WASHINGTON – The House Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, presented on Monday a comprehensive case that former President Donald J. Trump created and spread non-stop the lie that his election had been stolen. 2020 on the face. of the growing evidence of a growing heart of advisers who had been legitimately defeated.
The committee, at its second hearing this month, traced the origins and progression of what it has described as Mr. “big lie.” Trump. He showed, through live testimonies and recorded depositions, how the former president, challenging many of his advisers, insisted on declaring victory on election night before the full count of votes, and then tried to challenge his defeat. with increasingly extravagant and baseless claims that it was repeatedly. informed were wrong.
“He’s detached from reality if he really believes these things,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview the panel did on Monday, in which at one point he could not control his laughter. in the face of the absurdity of the statements made by the former president.
“There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” Mr. Barr.
The panel also used the testimony of Bill Stepien, Mr. Campaign’s campaign manager. Trump, who told his investigators that Mr. Trump had ignored his election night warning to refrain from declaring a victory he had no basis to claim. Instead, the president followed the advice of Rudolph W. Giuliani – his personal lawyer who, according to Jason Miller, one of the main campaign collaborators, “definitely intoxicated” – said he had won even though the votes were still they were tabulating.
It was all part of the committee’s commitment to show how the disguise of Mr. Trump on the election results led directly to the events of January 6, when a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in the deadliest attack on the building in centuries, spurred on by the president’s exhortations to “stop the robbers “.
Investigators went further on Monday, detailing how the Trump campaign and its Republican allies used allegations of rigged elections that they knew were false to deceive small donors and raise up to $ 250 million for an entity they called the Official Election Defense Fund, which he heads. Campaigners stated that they never existed.
“Not only was there a big lie,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who played a key role in the hearing, “there was the big scam.”
The money ostensibly raised to “stop the robbery” went to Mr. Trump and his allies, including, according to the investigation, $ 1 million for a charity run by Mark Meadows, his chief of staff; $ 1 million to a political group led by several of its former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Immigration’s immigration agenda. Trump; more than $ 200,000 at Trump hotels; and $ 5 million to Event Strategies Inc., which led the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol riot.
Assistants said Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., received $ 60,000 to speak at the event, a speech that lasted less than three minutes.
“Clearly he intentionally deceived his donors, asked them to make a donation to a fund that didn’t exist, and used the money raised for something other than what he said,” Ms. Lofgren on Mr. Trump.
Read more about the January 6 House Committee hearings
But most of the session was devoted to showing how determined Mr. Trump clung to the fiction that he had won the election, only to delve deeper into it as helper after helper informed him that he had not done so.
According to the committee’s presentation, the list of aides and advisers who tried to turn Mr. Trump away from his false statements was long and varied. They included low-level campaign lawyers who explained how they told the president that performances from the camp showed he was going to lose his career. There were also senior Justice Department officials, including his former attorney general, who explained how they had investigated allegations that the career had been manipulated or stolen and found that not only were they unfounded, but absurd.
“There were suggestions from, I think it was Mayor Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say we had won it directly,” Mr. Miller in a video interview played by the panel.
Mr Stepien later said he considered himself part of the “Normal Team”, while a separate group of external advisers, including Mr. Giuliani, was encouraging the false statements of Mr. Trump.
The committee interpreted several parts of a statement by Mr. Barr, the last attorney general of Mr. Trump, who called the president’s claims a stolen “shit” and “fake” election.
“I told them it was crazy and they were wasting their time,” Mr. Barr. “And it was a big, big skinny service for the country.”
Mr. Trump continued to do so on Monday, and issued a 12-page statement several hours after the end of the committee’s hearing, in which he duplicated his allegations of fraud, complaining, once again, without any evidence. , that Democrats had inflated election censuses. he illegally collected ballots, removed Republican observers from polling polling polls, bribed election officials, and stopped the count on election night when he was still in the running.
“Democrats created the January 6 narrative to downplay the much bigger and more important truth that the 2020 election was manipulated and stolen,” Trump wrote.
On Monday in the courtroom, the panel showed in astonishing detail how Mr. Trump tried and failed to get his lies abandoned and accept defeat. In his statement, Mr. Barr recalled several scenes inside the White House, including one in which he said he asked Mr. Meadows and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, how long Mr. Trump. go ahead with these stolen election stuff. “
Mr. Barr recalled that Mr. Meadows had assured him that Mr. Trump “was becoming more realistic” and knew “how far this can go.” As for Mr. Kushner, Mr. Barr explained that he answered the question by saying, “We are working on this.”
After informing Mr. Trump that his allegations of fraud were false, Mr. Barr had a follow-up meeting with the president and his White House attorney, Pat Cipollone. Mr. Barr described in his statement how Mr. Trump was outraged that his own attorney general had refused to support his allegations of fraud.
“This is killing me,” Mr. Barr quoting Mr. Trump. “You must have said that because you hate Trump.”
In all, Mr. Trump and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results. But among the numerous allegations of fraud, Mr. Barr on the committee, the worst, and most sensational, refers to an alleged plot by Chinese software companies, Venezuelan officials and liberal financier George Soros to hack and hijack machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. votes away from Mr. Trump.
These allegations were most prominently driven by a former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell, who collected several unverified affidavits from witnesses who allegedly had information about Dominion. In the weeks leading up to the election, Ms. Powell, working with a group of other attorneys, filed four federal lawsuits exposing his claims to the Democratic strongholds of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Phoenix, although the Trump campaign had already determined that some of his allegations they were false.
All of the costumes, known as the “Krakens,” a reference to a mythical, ravaging sea beast, were eventually discarded and considered so frivolous that a federal judge sanctioned Mrs. Powell and her colleagues. Dominion has sued her and others for defamation.
Mr. Barr, in his statement, described the allegations against Dominion as “crazy stuff,” a sentiment echoed by other Trump aides whose testimony was presented by the committee.
After Mr. Barr resigned as Attorney General, his successor, Jeffrey A. Rosen, also told Mr. Trump that his allegations of widespread fraud were “denied.”
Another witness who testified Monday and dismissed Mr. Fraud’s allegations. Trump was Byung J. Pak, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who abruptly resigned on January 4, 2021. After speaking with Mr. Barr, Mr. Pak studied allegations of election fraud in Atlanta, including a statement from Mr. Giuliani who had withdrawn a suitcase of ballot papers from under a table at a local counting station on election night.
Mr. Trump and his allies also claimed that there was rampant fraud in Philadelphia, with the former president recently claiming that more people voted in the city than registered voters. In his statement, Mr. Barr called the complaint “junk.” To reinforce this argument, the committee called Al Schmidt, a Republican who served as one of three city commissioners on the Philadelphia County Electoral Board.
Mr. Schmidt rejected allegations of fraud by Mr. Trump and his allies, saying there was no evidence that more people were voting in Philadelphia than those registered there or that thousands of dead people were voting in the city.
Mr. Schmidt also stated that after Mr. Trump posted a tweet accusing him of his name on election fraud, receiving online threats from people who disclosed the names of his relatives, his address and photographs of his home.
Zach Montague and Charlie Savage contributed to the report.