A new testimony transcript released by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot revealed that former President Donald Trump had “grudgingly” accepted his 2020 presidential loss in Arizona.
Mick Mulvaney, the former acting White House chief of staff, spoke with the committee in July about a conversation he had with Richard Grenell, former acting director of the U.S. National Intelligence, days after the 2020 election.
As they both discussed Trump’s “state of mind” at the time, Grenell told Mulvaney, in an in-person conversation, that he spoke with the then-president, telling him that “we had really lost Arizona,” according to the interview transcript.
“It was his [Grenell] impression, as he articulated to me, that the [former] President wasn’t happy about that, but grudgingly accepted it,” Mulvaney told the committee.
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However, Grenell on Friday denied this incident and said that he didn’t know the details about the election results in Arizona.
“This isn’t true. I worked in Nevada in 2020 and didn’t know the details of Arizona at that time,” he wrote on Twitter, sharing parts of Mulvaney’s interview transcript.
But, Mulvaney told the House committee that Grenell went to Arizona to “examine” the GOP’s investigation into the state’s election results, which later revealed that there was no proof that Trump won there.
The results revealed that Joe Biden won Maricopa County by 45,000 votes, which were crucial to his 10,500-vote victory in Arizona, according to the Associated Press.
“He was the president’s guy,” Mulvaney said of Grenell. “He was lead on whatever the campaign was doing in Arizona and then he came back and said…that they did not have anything, and that they had, in fact, lost Arizona.”
Mulvaney added that his conversation with Grenell happened at a time when Trump was still “taking the position that Arizona had been stolen” despite a lack of evidence.
“I didn’t realize till I sat here today about the conversation I had with Grenell…Obviously you’re going to reach out to him now, I understand that,” Mulvaney told the committee.
Mulvaney’s testimony before the committee was one of dozens of witness transcripts that the House panel released shortly after it published it final report last week, which outlined alleged efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump, who announced his 2024 presidential bid in November, has repeatedly touted baseless claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election and alleged that it was stolen for him, even though many Republican lawyers and judges concluded otherwise.
Newsweek reached out to Grenell through his election integrity-focused organization Fix California for comment.
