Over the course of two months of hearings, the committee used hundreds of taped depositions, as well as key witnesses who testified live, to present a devastating case that Trump sought multiple avenues to try to overturn the presidential election in 2020 even. after being told he lost, that the former president knew in advance that Jan. 6 could turn violent and that he chose not to act when his supporters attacked the Capitol and killed lawmakers, to not to mention his own vice president. – In danger.
The most damning accounts came not from Trump’s political opponents but from his inner circle in the White House, as several former Trump White House and campaign aides recounted firsthand the president’s unwillingness to accept reality and abandon their delusions about the elections. Even Trump’s own family members, such as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, offered testimony that sometimes painted the former president in an unflattering light.
The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, relied almost exclusively on testimony from GOP officials and nonpartisan officials during its set of hearings in an attempt to counter criticism of partisanship.
“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies. It is, instead, a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials , people who worked for him. years and his own family,” Cheney said. “They have come forward and told the truth to the American people.”
The committee’s investigation isn’t done either, as Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, said the committee plans to hold more hearings in September. But the panel’s set of eight hearings was notable for multiple reasons for fleshing out the details of how the U.S. Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6.
All the President’s Men (and Women).
For two years, congressional Democrats ran into a stone wall in the White House as they tried to investigate every aspect of the Trump administration. Beyond a few notable exceptions, notably the officials who came forward during Trump’s first impeachment, the shutdown was successful in evading accountability.
Things have been different with the January 6 commission.
In general, former White House officials came forward and spoke to the committee, which conducted more than 1,000 interviews in total. Some required a subpoena, but everyone from Trump’s former personal assistant Nick Luna to spokesman Jason Miller to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testified before the panel in taped depositions on video Much of the Jan. 6 story was already known, both from real-time reporting of what was happening in the West Wing and stories broken by CNN and others throughout the investigation, such as the more than 2,300 text messages released by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and obtained by CNN.
But the testimony of those in the room with Trump at crucial moments allowed the committee to tell the story of Jan. 6 from firsthand accounts. Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Trump reacted when he told him the claims of voter fraud were “bulls***.” Former Trump White House counsel Eric Herschmann said he warned the plan to kick out voters on Jan. 6 “will cause riots in the streets.”
And Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified live at a surprise hearing in late June, provided easily the most damning testimony about how she heard Trump say he didn’t care that the Jan. 6 crowd was armed and was told that Trump lashed out in anger at the Secret Service when he was not allowed to go to the Capitol after his speech. Some Trump aides still refused to testify before the panel, including Meadows and Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Although the Justice Department chose not to prosecute Meadows, who did commit to the committee, Bannon was convicted by a jury on Friday of being held in contempt of Congress after the DOJ indicted him for defying the subpoena of the committee earlier this year. He will be sentenced in September.
The White House power vacuum
There was a consistent theme throughout the Jan. 6 hearings: Trump was told over and over again that the election wasn’t stolen and that he couldn’t overturn it, but he ignored that advice and found confidants who they told him what he wanted to hear. .
Instead of listening to Barr or Cipollone, he turned to Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, lawyers who told him the election had been stolen. When Barr’s replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, also refused to accept Trump’s baseless fraud claims, the president considered replacing him with someone who did, Jeffrey Clark.
Instead of following the advice of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who waited until the Electoral College confirmed Joe Biden’s victory on Dec. 14 to declare Biden president-elect, Trump cut off communication with McConnell and went to embrace House Republicans who were plotting to reject constituents through Congress. on January 6
No one seems to have been able to stand up to Trump and tell him to back down.
The committee presented first-hand accounts of two wild meetings that took place in the Oval Office. The first happened in December 2020 when Trump brought Powell and Michael Flynn into the Oval Office, where he was presented with draft executive orders to confiscate voting machines. Herschmann said the meeting was so heated between White House lawyers and Powell and Flynn that it turned into a shouting match.
“It was really unprecedented … I thought it was crazy,” he said in a deposition video, adding that he told foreign allies to “shut the F up.”
Cipollone stated that he “didn’t understand how they got in” in the first place.
The second Oval Office meeting took place a few weeks later, just days before January 6, when Trump confronted Rosen and Clark in a meeting where he openly considered installing Clark at the top of the Justice Department .
Trump only backed down after his White House counsel and DOJ leaders told him there would be mass resignations if Trump made the move. DOJ officials testified how they argued forcefully that the arguments Clark was making to involve the DOJ in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election had no legal basis.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Donoghue said in a video statement that he told Clark at the meeting: “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill? “.
The January 6 toll for officials
At various points in the Jan. 6 hearings, the committee made a point to illustrate how Trump’s attacks on the election and the violence that occurred at the Capitol had impacts that went far beyond the political field
At the committee’s opening hearing, Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards testified about injuries she suffered at the hands of rioters. The committee brought in state officials such as Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, who received numerous threats after Trump attacked them. One of the most heartbreaking moments came from the testimony of Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, who were volunteer election workers in Atlanta during the 2020 election.
They were falsely attacked by Giuliani for passing a USB drive (it was a ginger mint), and both described how it turned their lives upside down, forcing them into hiding. Moss stated that she felt “helpless”, gained 60 pounds and stopped handing out her business card because “I don’t want anyone to know my name”.
Her mother, whose video was shown alongside her daughter’s testimony, testified that she stopped using her name even though she was known as “Lady Ruby”.
“I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people, starting with (Trump) and his ally Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me, and my daughter, Shaye, for lying about how they were stolen elections”. Freeman said.
Trump aides who testified faced their own backlash. Trump’s allies have waged an all-out campaign to try to discredit Hutchinson’s testimony, whose hearing was announced just a day in advance over concerns about harassment and threats.
Sarah Matthews, the former deputy press secretary who testified publicly Thursday, was attacked by the House GOP’s Twitter account during Thursday’s hearing, though the tweet was later deleted. He currently works for a House GOP committee.
GOP lawmakers played a big role in Trump’s scheme
Trump’s allies in Congress played a major role on Jan. 6 in opposing the House to certify Biden’s electors in two states, forcing debate that the mob abruptly interrupted.
But behind the scenes, the Jan. 6 committee hearing showed the important role many Republicans in Congress played in helping Trump’s plan.
Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, for example, brought Clark to the White House in December 2020 to introduce him to Trump, kicking off a push to replace the DOJ leadership with a loyalist.
Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, was lobbying Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on the morning of Jan. 6 to sign a letter of support for the state’s electors to decertify Biden, Bowers told the committee during his testimony last month.
And an aide to Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, texted a Pence aide on Jan. 6 asking if Johnson could hand-deliver to Pence the slates of Trump’s fake voters from Michigan and Wisconsin . The aide said no and that the delivery did not take place, but questions remain about why Johnson was trying to deliver the fake voters to Trump.
After Jan. 6, the House Select Committee obtained emails and testimony showing that several House Republicans were seeking pardons. This included an email that Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks sent to the White House in January 2021 suggesting blanket pardons to…