The New York Times is reporting that former Trump aide Stephen Miller was grilled for eight hours by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots, and that the interactions with the committee were at times “contentious.”

Miller, the immigration hardliner who actually publicly previewed the tactics Trump and his allies would use to try to stop the certification of the 2020 election in the weeks before the attack, was in particular asked about the speech Trump delivered at the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the riots.

“Investigators asked Mr. Miller repeatedly about the use of the word ‘we’ throughout Mr. Trump’s speech on the Ellipse, outside the White House, on Jan. 6, 2021, the people said, in an apparent effort to ascertain whether the former president had been directing supporters to join him in taking action to stop Congress from certifying his defeat,” the Times reports. “Mr. Miller argued that the language was no different from any other political speech.”

The portion of the speech in question featured Trump telling the crowd, “We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about… And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal.”

Miller also reportedly clashed with the committee over whether the 2020 election was stolen, even though Trump and his legal team lost every single court case they brought alleging voter fraud was to blame for his defeat.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet