A seemingly drunk Rudy Giuliani was key to convincing former President Donald Trump to plunge the nation into chaos and simply declare victory on the night of the 2020 election, drowning out the voices of some of Trump’s closest advisers who preferred wait for the final results.
This was just one of the bombshells of the second hearing of the Committee on Monday, January 6, as panel members tried to answer a famous question from another case of presidential irregularity: what did the president know and when did he go? to know?
Committee members came out eagerly on Monday, trying to answer that question once and for all.
MP Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who is taking the lead in this hearing, began her opening statement by saying that Trump was “consciously” based on false claims that there was widespread electoral fraud to deceive his supporters because believe that the 2020 elections were stolen. “Something I knew was wrong.”
“Mr. Trump’s closest advisers knew it. Mr. Trump knew it,” Lofgren said.
The committee also revealed that Trump’s “official electoral defense fund,” which raised hundreds of millions of dollars for a Political Action Committee set up after his loss, did not actually exist, but was a ploy. marketing to redirect money to other enriching entities. those closest to him.
A slide drawn by congressional investigators noted that $ 5 million went to Event Strategies, which helped organize the rally at The Ellipse near the White House, where Trump shot an angry mob that later attacked the Capitol buildings. They also noted that $ 1 million went to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, nonprofit Conservative Partnership Institute, another $ 1 million went to the America First Policy Institute to support candidates loyal to Trump nationwide and $ 204,857 was channeled to the Trump Hotel Collection. .
“The big lie was also a big scam,” Lofgren said.
Co-Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) said the panel would explore this item at a future hearing.
As for that hearing, it officially began 47 minutes late, after Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien stopped testifying because his wife came in part. When the hearing finally began, President Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said that today it was about telling “the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election.”
“As a result of his loss,” Thompson continued, “Trump decided to launch an attack on our democracy, trying to steal from you and your voice in our democracy, and in doing so he ignited the wick that caused the horrible violence of January 6th. ”
Cheney followed this statement by saying that Trump ignored the evidence and instead “followed the advice of a seemingly drunk Rudy Giuliani,” who told him to just reject the results and fight anyway.
The committee played video footage of some of Trump’s closest aides – Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller – talking about the unwanted role played by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
In the videos, Trump advisers said Giuliani appeared to be drunk on election night and repeatedly insisted on talking to Trump, as Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden and the White House mood. it was getting worse.
“It was too early to make such a call. The ballots were still being counted. The ballots had yet to be counted,” Stepien said in February. “My recommendation was to say that the votes were still being counted, it was too early to call the race.”
In his videotaped statement, Miller told the committee that “we shouldn’t go and declare victory until we have a better idea of the numbers.” But Giuliani was defiant and told them, “We won it, they’re stealing it from us … we have to go and say we won.”
Miller said Giuliani’s aggressive tone was that “anyone who disagreed with this position was being weak.”
The former attorney general also repeatedly said he told Trump the allegations of widespread voter fraud were incorrect.
“I thought, boy, if you really believe in these things, you’ve lost touch, you’ve become detached from reality if you really believe in these things,” Barr said.
Barr recalled that he organized a luncheon meeting with Associated Press reporter Mike Balsamo, in which the attorney general told him, without a doubt, that the DOJ had not seen levels of fraud that were not even in close to affecting the results of the 2020 election. Barr told the committee he hoped to be fired from the White House later that afternoon. Instead, he met with Trump in the Oval Office, where the president was outraged and outlined conspiracy theories.
Barr said Trump was “as crazy as I’ve ever seen” when he told the president he didn’t think there was anything substantive in allegations of election fraud.
Barr said he was surprised by “stupid claims” and “disturbing allegations” about voting machines and allegedly covert ballot papers that would influence the election to Biden.
“I told them it was crazy and they were wasting their time with it. I was doing a serious service to the country,” Barr told the committee.
Instead of abandoning him, Trump allowed White House adviser Peter Navarro to draft an official report, full of conspiracy theories, that summed up fragile and fabricated evidence to call the election into question. The committee reproduced a video deposition of Alex Cannon, a Trump organization lawyer who later joined the candidate’s campaign, in which he recalled his interactions with Navarro shortly after the mid-November election. .
When Cannon rejected Navarro’s massive fraud thesis, and pointed out how the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency had publicly asserted that the 2020 election was safe, he was personally attacked.
“I remember telling him I didn’t believe Dominion’s allegations, because manual counting in Georgia would solve any problem with the technology problem,” Cannon said.
He recalled that Navarro had accused him of being “an agent of the deep state” working against the president.
Cannon vowed never to receive another call from Navarro.
Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt also testified before the committee Monday that Biden undeniably won in 2020, and upheld his network’s decision to quickly report Trump’s startling losses to the Red States. Arizona and Georgia. Over time, he said, Trump’s loss became more apparent.
“We already knew Trump’s chances were small and getting smaller,” he said.
His testimony was remarkable, as the television network for weeks after the election continued to feed conspiracy theories about lost and destroyed ballots with news so far removed from reality that the company was eventually sued by a machine gun manufacturer. election.
Although Stepien did not appear in person, his recorded statements were strong enough. He repeatedly said he did not believe there was evidence that Trump had won the election, and Stepien said Giuliani and Trump’s insistence on a strategy to claim victory eventually led him to “move away” from the campaign. .
During the second half of the hearing, Lofgren spoke with those who dealt with Trump’s lies on the front lines. BJay Pak, who served as the top federal prosecutor in northern Georgia, said Monday that the FBI was thoroughly investigating a video that allegedly showed a Fulton County election worker storing ballots in a briefcase under a desk, only to find out what the employee was doing. your job and secure the ballots in a locked ballot box.
Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner, later said the city took all allegations of election fraud “seriously” and investigated allegations in the Trump camp that false ballots had been filed on behalf of people. dead.
“Not only was there no evidence of 8,000 dead voters in Pennsylvania, but there weren’t even eight,” Schmidt said.
When Trump tweeted directly to the then city commissioner, Schmidt said, he and his family were inundated with detailed death threats.
“The threats became much more specific, much more graphic and not only included me by my name, but included members of my family, their names, ages, address, pictures of our home, all the details you can imagine, “he said. .