Trump aide Garrett Ziegler’s sexist audio rant calls Jan. 6 committee racist
Hours later, Ziegler said without evidence that he was being targeted due to his race and posted a lengthy audio file calling the probe “a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign.”
“If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed,” Ziegler said. The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League noted that Ziegler’s words are “often used as a code for Jews.”
“They see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right? And so, today was just a lot of saying that I invoke my right to silence,” Ziegler said, while insisting he is “the least-racist person that many of you have ever met, by the way. I have no bigotry.”
Ziegler also lashed out at former White House colleagues Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, an ex-White House communications director, who have both testified before the committee.
He used sexist and offensive slang words to describe them and said they are “just terrible.”
The audio circulated online late Wednesday after it was posted by the Republican Accountability Project, a group previously dedicated to opposing Trump. The House committee plans to hold its eighth public hearing this summer on Thursday.
Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump WH aide, lost his mind after his interview with the @January6thCmte yesterday.
He accused the committee of being “anti-white” and referred to his female colleagues who spoke out against Trump as “thots and hoes.” pic.twitter.com/S7wOdH3tY1
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) July 20, 2022
Griffin has not publicly commented but reshared a post from ADL leader Jonathan Greenblatt on Twitter that called Ziegler’s language offensive.
This is the kind of offensive language we typically associate with right-wing extremists, not former officials who had access to the Oval Office.
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) July 20, 2022
In the clip, Ziegler said he was speaking from Illinois and had received a subpoena on April 28 but didn’t “throw a tantrum” about it. He said flying in to Washington for the hearing was “a pain” and that he found the whole experience “so one-sided” and lacking a Republican presence. Committee members “loathe my former boss and by extension me,” he added.
He said that he invoked his right to silence “over 100 times” in response to questions from the committee.
Hutchinson appeared before the committee in late June in an explosive and vivid day of testimony. She testified that Trump knew his supporters were carrying weapons the day of the riot but urged them to go to the Capitol anyway.
She also said she had cleaned up Trump-strewn ketchup off a White House wall and pleaded with Meadows to get off his phone and help quell the Capitol riot, among other claims. Trump has dismissed her testimony as “fake” and “fraudulent.” The former president has also called the committee a “Kangaroo Court.”
CNN first reported news of the Ziegler audio clip, prompting a reply from him online: “Total liars! I cherish women,” he said.
Ziegler also posted on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social that the media reports were “hit pieces” and “vicious” — and repeated his misogynistic insults of Hutchinson.
Trump condemned the Jan. 6 attack in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 after aides told him that members of his Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
However, according to individuals familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, he struggled to do so.
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