House investigators trace origins of violence US Capitol on January 6, 2021Using video testimony and living witnesses to illustrate of former President Donald Trump A December tweet included a “call to action” and how White House advisers urged the president to drop his false claims of election fraud.
In its seventh public hearing, Jan 6 Panel Not only is it detailing the plans of extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers prior to the attack, but is turning its attention to what was happening inside the White House at the time.
‘Call to Action? a call to arms’
A major focus of the hearing is Trump’s December 19 tweet about a “big protest” in the upcoming joint session of Congress: “Stay there, it’ll be wild!”
Florida Representative Stephanie Murphy said the tweet “serves as a call to action and in some cases a call to arms.” He said the president “called for backup” because he said Vice President Mike Pence and other Republicans didn’t have enough courage to try to block President Joe Biden’s victory in a January 6 joint session.
The tweets “electrified and galvanized” Trump’s supporters, said Maryland Representative Jamie Ruskin, in particular “dangerous extremists in Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other racist and white nationalist groups are spoiling for a fight.”
Ruskin said Trump encouraged groups around a common goal. “Never before in American history has a president been called by Congress to call a crowd for the counting of electoral votes,” he said.
The committee pieced together video clips from the interview to describe a meeting from December 18, hours before Trump’s tweet, in almost minute-by-minute fashion.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified live before the panel two weeks ago, called the meeting between White House aides and informal advisers “unheard” of the fraud claims in a text to another Trump aide that evening. asked for. Other aides described the “shouting” as the advisers’ wild theories of election fraud with no evidence to support them, and White House lawyers aggressively pushed back.
The video clip included testimony from attorney Sidney Powell, who, including breached voting machines and hacked thermostats, put forward some of the wildest theories that she was somehow bound by false claims of fraud.
White House counsel Eric Hershman, one of the aides pushing back, said the theories were “crazy” and “it got to the point where the scream was completely out there.”
Aides described a chaotic six hours back and forth, in which Trump spoke to a group of informal advisers, with no White House aides present. Cipollone and Powell both said in interviews that White House counsel Cipollone rushed to disrupt the gathering. Powell sarcastically stated that he thought Cipollone had set a new “ground speed record” by getting there.
Cipollone, who sat with the committee for a private interview after a summons last week, said he didn’t think the group was giving Trump good advice and said he and other White House lawyers kept asking him, “Where’s the evidence? But they didn’t get any good answers, he said.
Hours later, at 1:42 p.m., Trump sent out a tweet urging supporters to come to Washington on January 6.
As they have done several times before, the committee showed video testimony from White House aides, who said they did not believe there had been widespread fraud in the election and had told the president. Many said they were firmly convinced that Biden’s victory was a bargain after states certified voters on December 14 and after dozens of Trump’s campaign trials failed in court.
Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, said it was her feeling that the election was over after December 14 and “maybe even earlier.” Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she had planned for life after the White House at the time. Eugene Scalia, Labor Secretary at the time, said in a call to the president that it was time to say Biden had won.
Judd Deere, Trump’s former press aide, said he told Trump “my personal view was that the electorate was found” and that the time was off to move the litigation forward.
“He disagreed,” Deere said.
The panel is holding hearings in an attempt to establish the truth about the events of January 6 and weeks ago, as Trump and some of his GOP allies try to downplay it or deny it outright. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the panel, said at the start of the hearing that the committee had seen “a change in the approach of witnesses and lawyers in the Trump classroom to this committee and their strategy” over the past few weeks. ,
Instead of refusing to be involved, Cheney said, witnesses and those in Trump’s orbit “have called people ‘crazy’ to their advisers.”
“President Donald Trump is a 76-year-old man. He’s not an impressionable kid,” Cheney said. “And like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his actions and his choices.”
She also spoke to those who still believe her false claims of fraud.
“These Americans didn’t have access to the truth, as Donald Trump did,” Cheney said, “and they wanted to believe him.” “For millions of Americans, it can be painful to admit it. But it’s true.”
Trump has raided the committee and denied much evidence of it on his social media platform, Truth Social.
© 2022 Canadian Press