WASHINGTON (AP) – House investigators are exposing the origins of the violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, using video and live testimonies to describe the “call to action.” former President Donald Trump in a December tweet and how White House councilors urged the president to drop his false allegations of election fraud.
In its seventh public hearing, the Jan. 6 panel not only details the plans of extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers before the attack, but keeps the focus on what was happening in the White House at that time. moment.
“A CREATED IN ACTION … A CALL TO WEAPONS”
One of the main focus of the audience is Trump’s December 19 tweet about a “big protest” at the next joint session of Congress: “Be there, it will be wild!”
Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy said the tweet “served as a call to action and, in some cases, as a call to arms.” He said the president “asked for support,” as he said Vice President Mike Pence and other Republicans did not have enough courage to try to block President Joe Biden’s victory at the Jan. 6 joint session.
The tweet “electrified and galvanized” Trump supporters, said Maryland MP Jamie Raskin, especially “the dangerous extremists of the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other white racist and nationalist groups who are spoiled for a fight.” .
Raskin said Trump encouraged groups around a common goal. “Never before in U.S. history had a president asked a crowd to come to contest the counting of electoral votes by Congress,” he said.
A “DOWN” MEETING.
The committee put together video clips of interviews to describe a Dec. 18 meeting, in the hours leading up to Trump’s tweet, almost minute by minute.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified live in front of the panel two weeks ago, called the meeting between White House aides and informal advisers who pushed the allegations of “baffled” fraud in a text that night to another Trump aide. Other aides described “screams” as advisers presented wild theories of untested electoral fraud to support them, and how White House attorneys aggressively backed down.
The video clips included the testimony of attorney Sidney Powell, who had propelled some of the wildest theories, including those of violated voting machines and hacked thermostats that somehow linked him to false allegations of fraud.
White House attorney Eric Herschmann, one of the aides who backtracked, said the theories were “buoys” and “got to the point where the screams were completely, completely out there.”
Assistants described six chaotic hours back and forth, starting with Trump talking to a group of informal advisers with no White House aides present. Both Cipollone and Powell said in interviews that Cipollone, the White House attorney, rushed to adjourn the meeting. Powell said sarcastically that he thought Cipollone set a new “ground speed record” to get there.
Cipollone, who sat down with the committee for a private interview last week after a subpoena, said he didn’t think the group was giving good advice to Trump and said he and the other White House lawyers they kept asking them, “Where is the evidence?” But they didn’t get good answers, he said.
Hours later, at 1:42 a.m., Trump instantly sent followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6.
ADVICE NOT FOLLOWED
As they have done several times before, the committee showed video testimonies from White House attendees who said they did not believe there was widespread election fraud and had told the president. Many said they were firmly convinced that Biden’s victory was a deal made after states certified voters on Dec. 14 and after dozens of Trump campaign demands failed in court.
Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, said her sentiment was that the election had ended after Dec. 14 and “probably before.” Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she was planning for life after the White House at the time. Eugene Scalia, the Labor secretary at the time, said he told the president in a call that it was time to say Biden had won.
Former Trump aide to the press, Judd Deere, said he told Trump that “my personal view was that the polling station had met” and that time had closed to start a litigation.
“I didn’t agree,” Deere said.
A CHANGE IN STRATEGY
The panel is holding hearings to try to establish the truth about the events of January 6 and the weeks before, as Trump and some of his GOP allies try to downplay or deny it altogether. Wyoming MP Liz Cheney, one of the two Republicans on the panel, said at the start of the hearing that the committee had observed “a change in the way Trump’s orbit witnesses and lawyers approach this committee and its strategy ”over the past few weeks. .
Instead of denying their involvement, Cheney said, witnesses and those in Trump’s orbit have increasingly tried to “blame the people his advisers called ‘the madmen.'”
“President Donald Trump is a 76-year-old man. He’s not an impressionable kid,” Cheney said. “And like everyone in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”
He also spoke to people who still believe his false allegations of fraud.
“These Americans had no access to the truth, as Donald Trump did,” Cheney said, and they wanted to believe it. “For millions of Americans, this can be painful to accept. But it’s true.”
Trump has criticized the committee and denied much of his evidence on his social media platform, Social Truth.