Willard Hotel (nonfiction)
The Willard InterContinental Washington, commonly known as the Willard Hotel, is a historic luxury Beaux-Arts[3] hotel located at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Downtown Washington, D.C. It is currently a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[4] Among its facilities are numerous luxurious guest rooms, several restaurants, the famed Round Robin Bar, the Peacock Alley series of luxury shops, and voluminous function rooms.[5] Owned jointly by Carr Companies and InterContinental Hotels & Resorts,[6] it is two blocks east of the White House, and two blocks west of the Metro Center station of the Washington Metro.
Rolling Stone article
In the days and hours before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, diehard Donald Trump allies gathered at Washington’s Willard Hotel, hunkered down as the last-ditch efforts to overturn the 2020 election went forward. What exactly they were doing in those meetings was a subject of intense interest for Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation, but the committee ran into the limits of its powers as it struggled to reconstruct the specifics of those eleventh-hour meetings.
Now, special counsel Jack Smith’s office is taking its shot, hoping to figure out exactly what went down in the Willard “war room” — and just how involved Trump himself was in the Willard-based efforts to stop the transfer of power to then president-elect Joe Biden.
Special counsel investigators are grilling witnesses about the crucial Willard meetings, two people with knowledge of the investigation tell Rolling Stone. It could prove to be a fruitful line of questioning. One former senior Trump administration official, who stayed on through the Jan. 6 riot, simply refers to it as “the crime headquarters.”
The Willard, a luxury hotel a block from the White House, became the site of what participants described as a “war room” for Trump-aligned lawyers and diehard MAGA operatives working to overturn the 2020 election. The summit took place in the days and hours before the certification of electoral college votes on Jan. 6, and participants included Trump advisers and allies such as Giuliani, John Eastman, Bernard Kerik, Boris Epshteyn, and Steve Bannon.
Investigators led by special counsel Jack Smith have questioned multiple witnesses — including then-top Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani — about the timeline and deliberations of the meetings, seeking to reconstruct the events, the sources say. The investigators also plan to bring in additional witnesses who have knowledge of the Willard meetings, the sources add.
The federal investigators are also focused on the level of Trump’s direct involvement in the meetings, the sources say. The then-president reportedly called Rudy Giuliani on Jan. 5 to complain about Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with a plan to block the counting of legitimate electoral college votes, according to interviews conducted by the Jan. 6 Committee.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment on this story. But Smith’s interest in Trump associates’ activities at the Willard Hotel, where the then-president’s lieutenants reportedly oversaw the effort to disrupt the count of legitimate electoral college votes, suggests the special counsel is exploring Trump’s role in and knowledge of the efforts to disrupt the proceedings.
- Special Counsel Probes Team Trump’s Jan. 6 ‘War Room’ @ Rolling Stone (20 July 2023) - The special counsel's investigators are grilling Trump's allies about a series of meetings at the Willard Hotel ahead of Jan. 6, sources tell Rolling Stone
January 6 "war room"
The Washington Post reported on October 23, 2021, that, in the days leading up to the January 6 protest at the US Capitol, a series of rooms and suites in the hotel functioned as an informal "command center" headed by Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani for a White House plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election.[15] The Guardian reported that, during a January 5 meeting at the hotel, lawyer John C. Eastman went through his January 4 memo describing his theory that Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify certain state elector slates the following day, and hand Trump a second term instead.[16] On November 8, 2021, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack issued subpoenas to Eastman and five other Trump allies present at the meeting.[17] On November 30, 2021, The Guardian further reported that Trump personally called his lieutenants at the hotel on the night of January 5 to discuss how to delay certification of the election results.[18] On December 27, 2021, the House select committee announced its intention to investigate that phone call.[19] In testimony before the House select committee on June 28, 2022, Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, confirmed that Trump instructed Meadows to place a phone call to those present in the Willard "war room."[20] As The Guardian reported on July 2, 2022, Trump's request that Meadows place this phone call to Roger Stone and Michael Flynn at the Willard the night before the storming of the Capitol suggests a direct line of communication from the White House to the far-right militias that Stone and Flynn were connected with, including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.[21] On June 28, 2023, The New York Times reported that Giuliani had been voluntarily interviewed by federal prosecutors under a proffer agreement about multiple subjects, including the "war room" at the Willard, where he was present with Eastman, Steve Bannon and Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn.
In the News
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External links
- Who was who in Trump’s Willard Hotel “war room”? @ World Socialist Web Site
- January 6 United States Capitol attack @ Wikipedia
- Who visited the Trump White House before Jan. 6 - The Trump administration never publicly released White House visitor records. But new data released by the Jan. 6 committee offers a never-before-seen glimpse.
- The 147 Republicans Who Still Voted To Overturn The Election After The Capitol Siege @ Huffington Post