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“We’re talking about setting up Operation Hall Pass, which I don’t know anything about and if you accuse me of knowing something about, I’ll deny it. But there would be some person’s cell phone which might be” and he recites a phone number beginning with 971.

“But,” he continues, “that was just random numbers that I screened up. That’s not anybody’s actual cell phone. And if you say ‘I am at the west entrance’ during a session in text to that number there, that somebody might exit that door while you’re standing there.

“But I don’t know anything about that, I don’t have anything to do with that, and if I did, I wouldn’t say that I did. But anyway, the number that I didn’t say was (he repeats it). So don’t text that number. But a number like that. Make sure you say what exit you’re at too.”

A woman off camera asks him to repeat the number.

He continues, “If I were to say a number, it might be something like” and repeats his number again.

Sources say Rep. Mike Nearman, R-Independence, was shown on video surveillance footage exiting the Capitol on Dec. 21. Demonstrators gained access directly afterward, setting up a showdown ... According to one person with knowledge of the investigation, after Nearman exited the Capitol he appears to have walked around the building and used his ID badge to re-enter from the south side. The Legislature was meeting in a special session on Dec. 21 to approve a variety of new spending measures and extend the state’s ban on residential evictions. The Capitol building has been closed to the public since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Reached Thursday morning, Nearman repeatedly declined to discuss the matter. Asked about the footage and whether he’d allowed demonstrators into the Capitol, he repeated: “I just don’t have anything to say.” Nearman asked who had told OPB there was surveillance footage.