Donald Trump’s former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller claims the committee threatened on Jan. 6 to ‘make his life hell’ if he continued to claim that his former boss authorized the National Guard deployment during the Capitol riot.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center said he was ‘frightened’ by aggressive tactics from members of the Democrat-led panel who tried to prevent him from speaking publicly about a narrative that did not agreed with their final report.
Miller’s bombshell claims follow a report by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who reveals that the committee withheld a transcript of an interview with a top White House official in which he told Vice President Liz Cheney and other staffers that Trump wanted to deploy troops.
Cheney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether she or other members of the select committee corresponded with witnesses in a way that could be construed as threatening.
Trump appointed Miller as Pentagon chief in November 2020 after he fired Mark Esper amid efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
He was only in the job for two months, but was brought before the committee during their investigation into the events that unfolded on the day the Electoral College votes were certified.
Miller claims the members intimidated him and warned that they would repeatedly bring him into ‘hours’ of additional testimony if he continued to go on television and defend the former president’s actions.
Former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said he felt “threatened” by the select committee on Jan. 6 to keep quiet about his experiences surrounding the Capitol riot
Miller claims that the former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.), who was vice chairman of the select committee at the time of the Jan. 6 attack, “ran the show.” He speculated: ‘I’m sure Cheney looked at the optics and was like these people are a serious threat to my narrative’
At the time, Miller said, he didn’t have the “resources to continue to fight” the committee and didn’t want to face more rejection for speaking to the media about his experiences.
It was a June 6, 2022, Sean Hannity segment with Miller and Trump national security official Kash Patel that seemed to ‘hit a nerve’, according to the former DOD chief.
“The two of us were on (the Fox News show) and the next day my lawyer got a call from the director of personnel on January 6th — I forgot exactly who it was — but basically he said very legalistically, ‘Well, if your client has additional information he wants to share, we would be happy to re-interview him,” Miller recalled.
He continued: ‘It was more the latent threat of, ‘If you want to keep going on TV, we’re going to drag you back in here for hours of cross-examination.’ So that was the nature of it all’.
‘It was the latent threat that the government continued to intrude into my life.’
Republican communications strategist Erica Knight told DailyMail.com: ‘Knowing how other witnesses close to me were treated, it wouldn’t surprise me if people in the media were also threatened by the committee to stop discussing this issue.’
It is unclear whether any other witnesses or individuals felt they were “threatened” by the committee, but Miller said there was “fear” instilled in him that any discussion of the events of that day with others would cause him to become called for another interview with the panel.
So instead he kept to himself and didn’t discuss his uneasy feelings about the panel with others – until now.
“I didn’t talk about it with anyone else because of the fear or worry,” Miller told DailyMail.com. ‘I didn’t communicate with anyone because I knew that any interaction I had on it would result in me having to… acknowledge that I had been in communication with other people. And then it kind of just opens a whole can of worms with the investigators, which I just didn’t want to do.’
“It was much easier to just not be involved with anyone or talk to anyone about this because it would cause conflict and difficulty with the investigative team,” he added.
‘So I didn’t talk to other people, quite simply.’
Sean Hannity speaks with Miller (right) and Trump-era national security official Kash Patel (center) to discuss the Jan. 3, 2021 Oval Office meeting in which they claim Trump authorized deployment of the National Guard on Jan. 6.
Rioters clash with law enforcement as they storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021
Miller said it was clear to him that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) was the one running the show with the Jan. 6 investigation. He claims the committee’s vice chairman was specifically upset that the ‘optics’ of his public appearances would go against the narrative that Trump was complicit in sedition.
“The piece Kash and I did, it hit a nerve,” Miller told DailyMail.com in an interview. “It was like, d*** getting some attention.”
“I’m sure Cheney looked at the optics and was like these people are a serious threat to my narrative that she was trying to establish,” the former acting defense secretary speculated.
Both Kash and Miller were present at an Oval Office meeting where then-President Trump verbally authorized the Pentagon chief to mobilize the National Guard for deployment to Washington, DC amid threats of violence and protests over the 2020 presidential election results.
The former Trump officials’ testimony to the panel on Jan. 6 included recalling that meeting on Jan. 3, 2021.
The sworn testimony of Kash and Miller was buried or discredited by the select committee as they claimed the two men were politically aligned with the former president.
Miller said he ‘definitely interpreted’ that the panel would ‘make my life hell’ if he continued to go on TV.
“Now, you know, they’ll say, ‘No, that wasn’t it at all.’ We just wanted to make sure we understood all the nuances and complexities.’ But I definitely interpreted that as… don’t fight any town hall type,” he explained.
A review of the panel’s investigation by the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight revealed that Tony Ornato, the longtime Secret Service official in charge of Trump’s security detail on January 6, 2021, corroborated Kash and Miller’s testimony.
Subcommittee chairman Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) released earlier this month the transcribed interview the panel held with Ornato in November 2022.
Previously, Ornato’s testimony was suppressed by the January 6 panel and only briefly mentioned in their final report.
Patel told DailyMail.com in an interview last week that the transcript of Ornato’s interview with the select committee was withheld from the public because evidence that Trump approved the deployment of the National Guard “fights their insurgency claims.”
Christopher Miller (right) looks on with Kash Patel (second from right), Sen. Lindsey Graham (center) and former White House social media director Dan Scavino (left) as Trump speaks in the Diplomatic Room on 27 October 2019
The panel’s taped interview with Miller plays at a committee hearing on January 6, June 23, 2022 at the US Capitol
Miller and Patel were in the Oval Office meeting with Trump on January 3, 2021, when he said that defense officials had the authority to authorize the mobilization and deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops during the Capitol riot.
Also in the meeting was then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
Asked about Miller’s claims that Rep. Cheney was indeed in charge of the investigation, a person familiar with Loudermilk’s report said they could confirm that the Wyoming Republican took an ‘unusually active role’ in the case.
“She participated in nearly every transcribed interview, and her questions almost always focused on bashing Donald Trump,” they added.
It is unusual for a member of Congress to play as large a role as Cheney did while interviewing witnesses. Typically, lawyers and councils conduct interviews, and the members are briefed or read aloud afterwards.
‘(Cheney) didn’t actually have a job at the time, did he? She had been removed from all her committee duties. This is the only thing she did,” Miller said, referring to the congresswoman zeroing in on her role on the panel.
“But it was quite clear that she was very active and involved in the running of the case,” he added. ‘I have no idea about the other guy (chairman Bennie Thompson). I mean, I have no idea what his role was other than I saw him on TV. I’ve never seen him do the day-to-day stuff.’
Miller said he knows Cheney and other members of the panel will play down his claims that they tried to threaten him to stop speaking out about his story, and said it speaks to his naivete that he thought it would not be ‘biased.’
“I think now, when we look at all of Liz Cheney’s hearings, we realize that it was political theater,” the former acting defense secretary claimed.
‘And I was actually naive enough to think it was going to be a serious investigation.’