sometimes there were differences of views

24 represented by different departments and agencies. Those differences of views would

25 also be reflected in a summary of conclusions.

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1 If the matter was something we felt there was something close to consensus on,

2 usually that was sufficient to make U.S. policy. If it was something where there was -- it

3 was more contentious or there were significant differences of opinion about what our

4 policy should be, we would provide a range of recommendations up to the Principals

5 Committee.

6 The Principals Committee is chaired by the National Security Advisor, and it involves

7 cabinet-level officers that he would convene to hear the range of options that had been

8 teed up by the Deputy's Committee. And then for them to deliberate on that, and try to

9 make a final decision.

10 In cases where a decision could not be made at the principals level, or where there was

11 a -- there was a good reason to believe that the President himself should weigh-in on the

12 issue, that would then be adjudicated in the Oval Office or in a formal National Security

13 Council meeting. A formal National Security Council meeting is one that the President

14 presides over, and where key members of his cabinet are there. The President usually

15 ends up making a decision in a National Security Council meeting.

16 So the majority of policy was usually adjudicated at the Deputy's level, or even below in

17 the some cases, at an Undersecretary or Assistant Secretary level.

18 Q So let me clarify one thing. The Deputy Committee meetings that you

19 chaired, is that just with NSC staff?

20 A No, I would chair a meeting that was attended by the deputy cabinet officers

21 of most of the cabinet departments and agencies.

22 Q Okay. So that was an interagency process as well as the Principals

23 Committee would be, I'm assuming, like the General Milleys and the director of ODNI,

24 that level. Okay?

25 A You got it. And so General Milley -- you know, the Vice Chairman of the
 16

1 Joint Chiefs would attend my Deputy's Committee meetings.

2 Q Okay. Thank you for that crash course on the NSC?

3 A Yeah, sure.

4 Q That was -- that was helpful as we inform some of our questions going

5 forward?

6 Did you have anything else on that?

7 -No.

10 Q So I want to kind of shift gears towards preparations for the elections itself,

11 and what your visibility was into ensuring that it was a secure presidential election in

12 November 2020, whether this came up in your Deputy Committee meetings. I know

13 there was some interagency meetings that were occurring before the November

14 elections. So if you could talk us through some of your knowledge about that?

15 A Certainly. I think that starting in probably late 2019, but certainly by early

16 2020, I was chairing regular Deputy's Committee meetings focused on the security of our

17 elections. Now, the focus was on foreign threats to elections. That was something

18 that I took responsibility for chairing those meetings, ensuring that we were

19 well-informed, that our full -- you know, all of our departments and agencies were

20 informed about threats that had been surfaced by our intelligence community, potential

21 threats to the safety and credibility and security of our elections.

22 As we got closer and closer to the election, the tempo of those meetings

23 increased. I can't remember how many of those meetings I chaired -- those formal

24 Deputy Committee meetings related to election security, but I'm quite confident that with

25 the exception of COVID -- then on any other topic while I was Deputy National Security
 17

1 Advisor.

2 He froze for a second.

3 ••IIJlll!!lll!!!!!!I Okay.

4 Mr. Pottinger. I can repeat myself if I froze there for a moment.

5 ~ I think we're okay.

6 BY

7 Q Who would be the attendees of those regular Deputy Committee meetings?

8 A Yeah, so the -- for the ones that were focused on election security, there was

9 a broad range of people, but two of the key people -- or actually three of the key people

10 who played, in my view, very important roles in helping secure those elections, included

11 our senior counterintelligence official at the time. His name is Bill Evanina. Also, the

12 senior cyber official for the Department of Homeland Security. His name is Chris Krebs.

13 Also, the -- some of the meetings were attended by the head of the National Security

14 Agency, General Paul Nakasone.

15 But in addition to them, we had the Deputy Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary

16 of Defense, or else the Undersecretary -- Undersecretary of Defense For Policy. We had

17 the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Hyten, the -- Ken Cuccinelli, who's the

18 Deputy of the Department of Homeland Security, in some of those meetings. In others,

19 DHS was solely represented by Chris Krebs.

20 And so in all of -- I mean, of the more than 100 Deputy -- formal Deputy Committee

21 meetings that I chaired in my 15 months as Deputy, the largest percentage, I think, was

22 devoted to election security.

23 Q I understand the focus was on the foreign threats, and I'll start with that, but

24 was there any -- obviously not unclassified -- any red flags that were -- that anyone made

25 you aware of, and how were they dealt with?

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1 A Sure. We were -- without revealing any classified information, I can say

2 that we were tracking threats from several states -- several adversarial state

3 governments, where there were -- we were aware of aspirations to, at a minimum,

4 undermine the credibility of U.S. elections by fomenting dis -- you know, disinformation,

5 and -- and other steps that were mainly designed -- and, of course, we were on alert also

6 for signs to actual interfere in our elections. "Interference" is a technical term in the

7 context of discussing securing elections. Interference would mean actually trying to

8 change, you know, the outcome through, you know, cyber attacks, or changing -- you

9 know, disrupting, for example, people's voter registrations, things of that nature.

10 As opposed to influence as opposed to -- so, you know, "influence" in this context

11 means trying to inject narratives into the public discourse in the United States that are

12 designed to sow confusion, or to undermine the credibility of the elections, so doubt

13 about whether an election was legitimate, for example.

14 We were tracking multiple threats over the course of the year in the run up to the

15 election. I can say without divulging any intelligence, that we took rather proactive

16 steps to undermine efforts by certain state actors to either interfere in or influence our

17 elections. And that, in my judgment, and I think in the collective judgment of that -- of

18 the committee I chaired -- because we met after the election as well -- we believed that

19 we were successful in mitigating and ultimately blunting those efforts by states to

20 interfere in our elections from abroad.

21 In many ways, it was the dog that didn't bark. We think that that was a sign of success,

22 and -- and I credit leaders and people at the bureaucratic level in those departments and

23 agencies, including at the NSA, the intelligence community, DOD. The Department of

24 Homeland Security, I think, did -- did quite good work to blunt those threats.

25 Q And it sounds like you're confident actions were taken against any potential
 19

1 efforts to sow doubts by these foreign actors?

2 I -- I want to shift towards -- as the COVID pandemic began kind of in March

3 of 2020, how did that impact the lead up during these -- during these meet ups into the

4 election. I understand the focus was still on the foreign threats, but obviously, this

5 impacted the election in so many ways, and were there conversations about that.

6 A Yeah, we did not have any policy decisions to make about the way that our

7 elections are conducted -- how states choose to distribute ballots or how far in advance

8 of the election. Those were not policy -- national security policy issues. We were kept

9 informed. In -- in many of our meetings, we would get briefings from DHS, for example,

10 on what the states were doing.

11 In other words, we were aware that a lot of states were changing the way that

12 they conducted elections in order to account for social distancing, the fact that we were

13 in the middle of a -- of a extremely disruptive and frightening pandemic. But we did

14 make policy decisions with respect to how the election was conducted.

15 Q Without any decision making, though, was there any discussion about the

16 impact of the mail-in voting or any concerns raised about that during -- during these

17 meetings?

18 A Yeah, I do recall asking questions and others asking questions to help us

19 understand how mail-in voting works. There's some states -- a handful of states that

20 had experienced over the course of several election cycles, including my home state of

21 Utah, in doing mail-in ballots broadly. But there were a number of states that were

22 shifting on short notice to a similar kind of approach, so naturally, we wanted to know

23 whether those efforts were -- would create additional vulnerabilities from the standpoint

24 of foreign actors.

25 And so, you know, the process was explained and briefed, and there were times
 20

1 when we wanted to ask questions to understand what the process is for distributing

2 ballots, what happens when a ballot comes in, when the envelope is opened, and the

3 ballot is then examined, are there ways to remediate at that point.

4 You know, most of the remediation would have to occur before the -- the thing is, you

5 know, opened -- for example, is their signature on the back, and so forth. So we were

6 sort of in discussion about -- or being briefed on that, what that would look like, but I

7 don't recall us getting into deeper questions of -- of the wisdom of that approach or

8 whether -- we were focused primarily on whether that would create a surface or

9 vulnerability for foreign state actors to attack.

10 Q Was Chris Krebs the person who would be briefing on those issues primarily?

11 A Certainly, Chris briefed on those issues. Not exclusively. Although I think

12 "primarily" is probably a safe -- a safe statement, yeah.

13 Q And during any of those meetings, do you remember any concerns about

14 that -- about the particular mail-in voting process being raised?

15 A I don't recall a specific technical threat. They were more expressions of

16 concern, general anxiety about such major shifts occurring in, you know, in just a matter

17 of months before the election began. I think that there was sort of floating angst

18 about -- about that, but not specific technical threats.

19 Q Okay. I want to shift to the day of the election. Were you in the White

20 House that day?

21 A On election day, I was in the White House, yes. And I do recall being in the

22 White House, and watching some of the returns come in.

23 I want to welcome Representative Murphy. I believe she just

24 joined the interview.

25 Ms. Murphy. Good morning.

 21

1 Good morning.

3 Q On that day -- in the lead up to it, were you aware of some of the claims that

4 had begun at that point by Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell about the potential for

5 widespread fraud for the election?

6 A Not in any direct kind of way. I mean, I'm sure I was aware of news

7 reporting about some of -- some of the statements by Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell,

8 although I -- frankly, I remember more of that emerging with the press, of course, after

9 the election. I don't have any specific memory of what they were alleging right -- right

10 in the lead up to it. But I was generally aware, but not directly aware.

11 Q Do you remember seeing them in the White House on election day?

12 A I do recall seeing Sidney Powell. It was -- it was the only time I'd ever seen

13 her before or since -- in the -- in the area where some TVs had been set up, some TV

14 screens, in the residence of the White House, where there was a reception and people

15 were watching the returns come in. I don't recall seeing Rudy Giuliani, and did not see

16 or interact with them at any point that I was in office.

17 Q Did you watch the returns at the White House?

18 A I did. I was working, and so mostly just watching from my office. I did

19 walk over to that reception at one point that evening just very briefly.

20 Q Now, obviously, the election wasn't declared that evening. On

21 November 7th, major networks declared Joe Biden was the President-elect. Obviously,

22 there was litigation, a number of events occurred after that, but I'm just curious about

23 your thought about the security of the presidential election?

24 A Yeah, you know, with respect to the, you know, foreign threats to the

25 election, we were confident that we had blunted any attempts that our intelligence had
 22

1 surfaced to influence the election. So we were -- we were -- by the time the election

2 was over, we were confident that direct foreign interference and really even foreign

3 influence had not played any kind of a major, much less decisive role in the election.

4 Q Did you -- were you aware of the firing of Chris Krebs, then, on

5 November -- November 12th, I believe it was?

6 A I heard about it. I did not know about that in advance.

7 Q Were you surprised by it? It was linked directly to the statement that CISA,

8 along with other organizations, put out that the November 3rd election was the most

9 secure in American history?

10 A Yeah, with respect to foreign interference or influence, I don't disagree with

11 Chris's statement. You know, in other words, with the idea that as far as we knew, there

12 was no direct foreign influence or interference that would have -- that had played a

13 significant role.

14 Q And did you agree with Attorney General Barr's December 14th statement

15 that there was no widespread fraud in the election that could have changed the

16 outcome?

17 A I had no reason to doubt his statement. Again, I wasn't focused at

18 any point on -- really, on the domestic factors, the court cases that were playing out, the

19 challenge -- the challenges in court. I was not directly involved in any of those efforts.

20 So I was really about as well-informed as any -- you know, anyone paying attention to the

21 news would be.

22 Q So as you head towards -- from now November into the end of the

23 administration, how would you describe, you know, the mood of the White House?

24 A The mood of the -- yeah. Well, I would say that the -- you know, it was

25 clear that the President was, you know, determined to challenge the outcome, and that
 23

1 he was unlikely to concede. That was -- weighed on everyone's -- on everyone's -- sort

2 of -- you know, on the atmosphere of the White House.

3 The National Security Council staff was busying itself preparing for the transition

4 to a Biden Administration while stilling being aware that some of these things were

5 playing out in court, that there was always the possibility that there might be some

6 dramatic turn in events, although that seemed unlikely. We wanted to make sure on

7 the National Security Council staff that we were going to conduct a first rate, extremely

8 thorough transition to the incoming administration, and that -- that entails quite a lot of

9 work, by the way.

10 And, of course, we're also at a vulnerable moment in -- the genius of our system is that

11 we have a predictable transition of power every four or eight years, and that period of

12 transition is a period of natural vulnerability with respect to foreign state actors. So we

13 were very much focused on watching the activities of the People's Republic of China, of

14 Iran, of North Korea, for example, and ensuring that -- that our national security was

15 secure during that -- during that period.

16 So it was very much -- the mood was one of busy anxiety, busying ourselves with the

17 transition, busying ourselves watching carefully foreign actors. And then out of -- out of

18 the other corner of my eye, watching the national drama playing out of a contested

19 election.

20 Q When did the transition begin for the National Security Council? Obviously,

21 there's a GSA ascertainment that happened a few weeks later, but when -- when did you

22 direct your staff to begin?

23 A I -- I think -- I'm trying to remember. It was -- it was rather quick. I seem

24 to recall that the -- the election was -- was declared by news media a few days after the

25 election, right.
 24

1 Q The 7th, yeah?

2 A So -- yeah, the 7th. So certainly at that point, I would've already been

3 having conversations with the National Security Advisor about making sure we're ready

4 to -- to conduct that transition. So that meant -- it didn't mean that we are in

5 conversation with the Biden team yet. That was something that was approved later by

6 the chief of staff's office, by our general counsel, but we began the internal work of

7 having senior directors, the heads of each our NSC directorates preparing turnover

8 binders to -- that we -- you know, once given a green light, that we would provide to the

9 incoming team.

10 So turnover binders would mean key intelligence that we thought would be

11 important for the incoming team to know about, all of the strategies. Every strategy

12 that had been adjudicated in that White House, we wanted them to have the benefit of,

13 because those were the strategies that our interagency -- you know, all the departments

14 and agencies were supposed to be following.

15 And then other things, where things are -- things that are on the near horizon, we think

16 that they'd need to know about -- events or -- or threats or intelligence, sort of

17 near-horizon things they would need to be aware of, the strategies, and current

18 intelligence.

19 Q So it sounds like you started that process pretty immediately, knowing that

20 it's a complicated process to start and -- within that time period given, right?

21 A Yeah, we started that -- that internal-facing process certainly not too long

22 after the election, you know, by mid-November.

23 Q You mentioned that there was, obviously, the litigation that was happening,

24 and there was the former President Trump didn't concede the election at all, but

25 particularly during that time. Were you concerned about the impact that would have
 25

1 perception-wise by foreign actors?

2 A Yes, and I felt that way about -- you know, whenever we've had a contested

3 election. The first one that I -- you know, we all remember, of course, was the election

4 of 2000. I was working in China as a reporter at the time, and it was a very -- it was an

5 uneasy time, but there was also confidence, I think, that our system would -- would

6 adjudicate it.

7 We're a rule of law society. We have -- we have constitutional prescriptions for

8 situations just like this. We've got laws to deal with situations like this. So I think that

9 there was -- I was confident that the system would ultimately prevail. But nonetheless,

10 it is -- it is a time of natural vulnerability when it's unclear to the country and to the

11 world, including our adversaries, what the ultimate outcome would be.

12 Q What was your interactions with the Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, during

13 this time period or during your time period in that role that you had under Mr. O'Brien?

14 A You mean over the course of that whole, you know, 15 months or so that I

15 was in --

16 Q Sure?

17 A Yeah, so when I came into the role of Deputy National Security Advisor, Mick

18 Mulvaney was the Acting Chief. I had frequent interaction with him. In no small part,

19 because of the COVID pandemic, and, you know, we -- we began in January having daily

20 meetings convened by the National Security Council staff that then evolved at the end of

21 January into what became known as the COVID Task Force.

22 But I was in every one of those meetings, including on weekends. And so I had

23 quite a lot of interaction with Mick Mulvaney until Mark Meadows came in, sometime in

24 March, and -- and had quite a lot of interaction with him focused primarily on COVID, and

25 our COVID response that -- we were consumed with COVID response for, you know, really
 26

1 the entirety of 2020, but particularly that spring into early summer. So I had routine --

2 Q I should note that you became the NSC point person on the COVID Task

3 Force; is that --

4 A That's right. That was a deliberate decision by the National Security

5 Advisor, given my -- my experience actually covering the SARS epidemic for the

6 Wall Street Journal in China back in 2003. So I had -- I had still a layman's knowledge,

7 but a pretty -- a pretty deep layman's knowledge about the intersection of pandemics and

8 the Chinese government and coronaviruses specifically, too.

9 Q Were you ever present for any discussions about the claims of election

10 fraud, either with Mr. Meadows or with the President himself?

11 A No. So my -- following the election, I spent fairly little time with the

12 President. I think that I had just really a handful of interactions with him, the last of

13 which was on Christmas Eve of 2020, and all of those conversations were focused on

14 specific policy questions, where I needed to either brief him or ask for a decision from

15 him on a policy matter -- and those were national security matters. None of

16 them -- none of them were related to the election.

17 Q There was never -- there weren't any moments where -- just there was any

18 throw-away comments about the claims of election fraud particularly during this

19 November, December period?

20 A I can recall, I think, just one instance of the President making a comment to

21 the effect that he believed that the election had been stolen. It was a -- a side remark in

22 a conversation that was not focused on the election. I remember having the impression

23 that he believed that the election had been stolen, but it was a -- it was a non sequitur

24 remark in -- during a conversation about a foreign policy issue.

25 Q Do you --
 27

1 A That was the only time I remember hearing the President --

2 Q Do you remember the timeframe of that comment?

3 A It was -- it would have been late November, early December. I can't

4 remember the date.

5 Q And do you know who was present for that conversation?

6 A It was on -- I'm trying to remember whether Mark Meadows was there.

7 actually do not remember who else was there. I'm sure that there was probably one

8 other person in the room, but I -- it might have been -- it might have been Mark. I don't

9 recall.

10 Q Did you respond in any way?

11 A I did not.

12 do you have anything.

13 -No.

14 BY
15 Q I want to -- before I show you some exhibits, was there ever any sense closer

16 to the November 7th timeframe, after it was declared that Joe Biden would be the

17 incoming President, was there any sense then -- early on -- that the President may

18 concede the election?

19 A So I wouldn't have had enough time with the President to make that

20 determination for myself, but the sense from talking to others in the West Wing was that

21 the President did not appear likely to concede. But I think there was also a -- an

22 assumption among staff in the West Wing that the President would step aside, even if he

23 didn't concede. In other words, that we would have an inauguration as planned, as

24 scheduled, and a new President would take residence in the White House on inauguration

25 day.
 28

1 I don't recall anyone ever suggesting or showing real concern that -- that would

2 not happen, that we would not have a transition, but a concession seemed -- as those

3 weeks ground on, a concession seemed less and less likely.

4 Q I want to show you Exhibits 2 and 3 just to get a sense of some of the activity

5 that was going on during this time period?

6 A Sure.

7 Q Exhibit 2 is an e-mail. Do you have it, or else I can --

8 A Let me pause just for one second.

9 Q Sure?

10 A If you just give me one second. I'm going to stop the video and mute just

11 to -- just to dig up some -- some papers, so I can --

12 Q Sure. Do you want to take five minutes now?

13 A Yeah, five minutes is more than enough. I just --

14 Q Okay. Great?

15 A Thank you.

16 Q Yep?

17 [Discussion off the record.]

18 BY
19 Q I think this is Exhibit 2, I believe, that starts with -- the first one is a

20 November 23rd e-mail from John Poindexter. He was a former National Security

21 Advisor, right, Mr. Pottinger?

22 A That's right.

23 Q To yourself. Can you just explain what -- in the e-mail, he essentially asks

24 you -- I'll ask you what you think he asks? Well, it's more about support for a bipartisan

25 commission to look into election security issues; is that fair?

 29

1 A I think so, yeah. I had forgotten about this e-mail until you provided it as

2 an exhibit, but I think that's -- but I think that's fair.

3 Q One second?

4 [Audio interruption.]

-
5 Okay.

6 Sorry about the that.

7 BY

8 Q Okay. Sorry. We're back on the record. Go ahead. It's also attached

9 to -- just so the record is clear, Exhibit 3 is the actual OpEd piece?

10 A Right, right, yeah. I don't really remember the -- you know, this coming in,

11 but I've just glanced at the content of, you know, sort of what they're recommending as a

12 way to strengthen confidence in elections in the future. But, yeah, I don't have much

13 specific memory of that e-mail.

14 Q Sure. My question is, it says -- in the first exhibit, there is, "If you feel that

15 it is a worthy endeavor, please pass this on to appropriate staff." And in the second

16 e-mail, it says that -- Mr. Poindexter says, "It is a national security issue," meaning the

17 election security?

18 Did you share that concern with Mr. Poindexter, and did you take any steps to

19 pass it on to appropriate staff or whatever the NSC could do to deal with this.

20 A Yeah, I don't remember reading it closely enough to have formed an opinion

21 about whether I agreed with -- with any of the specifics of what he wrote about in that

22 draft OpEd, although I -- you know, I think, like anyone, I shared the view that ensuring

23 our elections are both secure, but also credible, that people have faith in our system is a

24 national security issue. It's a fundamental issue for the republic. So I probably would

25 have had sympathy with the general sentiment there.

 30

1 As for passing it on, I saw from your other exhibit that I had asked my assistant, at

2 some point, to forward the e-mail to Tony Dolan. Tony Dolan -- if -- I'm trying to

3 remember what my impetus was for sending it to him. I think it was probably mainly

4 interest in the fact that Admiral Poindexter was a colleague of Tony Dolan's when they

5 both served in the Reagan Administration.

6 So Admiral Poindexter, as you mentioned, had been a National Security Advisor for

7 President Reagan. Tony Dolan, who was working on President Trump's speech writing

8 staff, had also been the chief speech writer for President Reagan. So when I told my

9 assistant to just forward it on to him, it may have simply been related to interest in the

10 fact that they were both Reagan-era colleagues as opposed to any -- asking anybody to do

11 anything about the OpEd.

12 Q So that's my question is, what would have been the expectation that you, as

13 the Deputy Advisor -- Deputy -- in the Deputy position at the NSC, could have done about

14 the election security issues?

15 A Yeah, I don't remember having any -- any expectation or -- or motive in

16 forwarding that e-mail, other than that it was interesting that this was coming from a

17 Reagan-era colleague of Tony's.

18 Q Similarly, it looks like Exhibit 1 is another e-mail about the integrity of the

19 election results from Ken Abramowitz?

20 A Right, right, yes. I --

21 Q Do you remember receiving this e-mail or doing anything about --

22 A 1 don't recall receiving that one. If I -- I don't recall doing anything about it

23 or even reading it very carefully, just given everything that was on my plate at the time.

24 If I responded to him, I don't remember doing that. And if I did, my guess is it was

25 probably a perfunctory kind of response. Yeah.

 31

1 Q And I think just generally, just to zoom out, during this time period from

2 November 7th obviously until January 6th, there was increasing drum beat about

3 political -- the rhetoric about the election security that you are obviously aware of?

4 Did anybody -- putting aside the e-mails -- reach out to you personally to -- kind of

5 for your assistance to investigate the election fraud results.

6 A No, and certainly not. And the -- you know, the view that we had, that we

7 had secured the election from any significant threats, that we had blunted any significant

8 threats from foreign actors, that would be captured in, you know, the summaries of those

9 Deputy Committee meetings that I conducted.

10 So at no point was I asked to provide material or look into some -- some of the

11 allegations that were being made by the President or by his supporters about, you know,

12 some of the specific conspiracy theories about voting machines and things of nature.

13 Yeah.

14 Q Okay. How about -- obviously, former General Michael Flynn was a big

15 proponent of the claims of election fraud, and even said that martial law should be

16 invoked as well -- the Insurrection Act, in a mid-December statement. Did you ever have

17 any contact with General Flynn about his claims?

18 A No, my last conversation with General Flynn was the day he left office in

19 early 2017. For the remainder of my time in office, we were not in touch.

20 Q I want to ask about some appointments that President Trump made on

21 November 9th -- again, after Joe Biden was declared to President-elect. There was the

22 firing of Secretary Esper, as well as the appointment of Acting Secretary of Defense Chris

23 Miller?

24 Were you familiar with Chris Miller before he became appointed to that position.

25 A Yeah, Chris had -- Chris worked on the National Security Council staff on
 32

1 counterterrorism and did a very good job in that role. He later went to the National

2 Counterterrorism Center, and was in that role for a number of months as the director

3 before President Trump installed him as the Acting Secretary of Defense following the

4 election.

5 Q And he also appointed Kash Patel as the Chief of Staff for the Acting

6 Secretary of Defense. Were you familiar with him?

7 A Yeah, I knew Kash from his work at the NSC, mostly focused on the

8 counterterrorism issues as well. I knew them both.

9 Q Were you surprised by the timing of these appointments?

10 A I was. You know, there was -- you know, I was not -- my opinion wasn't

11 really sought, and nor did I offer it on this particular set of personnel shifts. I think it

12 was driven by the President, personally, and, you know, put into effect by the President

13 and the Chief of Staff -- you know, those shifts in personnel following the election.

14 Q And how do you know it was the wish of the President, personally?

15 A It -- not from anything the President told me, but just from conversations in

16 the West Wing. It was -- it's not the kind of thing that happens without a presidential

17 order, you know, somebody going into the role of Acting Secretary of the Department of

18 Defense. There's no other way but a presidential order for that to happen.

19 Q Were you aware that the firing of Secretary Esper was imminent, essentially?

20 A I think that I had first heard about it following the election, not prior to.

21 And within a day or so of it happening, I caught wind that this was now in the works.

22 Q Did it have any impact on the work that you did or at the NSC, generally, in

23 terms of putting in new leadership at DOD in a time where agencies should be looking

24 towards transitioning?

25 A Well, yeah, I mean, any time you have a shift in leadership,

 33

1 it's -- there's -- it's certainly disruptive. We'd had a lot of that to begin with. Our

2 system is able to handle those kind of shifts.

3 When it came down to my specific work, my direct counterpart was the Deputy

4 National -- pardon me, the Deputy Secretary of Defense Norquist. He remained in place,

5 in fact, all the way through inauguration day. So there was a sense of continuity there.

6 The Undersecretary of Defense for Policy -- there had been a couple of shifts. You

7 know, you had had -- for a couple of years, John Rood was in that role, and then his

8 Deputy was in the acting role, Jim Anderson. And then General Tata. Tony Tata came

9 in at the end. Tony had been working in the Department of Defense for a while already,

10 so he knew the brief. He'd been working in that office. So I did not actually feel

11 from -- at the Deputy's level that it was -- that it generated any problems. There was

12 level-steady flight between myself and Norquist, the Deputy Secretary, and also the shift

13 from Jim to Tony was fairly smooth.

14 Q And didn't Mr. Tata also get a promotion at that time as well?

15 A To be honest, I can't -- I can't remember what the -- I mean, he was in an

16 acting role, so I'm not sure what his title or rank was at the time that he was put into the

17 acting role there. I'm not sure what -- what that entailed -- if there was a promotion

18 involved, other than in an acting capacity.

19 Q Sure. Did you have contact with Ezra Cohen-Watnick in your position?

20 A Yeah, occasionally. Ezra had been working in the -- in an acting capacity as

21 the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. At no point were we discussing

22 election-related matters. There were occasional conversations with him on

23 intelligence-related issues.

24 Q During your time with the NSC, did you have the opportunity to view or have

25 an understanding of the relationship between Mr. Patel and the former President?
 34

1 A You're saying prior to my --

2 Q Just during your time?

3 A My time. The -- when I was serving as Deputy National Security Advisor,

4 the President had requested Kash Patel on a couple of occasions, which was how I

5 learned that there was a, you know, a prior relationship there, or some -- you know, some

6 kind of relationship there.

7 Q So at that time -- the time period you're talking about, Mr. Patel was still in

8 what job -- not at DOD, but at NSC?

9 A At the NSC, when Kash was working on counterterrorism issues, I learned

10 that there were a couple of times that the President had personally requested him. So

11 that -- it was unusual, given that he was at a lower rank, but I -- to my knowledge --

12 Q To yourself, correct? He was of a lower rank to yourself?

13 A Yeah.

14 Q And were those meetings frequent, and were they with others or alone with

15 Mr. Patel and Mr. Trump?

16 A I doubt that they were frequent, although I can't say for sure, but I don't

17 think so. And the National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien would have -- I'm not certain

18 whether he would have had visibility on all of those interactions or not, to be honest.

19 don't know.

20 Q We're heading into January 6th, so -- but one more topic before. Are you

21 familiar with the November 11th executive order or memorandum that was issued out of

22 the White House ordering the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Somalia?

23 A No. The question of timing -- we knew that the President wanted to get

24 out of Afghanistan. The question of the timing of how and when to get out was a

25 perennial debate over the course of the entirety of the administration. It was not a -- it
 35

1 was not -- remember, I told you that an enormous amount of policy was adjudicated at

2 the Deputy's level. One of the exceptions to that was Afghan policy. I did not chair

3 any Deputy Committee meetings on Afghanistan. They were all handled at a principals

4 level by the President and, you know, select cabinet members. So I did not have

5 visibility into that -- into that memo.

6 Q Did you ever learn --

7 Mr. Bellinger. It's John Bellinger. Just for clarification, you are referring

8 to -- when you say the memorandum -- that memorandum that was, I think, reprinted

9 and the Bob Woodward book that you sent to me and I shared with --

10 Right. And it's not the actual memo. I just wanted to know

11 if Mr. Pottinger had any insight into this incident, where a memorandum came from the

12 White House to the Department of Defense through Kash Patel to General Milley on

13 November 11th -- what's been described as a two-sentence order.

14 And then at that point, General Milley, along with Secretary Miller, went to the

15 White House and had an exchange with Mr. O'Brien who indicated that it had not gone

16 through any type of normal process.

17 BY
18 Q Are you aware of that incident, generally?

19 A I don't remember the written document. I do remember a period where

20 there was discussion about whether we -- whether the President was going to instruct the

21 removal of our troops before the end of his term in office or later. I do remember

22 hubbub, you know, around that, but I don't remember anything related to a specific --

23 Q Okay. And putting aside kind of the content of that order, was there -- did

24 you ever have a discussion with Mr. O'Brien about an order -- in quotes -- that had not

25 gone through the process within the NSC or within the DOD?
 36

1 A It's possible. I don't remember the specifics.

2 Q Okay?

3 A Yeah.

4 Any questions before I go into January 6th.

5 -No.

6 Okay. I don't see anyone coming off camera.

7 BY

8 Q Okay. So, Mr. Pottinger, I want to start with kind of the lead up to

9 January 6th. Again, I know your focus was on the foreign intelligence from the IC

10 community, but I'm wondering if you had any visibility about any of the threat landscape

11 domestically, particularly about the January 6th rally, prior to the event itself?

12 A The short answer is no. The events of that day came as -- as a surprise, to

13 put it mildly. And I think that that was the case for certainly others at the National

14 Security Council staff. I know that was the case that the National Security Advisor was

15 blind-sided by those events.

16 The, you know, risks of domestic disturbance that don't have a foreign nexus are

17 not the natural purview of the National Security Council staff. That said, there are ways

18 for the White House to be alerted to threats of, you know, of a purely domestic nature.

19 For example, the general counsel's office interacts with the Department of Justice. The

20 Department of Justice had the lead on sort of the events leading up to

21 securing -- keeping -- making sure the Capitol was secure in the lead up to the 6th of

22 January.

23 So if there had been specific threats, my expectation is that they would have would been

24 communicated by the FBI and the Department of Justice to the general counsel's office in

25 the White House, and probably to the Chief of Staff's office, just in light of fact that the
 37

1 Chief of Staff is in interface with the Secret Service. The Secret Service would always

2 want to know about any -- any kind of violent threat in the Capitol. But that interface

3 does not take place between the DOJ and the NSC directly. It would have been through

4 general counsel's office, and perhaps the Chief of Staff's office.

5 And so there were -- nothing was flagged in my intelligence briefing, you know, that

6 morning or in the days -- in the run up that suggested anything like what happened was

7 going to happen with the riots, the attack on the Capitol, and so forth.

8 Q And I think my colleague was asking about kind of the domestic intelligence

9 portion of NSC. It sounds like there was -- it's a separate entity; is that fair?

10 A Well, for reasons going back to the abuses of the '60s and the '70s, there's a

11 very bright line drawn between what our intelligence apparatus is collecting, and, of

12 course, the rights of U.S. persons -- citizens and others who have that status -- legal status

13 as U.S. persons. So they should not be collecting intelligence -- the NSA or the CIA or

14 others -- on the activities of American protesters, unless there's some kind of a foreign

15 nexus, some kind of a foreign threat.

16 Now, there is a -- there is a -- pardon me, a regular meeting, really -- really a

17 conference call, that takes place between some of the domestic-facing agencies, including

18 the FBI, DOJ, and certainly DHS as well as the Department of Defense. There is a regular

19 call that NSC staff participate in, listen in on, where they discuss threats, terror-type

20 threats -- you know, threats to the homeland.

21 And if -- if there had been something raised in that regular call, my staff would have

22 alerted me to that. In other words, if FBI or DOJ had warned on that -- more --1 think

23 it's a daily call about, you know, terror threats and the like -- my staff would have heard

24 that and they would have alerted me. I didn't get such an alert, and I'm pretty much

25 confident there was no such warning, not because anyone failed to convey it to me.
 38

1 Q And I appreciate you going through kind of the formal information that you

2 received. How about you, just as Matt Pottinger, former journalist?

3 A Yeah.

4 Q Did you have any concerns going into January 6th?

5 A Yeah. I mean, I do remember specifically having concerns about the

6 possibility of -- of competing protesters, competing camps of protesters clashing in the

7 capital that day, given that there's -- you know, the President had convened a rally and

8 emotions were running high. You know, we're now just two weeks out to inauguration

9 day. We don't have a concession. We have a rally asserting that the election had been

10 stolen. I did have, personally, concern that there might be clashes between different

11 camps of protesters. I did not foresee an organized assault on the Capitol by supporters

12 of the President.

13 Q Were you --

14 Could I just jump in.

15 Sure.

16 Mr. Bellinger. Matt, just a minute ago -- about six sentences ago, you said you

17 were worried about a possible clash in the capital. I think you may have meant --

18 Mr. Pottinger. I meant capital with an "A," meaning the City of Washington, D.C.,

19 not the Capitol with an "O," the seat of our democracy. So the Capitol was not, in my

20 mind, even likely to be the center of the action. I was more concerned about activity

21 around the White House, to be honest, since, quite frankly, we'd gotten used to pretty

22 sporty, and in some cases, violent protests close to the White House over the course of

23 2020.

24 My -- like you said, reporter's intuition was there that could be clashes, but that those

25 would be as likely to take place somewhere as close to the White House as anywhere
 39

1 else.

2 BY

3 Q And you mentioned some of these other lead up events, including the

4 President not conceding, and obviously, there was increased tweets and rhetoric coming

5 about a stolen election. Did that impact kind of your view of what could occur, being

6 that January 6th would be a significant day for the joint session to certify of the election

7 results?

8 A Yeah, I mean, that -- that rhetoric had been continuing for -- for weeks at

9 that point. And so I viewed it as more of -- more of the same more than some

10 significant new turn in events. And that I -- it really came -- it really came as quite a

11 shock. My day was not planned around anything like what ended up playing out that

12 day.

13 Can you just give us a couple of minutes, Mr. Pottinger?

14 We're going to take a break and resume in a few minutes.

15 Mr. Pottinger. Yeah.

16 - Yeah, let's go off the record.

17 [Discussion off the record.]

18 BY

19 Q Mr. Pottinger, we're going to start with the day of January 6th, but I wanted

20 to start with Exhibits 4 and 5, if you have those. This was an e-mail on Tuesday,

21 January 5th, at 8:00 p.m., from the staff secretary, of the draft -- I see you're nodding

22 along -- of the draft, State of America POTUS Remarks?

23 A I see them.

24 Q Was this an e-mail that you remember receiving, and then reading the

25 remarks?
 40

1 A So I -- you know, it's typical for any speech, not all of them, but most of the

2 speeches -- prepared speeches by the President would be circulated in

3 advance -- sometimes just hours before -- to commissioned officers to review. I would

4 always review policy speeches that were on foreign policy. If a speech was -- a

5 campaign speech or a rally speech, like this one, more often than not, I would not read

6 them. And if I did, it was usually to scan for substantive errors with the respect to

7 foreign policy or foreign affairs.

8 I do recall this speech being circulated, but I don't recall actually paying it very

9 close attention.

10 Q So do you remember offering any edits or comments for this particular

11 speech?

12 A I don't recall having done so. I honestly don't remember. As I was looking

13 through this speech, when you provided it as an exhibit, a lot of the language looked new

14 to me, but -- but it is possible that I scanned it the morning of, but that's not my

15 recollection, though.

16 Q And as you said, it didn't necessarily touch on any national security concerns,

17 at least foreign threats, in that particular speech?

18 A Yeah, yeah, right.

19 Q When you say commissioned officers, if you take a look at that distribution

20 list, can you just explain kind of what the next -- the third line is with all those folks on

21 that list?

22 A Yeah, so you've got the Chief of Staff's office, the spokeswoman, several

23 other people from the Chief of Staff's office. You've got some of the members from the

24 general counsel's staff. You've got senior advisors to the President -- lvanka Trump,

25 Jared Kushner. Everyone who's on there is a -- I think -- what you would call a
 41

1 commissioned officer, meaning a high-level appointee to the White House as opposed to,

2 for example, the National Security Council staff is made up of a lot of people who are on

3 loan as detailees from their career jobs at the State Department or the CIA or the

4 Treasury.

5 People who are on detail would not be on a -- copied on a speech like this,

6 particularly because it's a political speech. It's of a political nature, and -- and so it

7 would be limited to people who are politically appointed into the administration.

8 Q So you were on this list, but Mr. O'Brien, I don't think, is on this list, right?

9 A Yeah, it's possible that -- yeah, I don't see his name on there. Yeah, I'm not

10 sure why some are on and some are not. I don't see the rhyme or reason for that. It

11 may be that I'm on there because just I'm, you know, usually at my desk and -- and

12 responsive. But you're right, I don't see Ambassador O'Brien's name on there.

13 Q Okay. And that brings us to the day of January 6th. Are you stating that

14 Mr. O'Brien was not in D.C. that day?

15 A That's correct. Ambassador O'Brien had flown down to Florida to make a

16 visit to our Southern Command headquarters. He was being briefed on the, you know,

17 national security issues related to the Caribbean, Latin America, drug interdiction, things

18 of that nature.

19 Q So if you could just start with your day on January 6th, what time you arrived

20 to the office and your meetings and -- as a narrative, and then we can start there?

21 A Sure. So I -- I came to the White House in the morning, I don't remember

22 exactly what time. It was probably around 8:00 o'clock that I would have arrived.

23 Q And I'm sorry. And your office -- I don't think I asked you before -- where

24 exactly is it located?

25 A So the Deputy National Security Advisor sits in an office next to the National
 42

1 Security Advisor's office. They're all -- it's part of the same suite of offices in the corner

2 of the first floor of the West Wing. So the northwest corner of the West Wing is the

3 National Security Advisor and the Deputy National Security Advisor's office is -- along with

4 the Chief of Staff to the National Security Advisor, and then a few aides handling

5 scheduling and -- and things of that nature.

6 So I would have come in that morning, probably around 8:00 o'clock. I -- I

7 remember working that morning. There was a couple of things that I was working on.

8 One of them was a statement related to, basically, putting out an official statement

9 condemning the actions by the People's Republic of China, and their puppet government

10 in Hong Kong. They had just arrested 50 Hong Kong citizens, I think it was the day prior,

11 and threw them in the clink for -- for free speech, and the democracy issues. So we -- I

12 was presented with a draft by my staff, and I spent a fair amount of time editing that

13 document.

14 I remember working as well on sort of receiving a newly, freshly declassified copy of our

15 Inda-Pacific Strategic Framework, which was the Asia strategy that our administration had

16 followed for the four years that we were in office. That document had been -- had gone

17 through a multi-week process of declassification with some redactions. And the

18 President had approved that declassification, I think, just the day prior, had finalized that.

19 So I was familiarizing myself with the new declassified redacted copy of that document,

20 so that I could brief that document to the Indian ambassador to the United States that

21 day.

22 As a courtesy to our allies who were mentioned throughout that document, I made sure

23 that my staff had contacted those governments just to give them a heads up that this

24 document was going to be made public, and their countries would be mentioned in this

25 document and to give them a rough sense of the context in which their countries would
 43

1 be mentioned.

2 I elected to personally brief the Indian government on that, and that was my next

3 meeting of the day, which was -- one of my staff and I drove out -- were driven out to

4 have lunch with the Indian ambassador and his staff. And so over that lunch, I briefed

5 him on this Inda-Pacific Strategic Framework.

6 Q And was that at the ambassador's residence, then?

7 A That's right. I believe it was not at the embassy proper, but at his

8 residence, which is technically part of the embassy. That's right.

9 Q Do you remember the timing of that meeting and then --

10 A Yeah, I remember we were running a little bit late, but I don't have my

11 calendar. But it was probably around the 12:30, and we might have been a bit late. It

12 might have been closer to 1:00 o'clock or something like that -- 12:45.

13 Q So when you left -- when you left the White House around that 12:30, 12:45

14 timeframe, who was present within the office that you saw, other than NSC staff?

15 A Oh, you mean present in the --

16 Q In the White House, before you left?

17 A Yeah. So as I left the suite, the TV was on overhead, and I recall seeing

18 news headlines about the results of the Georgia election. And I recall seeing images

19 from the Ellipse where President Trump was either beginning to speak or -- I can't recall

20 seeing whether he was already speaking or whether it was others who were speaking at

21 this rally. But it's -- probably he was speaking. And my staff -- I still had staff in the

22 suite, you know. I -- I didn't interact with other senior staff on my way down to the car

23 to go to the Indian embassy.

24 Q So that morning, from 8:00 to 12:30, you didn't see any other -- any other

25 White House staff?

 44

1 A It was mostly just my -- my direct staff. I think I read the -- my intelligence

2 briefing for that morning. I was presented with a lot of paperwork that I was working

3 through. I don't recall leaving my office that morning before heading to the Indian

4 embassy.

5 Q Okay. And just for the -- kind of the time guidepost, Mr. Trump's speech

6 began at noon and ended around 1:10?

7 A Okay.

8 Q What -- do you have a sense of what time you arrived back to the White

9 House?

10 A Yeah, the thing I remember most was that people traveling in the vehicle

11 with me, as we were arriving back at the White House, their cell phones rang with an

12 alert -- a wireless alert. And that alert was an announcement of a curfew that was being

13 imposed by the Mayor of Washington, D.C. And if I remember correctly, that -- that

14 wireless note was announcing a 6:00 p.m. curfew. So that -- that was -- I recall that

15 alerted me that something -- something bad was -- may well be happening.

16 I used one of my staffer's phones to call my direct aide just to get a quick update.

17 He told me I needed to get back to the suite quickly because of developments that he was

18 watching on the TV -- the developments on the news.

19 Q And just on the way to the ambassador's residence and on the way back, did

20 you observe any crowds or observe anything --

21 A There was -- there was traffic. It was a bit slow because of nearby

22 demonstrations, but I don't recall seeing any -- anything chaotic. But, yeah, things -- it

23 was not easy to get in and out of the White House compound, just because some of

24 the -- if I remember correctly -- some of the roads may have been closed. And I do

25 remember seeing demonstrators walking back and forth.

 45

1 Q So again, as a kind of guidepost, the mayor issued the curfew at 2:30 on the

2 afternoon of January 6th. Did you arrive to the White House around that time?

3 A I think that that is very close to the time that I arrived, right around 2:30.

4 Q And who was present? What did you do upon your arrival back to the

5 White House?

6 A I went straight up from the basement level, up the steps to my office, came

7 in and asked my aide, who was at his desk, to brief me on what was going on. We

8 turned to the television, and it was clear that things were turning violent. I don't think

9 that -- that people had -- it wasn't clear whether people had actually, at that point, made

10 it into to the Capitol Building, but you could see that the barricades -- metal barricades

11 were falling, people were jostling, the scenes were of evident chaos unfolding around the

12 Capitol Building at that moment.

13 Q Did you become aware of any tweets that the President had put out?

14 A Yes, I -- one of my -- you know, as I was watching developments and listening

15 to the reporting on cable television, one of my staff brought me a print out of a tweet by

16 the President. And the tweet said something to the effect that Mike Pence, the Vice

17 President, didn't have the courage to do what he -- what should have been done. I read

18 that tweet, and made a decision at that moment to resign. That's where I knew that I

19 was leaving that day, once I read that tweet.

20 Q So I just want to go through that moment by moment, but it sounds like you

21 got back to the White House around the 2:30 timeframe. The tweet that you're

22 mentioning is at 2:24. And for the record, I just want to read it in its entirety. It says,

23 "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our

24 Country and our Constitution, giving States the chance to certify a corrected set of facts,

25 not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones, which they were asked to previously certify. USA
 46

1 demands the truth!"

2 And I think we're putting that up on the screen.

3 A Okay.

4 Q And you say at that moment, you decided to resign, which I want to talk

5 about, but were you aware of the tweet 14 minutes later, at 2:38, which states, "Please

6 support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our

7 Country. Stay Peaceful"?

8 A I remember seeing that tweet, although it may not have been

9 contemporaneous.

10 Q Okay?

11 A I may have seen that a little bit later in the afternoon. Yeah, but -- you

12 know, yeah.

13 Q So, Mr. Pottinger, what in that moment from seeing that 2:24 tweet made

14 you -- triggered that decision that you made?

15 A Yeah, it looked to me as though the President was adding fuel to a fire.

16 That the -- the attack -- I mean, let's face it. What it was, was an attack on the Vice

17 President -- was, you know, at a moment where it was evident from watching TV that

18 things were turning violent. That suggested to me that -- that the President was -- was

19 doing the opposite of what I would have hoped he would be doing at that moment, which

20 is trying to deescalate the situation. And that tweet struck my eyes as fuel on the fire.

21 So I resolved that I didn't want to be associated with the violence that was -- that I

22 was watching at the same time in the images coming across the TV screen.

23 Q Had you thought about resigning prior to that event on January 6th?

24 A Yeah, I think -- I mean, I have to assume that any honest official would. You

25 know, at various points in public service, you always have to be ready to resign. There
 47

1 were -- there were times over the course of my time at the White House that I considered

2 resigning really over policy issues, you know, policy battles.

3 You know, there were times that I thought that policy might go in a very different

4 direction from the one that I believed the President campaigned on or that I had signed

5 up to help effectuate, but usually things came back to the general thrust of those

6 strategies that I described earlier, you know, on our call today.

7 But I had had -- also had considered resigning before the election. I had -- I had actually

8 made it -- I had determined that I was going to leave public service irrespective of the

9 outcome of the election, really not in protest, but because I'd given four years of my life

10 and my family had sacrificed four years for me to do some pretty grueling jobs in service

11 of the country. So I was determined that I would leave.

12 Originally, I planned to leave on election day -- you know, really to get us to the election,

13 and then -- and then to leave, irrespective of the outcome. And I made plans for that.

14 I bought a home for the first time, and moved my family out of Washington about, you

15 know, a couple of weeks before the election. I moved my family to Utah, and I then

16 ended up moving and staying with friends.

17 And the -- Robert O'Brien had asked me whether I would stay on for the transition,

18 irrespective of the outcome, so that I could help effectuate a transition to a second

19 Trump term or to a Biden Administration, and I agreed to do that, and to stay on past the

20 election, which was not my original plan. But I understood that it was important to have

21 continuity and leadership in place for that vulnerable period, so I did agree to stay on.

22 Q Prior to January 6th, do you remember hearing the call between President

23 Trump and Brad Raffensperger?

24 A Yeah, yeah, I did. I heard the recording of that call on a news website the

25 Sunday prior to the 6th of January. In fact, I had just gone home to see my family in
 48

1 Utah and had just flown back when I heard that recording. And that -- I felt like

2 resigning when I heard that.

3 Q Why is that?

4 A Yeah, I thought it was wholly inappropriate for any -- any sitting official to

5 call election officials and to argue for them to reverse the outcome of an election and of a

6 due process in the -- in that state or in that jurisdiction. So it was a -- I thought it was

7 entirely inappropriate.

8 Q Did you see it as a violation of President Trump's -- President Trump's oath

9 to the office?

10 A Well, without the full context of everything that was on there, but from what

11 I heard, you know, it was unseemly and was not in keeping with -- with responsible

12 governance. You know, we are a rule of law society, not a rule by man society, thank

13 God.

14 And it appeared to me that while the President certainly was within his right to

15 contest the outcome of various elections and did challenge the outcomes -- he and his

16 supporters filed more than 60 court cases around the country. To my knowledge, every

17 single one of those court cases, either -- either in the original filing or in appeal, upheld

18 election results that were adjudicated by election officials, like the Georgia Secretary of

19 State.

20 So at that point, one's opinion about whether the election was accurate or not become

21 immaterial once you've had due process. And it was clear that due process had already

22 played out in at least 60 courtrooms around the country, some of which were presided

23 over by judges that the President himself had appointed.

24 So it comes down to a matter of the Constitution. It comes down to a matter law, not a

25 matter of opinion. And let's face it, fraud does occur in elections. We know that that's
 49

1 true, but -- but due process is what allows the republic to move forward, irrespective of

2 what one candidate or another might believe the outcome of that election was. Due

3 process. And it was clear -- it looked to me that that call was an effort to circumvent

4 due process.

5 Q So, again, it sounds like you flew back on January 3rd, which was the Sunday,

6 back to D.C. from Utah. And that call with Mr. Raffensperger was leaked that same day,

7 or obtained by the Washington Post?

8 So I wondering how this impacted you going into the 6th. Was that at top of

9 mind or the back drop as you made that decision upon seeing the particular 2:24 tweet.

10 A Yeah, I mean, now -- I mean, now that you mention it, and when I think

11 about it, it was certainly something that had been at top of mind as I came back to work

12 that Monday morning. I was very much focused on those final two weeks, getting us to

13 inauguration day, completing the already substantive engagement that we had, by that

14 point, with the Biden Administration -- or the Biden transition team to provide them with

15 what, I thought, their national security team needed to have, in order to succeed in

16 continuing -- you know, continuity of government and continuity of our national security.

17 So I was very, very much focused on trying to sprint to the finish line, but I was -- I

18 was -- there's no question that I was quite troubled by the call that I had heard the

19 recording of on Sunday night.

20 Q So I want to go back to the 2:30 timeframe. You read the text. Now, at

21 that point, you made the decision that you want to resign, but you don't walk out of the

22 White House at that moment?

23 A No.

24 Q Right?

25 A No, no, no. No, what I -- I walked into my office and shut the door and
 50

1 began planning for how to depart in a way that is responsible. I was very acutely aware

2 of the fact that the National Security Advisor was not in Washington at that moment.

3 was also mindful of the fact that we were monitoring the same threats that we'd been

4 dealing with over the course of the administration, and predating the administration,

5 namely Iran, which had only a couple of weeks earlier had attacked our embassy in

6 Baghdad with rocket strikes through proxies, but it was really an Iranian attack using

7 Iranian missiles -- or rockets. I was mindful of the fact that the People's Republic of

8 China has and continues to have designs on Taiwan, which they may resort to using force

9 to annex Taiwan.

10 So these were the sorts of things that were front and center in my mind. And so

11 my -- I began just organizing my thoughts to ensure that the NSC would continue to

12 function and remain more or less fully staffed by the time I walked out, and to make sure

13 that Robert O'Brien was fully aware of my -- of my decision, and -- and then there were

14 personal matters of getting all of my records, many of which are classified, into properly

15 annotated and sealed boxes to be shipped off to the National Archives.

16 Q So just so I'm clear --

17 A Yeah.

18 Q Mr. Pottinger, so you're starting that process in the 2:30 timeframe, pretty

19 much sounds like you close your office and you start?

20 A Close to 3:00 p.m., probably at that point, sometime between -- yeah, 2:45

21 and 3:00. Mm-hmm.

22 Q The decision you had made in your head at that moment, did you convey it

23 to anybody in that timeframe?

24 A I probably called -- I remember calling my wife. I just don't remember

25 exactly when it was, but it was probably in that moment. She was the first person I told.
 51

1 The second person I told was Robert O'Brien, but I was not able to reach him

2 immediately. He was in a -- he was receiving a briefing in a SCIF, but I left a message for

3 him to call back, and then I began getting organized.

4 I -- I left my office to go retrieve my personal phone, which is my cell phone, which

5 we don't bring personal phones -- any kind of cell phone into the National Security

6 Council offices or into that suite for security reasons.

7 So I had to go downstairs to a locker where that phone was, and retrieve that phone,

8 turned it on. And that's when I became aware -- in fact, one of the -- the only thing I

9 remember seeing was a text message from my predecessor in the job. My predecessor

10 was Charles Kupperman. He was the Acting National Security Advisor for a brief

11 period before Robert O'Brien was sworn in, and he had been the Deputy National Security

12 Advisor prior to that. He had written me a note that alerted me that the mayor of

13 Washington, D.C. had requested National Guard troops to be deployed to secure the

14 Capitol, and that the White House was holding that up.

15 So I -- if I remember correctly, I think I called him right then and there on that phone, and

16 reached him. And frankly, I don't -- I don't remember him explaining to me how he had

17 come by that information. In retrospect, it occurred me that it may have just been from

18 news reporting as opposed to something proprietary that he knew.

19 But nonetheless, after he told me that, I put the phone back in a box, and went to the

20 Chief of Staff's office. So this would have been sometime in the 3:00 p.m. hour, but I

21 don't remember exactly when. It may have been 3:15, something like that. I'm pretty

22 confident it was in the 3:00 p.m. hour. I'm just -- not -- not precise as to exactly when

23 that was.

24 Q It's around that timeframe when there was the tremendous amount of

25 confusion as to whether the National Guard was responding, so --

 52

1 A Yeah, and I waded -- I waded right into that confusion, so --

2 Q And what happened once you got to Mr. Meadows' office?

3 A So I walked to his office. His staff alerted me that he was in the Oval Office.

4 So I walked down the hall to the -- what we call the outer Oval -- that is suite of

5 administration offices just north of -- connected to the Oval Office -- and came in there to

6 look for the Chief of Staff, and there were a few people there. The television was on.

7 I remember encountering our general counsel -- or the president's counsel, Pat

8 Cipollone, and telling him that the -- I had learned that the -- that the National Guard was

9 being held up for some reason by the White House. He was concerned to hear this, and

10 said, has -- does the Chief know? I said, I'm looking for him now, and Pat walked into

11 the Oval.

12 I followed. And neither -- no one was in the Oval Office. The President and the Chief

13 were not there. But there is a hallway leading from the Oval Office to the President's

14 dining room. Pat went ahead into that hallway. I paused in the middle of the Oval

15 Office, and Pat and the Chief emerged from that hallway. And I can't remember if there

16 were any others. Keith Kellogg may have -- I think Keith Kellogg was there, although he

17 may have come in a moment later. I don't remember the sequence.

18 But what I remember is that the Chief of Staff was very agitated upon hearing that the

19 White House was holding up the National Guard, and he was saying -- agitated in a loud

20 voice -- something to the effect of, I've told them ten times, get the Guard moving. Get

21 them over there. How many times do I need to tell them?

22 And the "them" that he was referring to -- it became clear to me -- was the Pentagon. It

23 was not any White House staff, and -- and it then became clear to me that there was

24 already a conversation that I was unaware of underway between the Chief of Staff and

25 the Pentagon. And I then established that -- I think I asked the Chief whether he was in
 53

1 touch with the Acting Secretary of State or his Chief of Staff. And he said yes. I can't

2 remember if he said specifically who he was in touch with -- if it was Kash Patel or Chris

3 Miller.

4 But upon establishing that he was already in touch with them, he left the Oval Office to

5 go down the parallel hallway back to his office. And I joined him. I caught up and

6 walked with him down the hallway accompanying him to his office, and said two things.

7 One was, "Chief, I think -- I think that the information that I was giving you, clearly, is out

8 of date because you're already in touch with the -- with the Pentagon."

9 And he -- and he understood this as well. That was -- his body language settled down

10 and he said, it's fine, that's right. And I recall asking something to the effect of, is the

11 President going to make a statement? And I don't remember exactly what the Chief

12 said, but it was something that I interpreted that as an affirmative, that some kind of

13 statement was forthcoming. And I said, thank god. I then said, "Chief, I'm going to go

14 back to my office. I'll be there if you need me." And he went into his office. I head

15 down the hall to mine. That was the last time I saw the Chief.

16 Q Okay. Let me go back a little bit to when you first get this message from

17 Mr. Kupperman; is that --

18 A Yeah, that's right.

19 Q And then go towards the Oval. So when you get to the Oval Office -- outer

20 Oval Office area, you said you saw Pat Cipollone. And did you see also Pat Philbin at

21 that time?

22 A I remember seeing Pat Philbin there. I remember interacting with Keith

23 Kellogg, but I can't remember if that was in the Oval or if it was in the outer Oval. Dan

24 Scavino may have been there in his -- Dan Scavino's office is in that suite of offices.

25 don't remember having any substantive conversation --

 54

1 Q It sounds like -- just so the record is clear, you followed Pat Cipollone

2 towards the Oval Office, and no one is there. Then you said you paused, and Pat

3 Cipollone headed towards the dining room area where your understanding was where

4 the President and Mr. Meadows were?

5 A Yeah, my assumption was that the President was back there, too, but I did

6 not actually speak to the President or see him at all that day.

7 Q Is there a reason why you didn't follow in the dining room area?

8 A I can't remember if he said, hold on a minute. I'll get -- let me get the

9 Chief, or if it just looked crowded. You know, it's a narrow hallway, and that he -- my

10 understanding was that he was going to retrieve the Chief of Staff. And so I did -- I do

11 recall waiting for a moment in the Oval.

12 Q And what was -- before we get into the conversation with Mr. Meadows, but

13 what was the demeanor of the people you remember seeing, whether it's Mr. Cipollone

14 or Mr. Philbin or Mr. Scavino at that time?

15 A Yeah, it felt, to me -- unless I was projecting -- that everyone was under

16 immense stress. We were watching the images in that suite of offices, just like in my

17 own, where there were televisions in both places. The images were going from bad to

18 worse. By this time, I think, you know, glass was broken, and I can't recall whether we

19 had gotten reports yet of people being killed, but it was obvious that things were quite

20 violent.

21 I remember seeing an image around that time of what looked like plain-clothed

22 security officers with their pistols drawn inside of one of the chambers of the -- of the

23 Congress with their weapons pointing towards broken windows on a door. That's an

24 image I recall, although I don't remember the precise timing of that. But that's one that

25 stayed with me. So the mood was one of -- of anxiety.

 55

1 Q So when Mr. Meadows comes back out from the dining room area with

2 Mr. Cipollone, it sounds like he's -- I'll use the word "animated" about the National

3 Guard's arrival. Is that fair to stay?

4 A That's fair, yeah. Again, the phrase was something to the effect of,

5 I've -- I've told them ten times, or how many times do I need to tell them, send the guard.

6 It was something to that effect.

7 Q Did he ask you to call anyone at the DOD?

8 A I don't think -- it's possible that he said in that moment tell them to send

9 them, and that -- and in that moment, it became clear to me that he had

10 already -- already done that, at least, you know, more than once.

11 And once I had established that -- that he had already been in contact with the

12 Department, I did not believe that I was under instructions to make any further calls.

13 It's possible that I did. I honestly don't remember. I have a vague memory of trying to

14 call the Chief of Staff of the Pentagon's office just to make sure that things were moving.

15 But I don't actually remember if -- any conversation. But I was very much under the

16 impression that I had brought late information that had been overcome by events,

17 and -- yep.

18 Q And the conversation you had with him, where you give him those two

19 pieces of information, saying that you must have had outdated information about the

20 Guard, and that -- the second piece about, is the President going to make a statement, at

21 that time, were you -- it sounds like you were aware of the 2:38 tweet about, "Please

22 support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement?"

23 A Probably, probably, yes.

24 Q Did you feel that that was -- that an additional statement was necessary

25 from the President?

 56

1 A Absolutely, unquestionably. You know, a tweet calling for people to be

2 peaceful is welcome, but at this point, glass is broken. You -- I think at this point, there

3 were Members of Congress whose phone calls were being channelled live over cable

4 TV -- Republicans and Democrats alike, calling in fear and calling on the President to call

5 off the demonstrators and the rioters.

6 Remember -- you know, most of the demonstrators were peaceful that day, but

7 there were at least hundreds. You'll know better than me how many people were

8 engaged in violence. But it was obvious that the situation was violent, out of hand, and

9 that there were public calls for the President to make a very unequivocal statement

10 calling for people to leave the Capitol.

11 Q I want to draw your attention to the 3:13 tweet, which I don't think we've

12 read into the record in its entirety. It says, "I'm asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to

13 remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the party of Law & Order - respect

14 the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you?"

15 A Right.

16 Q Now, same question, did you feel that this was a forceful enough statement

17 by the President?

18 A Yeah, I don't remember exactly when I saw that tweet. My guess is that I

19 was encouraged that this was a sign of moving in the right direction, but that it remained

20 wholly inadequate to -- given the urgency of the crisis.

21 Q Do you think -- and I know it's looking back now on the timeframe -- when

22 Mr. Meadows said that Mr. Trump would be issuing a statement, do you believe it was

23 after this 3:13 tweet that he was talking about this statement or --

24 A I was -- I don't remember exactly. My impression was that it was -- that is

25 not what he was referring to, but something -- you know, maybe a videotaped statement
 57

1 or something of that nature.

2 Q Yeah?

3 A That was my impression -- that we were past that tweet at that point.

4 Q Got it. And again, you said this was wholly inadequate in terms of telling

5 the rioters to go home, correct?

6 A That's right, yeah. I, you know -- you know, at that point, lives were in

7 danger, and we needed to see a very clear unequivocal statement from the President

8 telling his supporters and people who were acting violently to stop, to leave the grounds

9 of the Capitol.

10 Q And that obviously wasn't conveyed in those two tweets that we just

11 discussed, but did you learn about the location of the Vice President during this time?

12 A I -- right around that timeframe, I approached -- it may have been right after

13 I spoke with the Chief of Staff, that I had a conversation with the Deputy Chief of Staff

14 across the hall, Tony Ornate. Tony had been the President's -- the head of the

15 President's Secret Service detail before becoming Deputy Chief of Staff of the White

16 House. So he had knowledge and awareness and responsibility for the President's

17 personal security and the security of the White House.

18 I do recall having probably two conversations with him, one right there to ask

19 whether the Vice President was safe. He assured me that -- that the Vice President was

20 safe. And then he came to my office a little bit later -- I don't remember how much

21 later -- to give me an update on the deployment of law enforcement to go secure the

22 Capitol.

23 He gave me some statistics on basically who was moving from which police departments,

24 state troopers from some of the surrounding states, the National Guard as well. He

25 came and gave me an update on basically the mobilization, and who was moving from
 58

1 where to where they were. And gave me what he knew of sort a damage assessment

2 inside the Capitol.

3 Q And did you get that, the kind of briefing update from Mr. Ornate, while in

4 the outer Oval or once you were back in your West Wing office?

5 A I can't remember. Well, I do remember him coming to my office after the

6 conversation that I'd had with the Chief of Staff, where he gave those updates. The

7 initial conversation may have been both in that outer Oval, as well as in his office, but it's

8 a bit hazy.

9 Q And I just want to go back to the conversation, again, with Mr. Meadows.

10 Did he -- did Mr. Meadows indicate who at DOD he had spoken, in terms of I had -- when

11 he mentions, I've told them repeatedly? I know you said the "them," but did he

12 mention a name at all?

13 A I remember Kash's name coming up, but I can't remember if that was -- that

14 he said he had spoken the Kash. I believe he'd said he had spoken to Kash in one of his

15 comments to me. He had said I spoke to "them." And at one point, I believe he said

16 that he had spoken to Kash Patel, the Chief of Staff. I can't recall specifically who else, if

17 anyone else, he said that he had spoken to, but I was under the impression that the

18 Pentagon leadership was very much in touch with him.

19 Q Were you in touch with anyone at the Pentagon?

20 A Not that -- not before that. And if there was a call afterwards, it's hazy to

21 me. I don't -- I certainly don't remember anything that would have been materially

22 important at that point. In other words, it all was overcome by events at point. What

23 orders had been given had already been received, any mobilization had taken place, had

24 already been authorized or commanded. But I did not speak to people at the Pentagon

25 earlier, that I recall.

 59

1 Q I just want to read to clarify -- to clarify. Obviously, there's been public

2 reporting about this time period. This is an excerpt from Peril, where it states,

3 "Pottinger, who was in touch with contacts at the Pentagon and its related agencies, said

4 Miller" -- meaning Acting SECDEF Miller -- "was wary of aggressively using the Guard to

5 put down the riot. It seemed too militarized to Miller, too in your face. Meadows did

6 not want to hear the excuse. I told him to get the Guard moving, get out there, and get

7 it done. Meadows said he told Mr. Pottinger to call Miller and push him?"

8 Does any --

9 A Yeah, I --

10 Q Yeah, go ahead?

11 A Yeah, I didn't speak to Bob Woodward to -- for that book, and was unaware

12 of that reporting until it was already published. My guess is that someone else who was

13 in that meeting, perhaps General Kellogg, maybe Chief Meadows himself -- although I

14 don't know. But I think it's more likely that someone who would have just come into

15 that conversation after it began and was a little bit confused about exactly what was

16 transpiring --

17 Q Sure?

18 A -- what was being presented. I think that it's -- that is not quite fully

19 accurate, the account that you just gave. I had not talked to -- I had talked to Chris

20 Miller. I couldn't have represented Chris Miller's point of view about, for example, you

21 know, allegedly being wary about sending in the Guard, because I don't know what his

22 view was at that point. I had not communicated with him about the -- about the

23 situation, so --

24 Q No, I appreciate that clarification, of course, and it's clear you didn't talk to

25 Chris Miller that day during the course of the attack?

 60

1 A No.

2 Q Okay. And just going back, again, when you said that your response to

3 Mr. Meadows when he said another statement is coming, and you said, thank God. Did

4 it appear to you that Mr. Meadows also shared your view that there is, indeed, need for

5 another statement to be issued by the President?

6 A I can't speak for the Chief. I think that was my impression, but -- but I don't

7 want to project on to him. That was my impression, was that there was a -- and it may

8 have been more of assumption on my part. That there was an effort get a definitive

9 statement from the President out, recorded or released in some manner.

10 I shared my view by -- by asking the question, and my reaction when I -- when I

11 heard that something was in the works. But I don't want to speak for Chief Meadows,

12 but my assumption -- I can only talk about my assumption.

13 Q Sure?

14 A And just at the time, it was an effort to persuade the President, but I didn't

15 witness that effort.

16 Q Were you satisfied by the video that Mr. Trump tweeted at 4:17?

17 Again -- go ahead. What was your reaction to that?

18 A Yeah, I -- I can't remember the exact text of what he spoke, but what I

19 remember is that when yet a subsequent statement was released by the President in the

20 wee hours of the morning, if I remember accurately, that was -- that statement finally

21 represented something along the lines of what I had hoped would have been released,

22 you know, earlier that afternoon that day. So it was -- that's my recollection of what I

23 felt about those competing statements or sequential statements.

24 Q Did you talk to anybody -- again, you're still at the White House at the

25 time -- about putting out a statement -- a forceful statement about telling the rioters to
 61

1 go home?

2 A Well, at this point, it's now in the 4:00 o'clock hour. I was in my office and

3 attempting again to reach Robert O'Brien, who I did reach in the 4:00 o'clock hour,

4 probably closer to 4:30. And I conveyed to him that I was leaving, that I had to leave.

5 He -- he accepted my resignation, and then we talked about continuity and to

6 ensure that I was leaving in a way that was responsible. And so we discussed -- he asked

7 me to stay in my -- in place until he could get back to the White House. And, you know, I

8 think our assumption at the moment was that he'd be back that evening. It end up

9 being more logistically fraught than either of us expected. And it wasn't really until the

10 middle of the night, I think, that he got back to Washington. So I remained at my desk

11 until he came in early the next morning.

12 Q Was there any explanation you gave to Mr. O'Brien during that 4:30 phone

13 call as to why you were leaving?

14 A Yeah, I mean, I told him the same that I just told you. I told him that about

15 seeing the attack on the Vice President, and believing that -- that I could no longer stay, in

16 light of that attack, and in light of -- you know, in light of the fact that he was attacked for

17 trying to carry out his constitutional duty to certify an election, and in light of the fact that

18 things had turned violent, and, in fact, lethal, I think, by then.

19 And so we -- we -- the conversation very quickly just got down to the business of

20 how do we effectuate my resignation without leaving a gap in leadership, and without

21 making us -- you know, putting -- ensuring that the institution of the NSC would continue

22 functioning following the events of that day.

23 Q Did Mr. O'Brien share your views about the events of the day, and did he

24 also consider resigning?

25 A Well, I would -- I would -- I'd really refer you to Ambassador O'Brien, you
 62

1 know, to talk about his -- his, you know, feelings and views, and so forth. I think that he

2 was -- my main recollection was that, one, he accepted the resignation, but was also

3 focused in a serious way on continuity. Continuity of the NSC, continuity of the

4 leadership of the NSC, and ensuring we made it through this constitutional crisis, and

5 were able to handoff on inauguration day.

6 So he expressed to me -- we had, you know, more than conversation over the next

7 several hours. He made clear to me that he was staying on. And we both thought that

8 it was wise for the President to be aware that he was staying and that I was leaving,

9 and -- and so I left it to him to sort of work out when and how to inform the Chief of Staff

10 and the President. And he came back to me much later that night and asked me to send

11 a note to the Chief of Staff confirming or, you know, conveying in writing my resignation,

12 which I did.

13 Q Mr. Pottinger, you spoke about the attack -- of the tweet that Mr. Trump put

14 out about the Vice President. Did you hear any of the speech that day of the former

15 President?

16 A No, I -- I was at the -- with the Indian ambassador almost -- almost precisely

17 the same -- I think I was commuting to that engagement while the President was

18 speaking. I don't recall hearing the President's speech, except in clips that were being

19 recycled in the news broadcast following -- you know, as the day deteriorated.

20 Q What was your impression upon hearing those words, not realtime, but the

21 clips, in terms of further attacks on the Vice President?

22 A Yeah, I mean, the -- you know, it was clear that the language had, at a

23 minimum, inspired tens of thousands or more demonstrators to march to the Capitol.

24 saw some of the clips that others who spoke at the Ellipse had made as well. There was

25 one -- I remember the word "combat" being used. These were -- these were -- this was
 63

1 intemperate language that I think contributed to the general mood that -- that would

2 inspire some to take violent steps.

3 Q You weren't the only person to resign that day on January 6th from the NSC.

4 I think there was four or five others. Do you remember their names?

5 A Well, I think that those resignations may have come the next day, to be

6 honest. I don't -- there were some other resignations I read about, but I don't think I

7 read about them -- any NSC staff resigning until the following day, yeah.

8 Q Did you inform anyone other than your wife, of course, and Mr. O'Brien, but

9 anyone else on the 6th that you were resigning?

10 A I recall at some point later in the day, after I had already informed Robert

11 O'Brien and my wife, I would have told a couple of close aides and asked them to help me

12 get all of my paper, all of my records into those National Archives boxes, to ensure that

13 we're labeling that stuff.

14 So I don't remember the timing. It wasn't until certainly at least a few hours

15 after I made the decision to resign, and sometime after that, there was a news report that

16 came out that said I was considering resigning, so something spilled out at that point. In

17 fact, I -- the report was inaccurate. I had already -- I had already decided then. And, in

18 fact, informed the National Security Advisor that I was resigning at that point, but the

19 rumors started to get out.

20 Q How was your resigning received by the people that you told that day or the

21 days after?

22 A Yeah, you know, I told a few more staffers early the next morning before I

23 walked out, that I had resigned. I do remember telling some of the NSC staff -- senior

24 staff that they should feel that they are under no pressure to resign, that I will certainly

25 respect whatever decision they make, whether it's to resign or to stay in office, but I did
 64

1 emphasize that staying in office had the benefit of ensuring continuity, ensuring that the

2 White House was well-informed about developments in the world, that the President

3 would still get the benefit of good advice, and that the transition, while it was very far

4 along at that point, would also be assisted by them staying on.

5 I do remember telling privately a couple of staff that if they stayed on -- if they

6 were feeling that they wanted to leave but elected to stay on, that I would always be a

7 character witness for them at any point in their lives, to make clear that they stayed on

8 for the country and for the best reasons .

9 Q I mean, it sounds like after four years working with the same people, it's an

10 emotional decision to leave in that moment for those reasons; is that fair to say?

11 A Yes, correct.

12 Q And it sounds like it was well received, and the reasons for your departure

13 was understood by the folks who worked with you?

14 A I think so. The Chief of Staff did receive my written resignation the night of

15 the 6th. He wrote back very quickly to thank me for my service. Robert O'Brien wrote

16 back, again, to thank me for my contributions over the course of those four years, and

17 certainly it's emotional, but it was a pretty emotional day for the whole country. It was

18 a trauma. It was a traumatic day.

19 Q Was there any sense from the other people who resigned within the NSC the

20 next day that those were decisions that were made independently, or was there a sense

21 that collectively people had had enough?

22 A I don't know the answer to that. I can only say that I did not -- those senior

23 directors who resigned did not ask me for my view of whether or not they should resign.

24 I think they made those decisions themselves, personally and automatically, and whether

25 they spoke to one another, I honestly don't know. But it was not coordinated with the
 65

1 leadership. It was not coordinated with the National Security Advisor or myself,

2 those -- those resignations.

3 Q Okay. Before I ask anyone else if they have any questions, I just wanted to

4 go back to -- did you see Mr. Trump at all during the day of the 6th?

5 A No, not at all.

6 Q Did you learn where he was located or what he was doing?

7 A I had heard that he was in his dining room around -- you know, that became

8 clear to me after the Chief came out and we had our conversation -- that he was there.

9 But I did not monitor his -- his exact location on the campus for the rest of the day.

10 Q And once you went back your office around that 3:00 o'clock timeframe, did

11 you ever go back to the Oval or outer Oval?

12 A Not that I recall. Not that I recall. Yeah.

13 Q What time did you leave that day on the 6th?

14 A I stayed at my desk through the night.

15 Q Why was that?

16 A Because the National Security Advisor had asked me to remain in place until

17 he could get back from Florida, and his -- he finally -- you know, for logistical reasons that

18 are not terribly interesting, but just having do with flight requirements for pilots in the Air

19 Force and so forth. They had to have a certain interval before the pilots were allowed to

20 fly back. You know, "crew rest" is the term or the technical term, I think.

21 So O'Brien didn't get back until very late that night, and then we spoke by phone

22 from his secure SCIF at his -- at his residence. And so I elected to stay through the night

23 until he came in the next morning and I could give him an out brief, which I did. And

24 then -- and then I took, you know, my belongings, which was just a shopping bag full of,

25 you know, Advil and Tums -- you know, just a few items, and I walked out. Everything
 66

1 else got shipped to the -- that morning off to the National Archives.

2 While I was at my desk, I was also doing really mundane things in addition to just the

3 watching the certification of that election in the wee hours of that morning. I was filing

4 my financial disclosure forms, which is -- which is a chore. It's not a 15-minute task,

5 filing all of that stuff. So I spent the night sort of working on that, and writing -- writing

6 final e-mails to staff and so forth, and then leaving the next morning.

7 Q Did you watch the certification process as it started from 8:00 p.m. until 3:10

8 a.m., I believe?

9 A Yeah, it was running in my office. I was, you know, making phone calls and

10 focused on getting organized in order to leave. So I was not 100 percent focused on it,

11 but I was certainly monitoring the progress. And I heard several of the speeches that

12 were delivered.

13 Q And what was your sense, once that process had ended? Did -- Vice

14 President Pence had done his duties that day?

15 A Yeah. Well, that the -- that the system had held, that -- that we finished

16 that 24-hour period the way we started, as a rule of law society, with an election that

17 had, while contested and while the President had the right to contest an election,

18 nonetheless was adjudicated according to due process under the Constitution and our

19 laws. So I think that it was a relief to see that -- that outcome, quite frankly. Yeah.

20 Q Did you ever return to your office, then, after January 7th, the morning of?

21 A No, no.

22 Mr. Pottinger, I don't have any more questions. Thank you for

23 your service, but I will turn it to

24 BY

25 Q So, Mr. Pottinger, when you were at the Indian ambassador's residence, was
 67

1 General Keith Kellogg, the senior national security official at the White House?

2 A Yeah, that's probably fair to say. You know, he is -- General Kellogg was the

3 senior-most national security official, even though he wasn't technically, at that point, a

4 National Security Council staffer. He was a personal staffer to the Vice President, but he

5 was also an assistant to the President in rank, which is the senior-most rank. And, of

6 course, that would make the answer affirmative to your question. He was the

7 senior-most national security-focused official in the West Wing.

8 Q And did you talk to General Kellogg about what had transpired when you

9 were away from the White House?

10 A No. I did receive -- if I remember correctly, he had come looking for me

11 while I was at that embassy, and that was one of the things that I was informed about

12 once I got out of the lunch into the car, and we had the wireless alert. And then I spoke

13 to my staffer who said, you need to get back. You need to get back quickly. So I

14 definitely saw Keith shortly after I got back.

15 Q Did General Kellogg tell you anything about his interactions with the

16 President that day?

17 A I do not recall him mentioning interactions with the President. It's possible

18 that he had not yet interacted with the President, but we talked about -- you know, we

19 saw the TV and what was transpiring there, but I don't recall him conveying something

20 specifically about the President.

21 Q Did General Kellogg tell you anything about his interactions with lvanka

22 Trump that day?

23 A No.

24 Q Do you know whether there were efforts to persuade the President to say

25 something more forceful about asking the rioters to leave compared to the text messages
 68

1 that we already went through earlier that had things like remain peaceful?

2 A Nothing direct. In other words, I don't recall anyone filling me in on

3 exactly -- it was clear to me that the President was in the company of the Chief of Staff

4 and perhaps others, although I wasn't sure who. I recall having every assumption

5 that -- that it would have been a common sense hope that the President would say

6 something, but I was not looped in on -- on a specific conversations that he was having or

7 the -- whether -- what precisely people were telling him. But I did -- I did assume,

8 probably correctly, that -- that people were trying to encourage him to make a statement.

9 And more things spilled out over time -- phone calls he received, things that I've

10 read about, like any -- any informed citizen has read about, but there were not direct

11 conversation that I was looped into that -- that day.

12 Q Okay. I think you said earlier that the Department of Justice had the lead

13 as far as preparations for January 6th. How do you know that to be case?

14 A I knew that from probably just the regular briefings I get every morning from

15 my staff. You know, we have a -- a Resiliency Directorate. All of the directorates

16 would write summaries of their work streams each night that I would review first thing in

17 the morning. My guess is that that's how I knew. I think it was clear in my mind that

18 the Department of Justice had the lead in advance of January 6th. It wasn't just

19 something that I would have learned that morning.

20 Q Did somebody designate DOJ as the lead agency?

21 A My -- I don't think that there was a formal NSC process to make that

22 designation. It would have been a designation made by the President and the Chief of

23 Staff. That's my best guess.

24 Q Well, I don't want you to guess. Do you know whether, in fact, that

25 happened?
 69

1 A I don't know when the designation would have been made formally that DOJ

2 had the lead for that day, but remember, we had had a lot of demonstrations. We had

3 some violent demonstrations prior to the 6th of January, including right outside the

4 White House earlier that year. The DOJ had the lead in those instances as well. So at

5 this point, it felt more or less like standard operating procedure that the Department of

6 Justice and the FBI would have had -- would have had the lead.

7 Q And then you said earlier that it was after the 2:24 Presidential tweet about

8 the Vice President that you decided you were going to resign. Was it your belief that

9 that tweet had -- in some ways, had contributed to the ongoing violence?

10 A Well, I couldn't have -- I couldn't have known what the effect of the tweet

11 was, because I received that tweet pretty soon -- you know, probably a matter of minutes

12 after it was issued. So I made a decision to leave before I could have observed the

13 knock-on effects of it, but I thought that it was a reasonable assumption that this was

14 something that would contribute to a -- to inflaming emotions, not tamping down

15 emotions.

16 I don't have --

17 I don't have anything further. Does anybody else have any

18 questions before we go off the record.

19 Mr. Pottinger. If I could just close with one thing.

20 Yes, please.

21 Mr. Pottinger. You know, as I -- which is simply that, you know, I mentioned that

22 this day was a national trauma, and I do want to state that we have something

23 approaching a kind of an epidemic -- an epidemic of officials -- not only Republicans,

24 Democrats as well -- who have alleged fraudulent or illegitimate or stolen elections in

25 recent years. And this has got to stop. This has really got to stop, because when you
 70

1 take an oath of office, you accept that we are a nation of laws, and, you know, you

2 can -- you can be concerned about election fraud. We know that election fraud has

3 happened at many points over the course of our history.

4 But you either -- if you take that oath, you have to accept that we're a nation of law, and

5 that there's a due process, that there's a prescription under our the laws and under the

6 Constitution for adjudicating contested elections, and that's what we swear our oath to

7 uphold.

8 So I just wanted to make a general statement about that. I think that every

9 official -- Republican and Democrat alike -- national office, local office, down to the level

10 of dogcatcher should read the concession speech made by Al Gore in 2000 and they

11 should read the concession that Richard Nixon gave in 1960. Those are powerful

12 historic examples for all of us to follow, but I'll -- that's -- that's --1 don't have anything

13 else.

14 Thank you.

15 I appreciate you saying that at end.

16

17 Q And I believe in both of those cases, Nixon and Gore, they were serving as

18 Vice President at the time, and therefore, presided over the joint session of Congress that

19 certified the election; is that your understanding?

20 A Exactly 60 years to the day. It was January 6th, 1961, that Vice

21 President -- outgoing Vice President of the United States Richard Nixon certified the

22 election of his opponent for the Office of the President, Senator Jack Kennedy. And

23 President Nixon had very good reason to believe that that election had been stolen

24 through acts of fraud, and he had been encouraged by many people in national life,

25 members of his party, some members of the press to contest that election, and he
 71

1 elected not to contest it.

2 I wrote down his quote. He said, "It would tear the country to pieces. You

3 can't do that." He said, "In our campaigns, no matter how hard fought they may be, no

4 matter how close the election may turn out to be" -- which was a euphemism for up to

5 and including fraud -- "those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win."

6 And that is why our republic has -- is singularly exceptional in the history of humankind, in

7 that we have had a predictable, peaceful transition of government for two and a half

8 centuries. It's an amazing achievement, and it's -- we've got a strong system and a

9 resilient system, but why test -- why test the outer limits of that resilience.

10 We've got to knock it off in both parties, candidates on both sides who are making claims

11 of illegitimacy of our elections or that the election has been stolen. The republic is

12 bigger than any candidate -- anyone -- all the way up to and including the President of the

13 United States, and that's the beauty of our system.

14 BY
15 Q It sounds like, Mr. Pottinger, that you are making a direct connection

16 between the claims of the stolen election and to the events of January 6th?

17 A That's right. I've always believed that the President and his supporters

18 have been well within their rights to contest under due process, under the rule of law, in

19 peaceful ways -- to contest the outcome of that election. Maybe there was significant

20 fraud. I haven't seen the evidence for it, but it's possible.

21 And so at the end of the day, if we swear an oath under God that we are not a

22 nation under men, but under laws, you have to accept, no how bitter the outcome or how

23 much you believe the outcome to be unfair or -- you have to accept the outcome under

24 the Constitution. Otherwise, we don't have a republic, and that would be the worst

25 outcome for -- not just for the United States, but really for humanity. I still believe that
 72

1 we are the great hope of humanity and that our system of government is -- as imperfect

2 as it is -- is the closest thing to perfection that we've been able to come up with so far.

3 Q Do you hold Mr. Trump accountable for the acts of violence that occurred on

4 January 6th because of the promotion of the stolen election?

5 A I don't believe that he had planned or ordered or hoped for violence. You'll

6 have to ask -- ask him what was in his heart, but there's no denying that the people who

7 perpetrated acts of violence, even though they were a fraction of a percent of the

8 number of demonstrators out there that day. There were a lot of people out there

9 expressing their views legitimately under their First Amendment right to assemble

10 and -- but that fraction of a percent sure made of a hell of a difference, didn't it, in the

11 history of our country, and what happened that day. They used violence, and they were

12 inspired by the President, even though I don't believe that they were instructed by the

13 President to do that.

14 So there is a -- there is a moral connection and a moral responsibility that rests

15 with the President, but even though I don't think there was a conspiracy or -- or some

16 kind of instruction to commit violence. You'll know better than me by the time you've

17 completed your investigation of what all the facts were that day, but that's my

18 impression.

19 Understood. Anything else.

20 Ms. Murphy, I see that you have rejoined us. We are wrapping up. Mr.

21 Pottinger made some closing remarks, but our questioning is complete.

22 Ms. Murphy. No, I'm all good. Thanks.

23 Great. Thank you, Mr. Pottinger, and we will go off the

24 record.

25 [Whereupon, at 2:11 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

 73

1 Certificate of Deponent/Interviewee

4 I have read the foregoing _ _ pages, which contain the correct transcript of the

5 answers made by me to the questions therein recorded.

10 Witness Name

11

12

13

14 Date

15