The only major issue on the committee’s second day of hearings on Jan. 6 was that President Trump was repeatedly told, including his own attorney general, that his “big lie” about fraudulent elections did not it had foundation. But he made the false statement on election night anyway and has not stopped since.
As they did during the opening hearing, committee members used video testimonials from some of Mr.’s closest friends and advisers. Trump, including scathing comments from former Attorney General William P. Barr, to show that the president should have known that his claims were unfounded.
Here are some other aspects of the second day of hearings.
Trump was described as “detached from reality” after the election.
The video testimony of Mr. Barr was one of the most convincing of the morning, with the former attorney general describing Mr. Trump as increasingly “detached from reality” in the days after the election. In his testimony, Mr. Barr said he told the president repeatedly that his allegations of fraud were unfounded, but that “there was never an indication of interest in what the real facts are.”
Mr. Trump’s unpainted portrait is at the heart of the committee’s argument that Mr. Trump knew his allegations about a fraudulent election were untrue, and he made them anyway. Mr. Barr said that during the weeks leading up to the election, he repeatedly told Mr. Trump “how crazy some of these accusations were.”
The committee is arguing that Mr. Trump was a known liar. But the testimony of Mr. Barr offered another possible explanation: that the president really came to believe the lies he was telling.
“I thought, ‘Boy, if you really believe these things, you’ve lost touch with, with … you’ve broken away from reality, if you really believe these things,'” he said. Barr on the committee.
Two groups surrounded Trump: ‘Team Normal’ vs. ‘Rudy’s Team’.
One thing that became clear on Monday was that there were two different groups of people around Mr. Trump in the days and weeks after the election.
Bill Stepien, the campaign manager for Mr. Trump characterized his team as a “Normal Team,” as opposed to the team led by Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump.
A veteran Republican agent, Mr. Stepien was among the campaign assistants, lawyers, White House advisers, and others who urged Mr. Trump to abandon his unfounded allegations of fraud. Mr.’s team Giuliani was fueling the president’s paranoia and pushed him to revoke the unfounded and fantastic claims of ballot collection, manipulation of voting machines and more. “We call them my team and Rudy’s team,” Stepien told committee investigators in interviews. “I didn’t mind being characterized as part of the normal team.”
Committee members hope that the description of the two competing groups in the orbit of Mr. Trump is proof that Mr. Trump made a decision: listen to the group led by Mr. Giuliani instead of those who led his campaign and worked in his administration. Mr. Trump chose, in the words of “Team Normal,” to hear those “crazy” arguments instead.
An image of election night in the White House appears.
Monday’s hearing opened with a vivid portrait of White House election night, describing the president’s reaction and those around him when Fox News called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. using video testimony from the president’s closest advisers and some of his family. , the committee showed how Mr. Trump rejected the warning advice he received.
Mr. Stepien said in the video that he had urged the president not to declare victory prematurely, after explaining that Democratic votes are likely to be counted later in the night. Mr. Trump ignored him, they said. Stepien and others. Instead, he listened to Rudy Giuliani, whose aides said he was drunk that night, and urged the president to claim victory and say the election was being stolen.
Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News who was fired after making the air call for Arizona, told the committee that the change in performance that night that sparked the president’s allegations of voter manipulation did not it was more than the expected results of the Democratic vote. counted after the Republicans. He expressed pride that his team was the first to accurately name the Arizona results and said there was “zero” chance that Mr. Trump would have won that state.
Millions of dollars were sent to a non-existent “electoral defense fund,” the committee said.
It wasn’t just the “big lie,” according to the Jan. 6 committee. It was also “the big scam.”
In a video presentation that concluded its second hearing, the committee described how Mr. Trump and his campaign collaborators used unfounded allegations of election fraud to persuade presidential supporters to send millions of dollars to something called the “Electoral Defense Fund.” According to the committee, Trump supporters gave $ 100 million in the first week after the election, apparently in the hope that his money would help the president fight to undo the results.
But a committee investigator said there was no evidence that the fund ever existed. Instead, millions of dollars resulted in a super CAP that the president created on November 9, just days after the election. According to the committee, this PAC sent $ 1 million to a charity run by Mark Meadows, its former chief of staff, and another $ 1 million to a political group run by several of its former staff members. , including Stephen Miller, the architect. of the immigration agenda of Mr. Trump.
California Democrat Zoe Lofgren summed up the findings as follows: “Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its deputies were misleading donors as to where their funds would go. and what they would be used for, “she said. dit. “So not only was there this big lie, there was also a big scam. Donors deserve to know where their funds really go. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.”