Brian Jack is a first-term congressman from Georgia's 3rd District who is very good at Washington. Speaker Mike Johnson put him on the Rules Committee as a freshman. His own class elected him to the Republican Steering Committee. Profiles describe him as a rising utility player.
Before all that, he was Assistant to the President and White House Political Director. And on January 5, 2021, he was the person who called Congressman Mo Brooks to tell him the President wanted him on stage at the Ellipse the next morning.
We know this in detail, because the House committee investigating the attack subpoenaed Jack in December 2021 as one of six people who helped plan the January 5 and 6 rallies, and deposed him under oath on February 11, 2022. The full 51-page transcript is published by the Government Publishing Office.
Most voters in GA-03 have never read it. Here is what's in it.
The list
The deposition walks Jack through his own text messages, which he produced to the committee.
On January 4, 2021, Megan Powers — a former Trump campaign operations director working on the rally — sent Jack a list of six members of Congress: Representatives Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and Mo Brooks, and Senators Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz. She told him where it came from: "Just received from Katrina," meaning Katrina Pierson.
Her next message, read into the record by committee counsel:
"This is who the President wants to be invited to speak for 3 minutes each on Weds."
Jack liked the message. Asked whether he understood "Weds" to mean the January 6 rally where Trump would appear, he answered: "At the time, I suspect that I did understand that to be in reference to the rally at which the President would appear."
Committee counsel asked whether he understood those six to be the members who had announced they would object to certifying the election. Jack's answer:
"I did not at the time, to the best of my recollection, understand any specific position that they had, but I did understand them to be allies of the President."
When counsel pressed on whether Jack had talked to any of those six about their plans to object, his attorney — Stanley Woodward — objected that the question was outside the scope of the subpoena, and the deposition went off the record for a conference between lawyer and client.
He tried to hand it off. Then he did it himself.
Jack's first instinct, in writing, was to push the assignment away. He texted Powers back: "Do we (OPA) need to coordinate?" — the White House Office of Political Affairs, his shop. Then: "Seems like it would be OLA" — the Office of Legislative Affairs, which handles Congress.
Asked why, Jack testified: "at the time, my office was not involved with the event on January 6th at all, so I suspect that I did not want to -- I suspect at the time I did not want to engage, you know, in an event that I was not yet involved in."
The next morning, January 5, Powers followed up: "Were you able to discuss on the plane?" Counsel then put it plainly:
"Okay. Well, I mean, you know you did help, right? You end up reaching out to Representative Brooks. Is there a reason why you took this on, as opposed to OLA?"
Jack: "I suspect it was because Megan Powers is a friend, and I knew that I could quickly reach out to some of these Members or their staffs to assist her."
The four-minute phone call
Jack texted Brooks, then called him. He told the committee the call ran about four minutes and that he chronicled it at the time. In his words:
"I recall informing him that the President was amenable to his participation, though understanding if he was unable to participate. And I recall, you know, conveying to him that if he were interested, there's a point of contact with the organizers with whom he or his staff could speak."
Brooks' reaction: "I recall him being honored, or something to that effect."
At 12:50 that afternoon, Jack texted the organizers: "we've handed over Brooks."
He did not stop there. The transcript covers a parallel exchange with Maggie Mulvaney — "we're working on Hawley, Cruz, and Blackburn." He also received a text from Vernon Jones, then a Georgia Democrat, asking Jack to "get the word to President Trump about my announcement tomorrow at the White House rally with Stop the Steal." Jones spoke at the rally the next day.
Brooks confirmed the call independently, and on the record, in a 2021 statement from his own congressional office:
"Per my cell phone records, on Tuesday morning, January 5, I had a telephone call with Brian Jack, White House Political Director. He asked me to speak at the Trump rally the next day."
What Brooks did with the invitation
Standing at the Ellipse the next morning, Brooks told the crowd that "today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass." He was wearing body armor under a windbreaker, a fact he volunteered to Slate months later: "That's why I was wearing that nice little windbreaker. To cover up the body armor." He has since said the "kicking ass" line was about beating Democrats in future elections.
Whatever Brooks meant, he showed up to a rally he had been personally invited to by the White House expecting enough danger to wear a vest. Within hours the Capitol was breached.
What Jack says he did that day
Counsel asked Jack to walk through January 6. He had been up late — the Georgia Senate runoffs were called around 3 or 4 a.m. — so he slept in and went to his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building sometime that afternoon.
Q: "Before you arrived, were you aware of any violence at the Capitol?" A: "I suspect at the time I saw Twitter reports or news reports, but I don't specifically recall exactly what I was aware of when I entered the White House grounds."
Q: "So what do you -- as best you can, how do you remember learning of the violence starting at the Capitol? You think it was through Twitter?" A: "Either through Twitter or watching the -- watching the news at home."
He testified he did not go to the West Wing that day, did not see or speak to the President, does not recall speaking to Mark Meadows, had no input into Trump's tweets, and saw the 4:17 p.m. "go home" video only after it went out.
Why this still matters
Take Jack's testimony entirely at face value. Believe that he didn't know the six names on the list were the members planning to object. Believe that he only made the calls because a friend asked. Believe he learned about the attack from Twitter.
What is left is still this: the President's political director personally called a sitting congressman, told him the President wanted him on that stage, and handed his contact to the rally organizers. That call was one of the last links in the chain that assembled the program at the Ellipse — the program that ended with a crowd walking to the Capitol.
Jack has never had to answer for it in front of the people he now represents. He has not held an in-person town hall in the district. Constituents in Newnan organized their own in March 2025 after his office told them there were no dates set, and a petition asking him to hold one has been circulating since.
The transcript is free. It is 51 pages. Anyone who wants to ask him about it now has the page numbers.
We deserve better.
Source
Transcribed Interview of Brian Jack, February 11, 2022 — Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, published by the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Subpoena reporting: "Jan. 6 rally organizers issued subpoenas," Roll Call, December 10, 2021. Photo: official congressional portrait via Wikimedia Commons.
