Jack Smith grills Bernie Kerik for 5 hours about Rudy Giuliani's part in Jan. 6 plot: report
Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik met with prosecutors for special counsel Jack Smith Monday as part of the investigation into the 2020 election plot, CNN reported on Monday.
According to the report, Kerik, a close ally of Trump associate Rudy Giuliani, was asked for information on what Giuliani tried to do to gather evidence that the election was stolen from the former president. He was seen arriving for the interview with his attorney on Monday morning, where he stayed for five hours before they departed.
This comes amid several other steps that Kerik took to cooperate in the investigation. Last month, he reached a deal with the special counsel to turn over documents related to Trump's plot.
The former president was indicted last week on four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against rights, and two charges of witness tampering. He was swiftly arraigned and pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors allege an extensive plot to fraudulently put forward fake electors as a pretext to exclude the certification of real ones, trying to create enough confusion to prevent votes being counted for President Joe Biden. Trump has claimed that he was acting under the good-faith advice of counsel and that the investigation criminalizes his political speech, although the indictment goes out of its way to differentiate between the former president's speech and actions.
No one else has been indicted in the case so far, although the indictment lists several unnamed co-conspirators, and the facts laid out strongly hint that Giuliani and fellow Trump lawyer John Eastman are among them.