An attorney for two Arizona women subpoenaed by the House Select Commission investigating the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 contends his clients are being targeted by Washington elites trying to scare average Americans into “meekness and compliance.”
Alex Kolodin of Davillier Law Group says Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino are simply retirees who decided to spend their golden years becoming more active participants in the political process. To that end, they were among the 11 Republican electors for Donald Trump listed on the ballot for the 2020 General Election.
Cottle and Pellegrino also joined the other Republican electors in signing and sending an alternate slate of 11 Arizona electors for consideration by then-Vice President Mike Pence during the Jan. 6 Joint Session of Congress. On the slate, Cottle is listed as chairperson while Pellegrino was the secretary.
Now, the women have been directed to provide documents to the congressional committee by 10 a.m. on Feb. 11, as well as participate in depositions about their “role” in the events of January 6 despite the fact they were “thousands of miles away from the Capitol” that day, according to Kolodin.
A deposition allows for the recording of sworn testimony provided by a witness in an out-of-court setting.
“Congress has not come after Nancy and Loraine because they are strong and powerful. It knows that they are not,” Kolodin said Tuesday. “To label these women seditionists is to call dissent itself sedition. By attacking Nancy and Loraine, Washington seeks to raise the price of political opposition to one that normal Americans are no longer willing to pay.”
The subpoenas issued to Cottle and Pellegrino by the House Select Committee last week are among 14 issued to various Republicans in seven states who stood as Trump state electors on Nov. 3. Rep. Bennie Thomas, the Democrat from Mississippi who chairs the commission, has said he believes those subpoenaed have information useful to the commission’s mission.
However, Kolodin warns that all Americans -regardless of political ideology- should be concerned by the January 6 Commission’s actions toward Pellegrino and Cottle, who he says have only exercised their fundamental rights as Americans.
“For Republicans, this is a direct assault on your right to participate in the political process free from fear. And if you aren’t a Republican, then consider carefully whether you would want a Republican Congress to have this kind of power over you,” Kolodin said.
It is an issue all Americans should care about, he said.
‘As the ACLU once put it, if we do not come to the defense of the free speech rights of our political opponents ‘then no one’s liberty will be secure,’” Kolodin said.