Here are the main findings of the commission’s second hearing this month on Trump’s efforts to cancel the 2020 election and the January 6 violence in the Capitol.
The commission surprised many observers on Sunday when it announced that Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, would testify in person at Monday’s hearing. But Stepien had his own surprise Monday morning when he learned that his wife had given birth, so he withdrew from the hearing.
This whirlwind of events forced the commission to fight – and they managed deftly, albeit after a 45-minute delay.
Lawmakers and commission officials were apparently prepared with videos of Stepien’s private testimony. And many footage of his testimony on Monday was released, revealing new details about his talks with Trump and how he advised the president not to declare victory early on election night.
In a sense, the result gave the Democrat-led committee more power to control what the public heard from Stepien. He was not in the room to give his opinion, which could include some of Trump’s defenses and some of the opposition to the commission. Instead, the panel could choose which delay videos to play, and they focused like a laser on Trump’s most harmful material.
Prolonged testimony is conducted on the testimony of witnesses
Stepien’s testimony was not the only use of the commission’s testimony on Monday. The panel played long portions of former Attorney General William Barr’s testimony before the commission, detailing why Trump’s allegations of fraud were “false” and why he has not seen anything since to convince him of fraud.
“There has never been an indication of interest in the facts,” Bar said in a video of his testimony released Monday. “I was a little demoralized because I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes in these things, he’s lost touch with – he’s detached from reality, if he really believes in these things.'”
The commission did not invite Bar to testify publicly at Monday’s hearing, but the minutes of his testimony at times gave the impression that he was there.
The video testimony also allowed the commission to show testimony from others in Trump’s inner circle – including Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner – without having to persuade them to testify. And by simply showing videos, the commission controls which sound clips are broadcast.
The hearing illustrates their key role played by Bar in setting the tone for Team Normal, the campaign team and White House officials who tried to advise Trump that the allegations of fraud were false.
This is not due to a lack of attempts to detect fraud. Bar issued a controversial note weeks earlier that allowed prosecutors to consider allegations of election crimes even before the vote was certified. Bar’s move prompted a senior integrity official at the Justice Department to resign. Bar searched for the scam and didn’t find it.
Bar becomes the main exposer
Democrats insulted Bar when he was in office, accusing him of using the powers of the Justice Department to carry out Trump’s orders, undermining Russia’s investigation and promoting right-wing conspiracy theories. But in the last two weeks, Bar has become something of a new hero for the Liberals, aggressively debunking and condemning Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
The Democrat-led commission has included videos of Bar’s testimony more than any other witness so far, and they interviewed more than 1,000 people as part of a one-year investigation. These videos established Bar as the highest-ranking official in the Trump administration to confirm the legitimacy of the election results and deny Trump’s tireless efforts to claim that the election was tainted by fraud.
During Monday’s hearing, Bar removed specific allegations backed by Trump about illegal “vote dumps” in Detroit, the rigging of nationwide votes by the Dominion with its electoral machines, and other conspiracy theories.
Without prompting, Bar even did his best to criticize “2000 Mules,” a film made by right-wing activist Dinesh D’Souza, a convicted criminal who claims the 2020 election was stolen. (In a testimony video released Monday, Bar laughed at the film and said there was “complete lack” of evidence.)
Barr said Trump’s theories were “idiotic” and “amateur” and “detached from reality.” This rhetoric is strikingly close to what senior Democrats have said all along about Trump’s allegations of fraud.
To be clear, Bar is still a staunch conservative. Just a few weeks ago, he made several false allegations in an interview with Fox News about the Trump-Russia investigation and backed Trump’s baseless allegations that the entire investigation was a fabricated “fraud” committed by Democratic and FBI operatives.
The committee claims that Trump sold fraudulent allegations in bad faith after he was personally told that they were illegal.
One of the main areas of focus for Monday’s hearing was to highlight the idea that Trump and some of his allies continue to spread false allegations of election fraud after being personally told they were illegitimate.
The commission argued that Trump had been repeatedly told by his own senior officials, including Barr and Stepien, that the countless allegations of fraud he insisted were baseless and certainly not evidence that the election had been stolen.
“I specifically raised the Dominion voting machines, which I found to be among the most disturbing allegations – disturbing in the sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously affect many people.” members of the public, “Bar said in testimony, according to a video released Monday.
Yet Trump and some of his allies continued to impose these false allegations throughout January, and what the commission tried to show was an unscrupulous effort to cancel the election, even though they were constantly told that the allegations were invalid. .
During their confrontation in the Oval Office in December 2020, Barr said that Trump had given him a report claiming to be “absolute proof” that the Dominion voting machines had been falsified. Barr said the report “seems very amateurish to me” and he “did not see any supporting information” about the allegations of fraud.
Barr will resign in December 2020 shortly after his last meeting with Trump and was replaced by acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who also faced similar pressure from the former president to investigate the same baseless allegations of election fraud that Barr warned that they were unfounded. .
In the end, Trump considered replacing Rosen with a relatively obscure environmental lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, who has shown a desire to pursue allegations of fraud that other senior Justice officials would not.
Clark prepared “proof of concept” for the cancellation of the 2020 elections and sent it to senior Justice officials on December 28, 2020, two weeks after Bar’s resignation. This note relied heavily on many of the same debunked allegations of fraud that Trump had already been told had no merit.
At the same time, Trump’s allies have demanded that the Justice Department take false allegations of stolen Trump elections to the Supreme Court in an attempt to prevent the counting of the results of several key swinging states. The report, sent to Rosen and other Justice Department officials by Trump’s personal assistant at the White House, cited the same report on irregularities in the Michigan voting machine, which Bar said Trump was “amateurish” and did not include any support. information.
The committee focuses on the Normal Team’s opposition to Rudy
The commission focused on Monday’s testimony, which distinguished two groups advising Trump in the post-election days: A Normal Team and those with Rudy Giuliani, insisting on baseless allegations of voter fraud.
“We called them something like my team and Rudy’s team,” Stepien said in a video released by the committee. “I didn’t mind being described as part of Team Normal.”
The commission traced the split until election night, when Stepien and others told Trump it was too early to call a race while Giuliani told him to declare victory.
“The president did not agree. I do not remember the specific words. He thought I was wrong. He told me, “Stepien said of a conversation with Trump on election night. “And that he was going in another direction.”
The committee is working to undermine the savage allegations that Giuliani and Sidney Powell have made about changing voices and involving foreign countries – all of which were false. They showed a video of the testimony of Giuliani and Powell, compared to officials such as Bar and Stepien, who said the allegations were nonsense.
The commission even delved into Giuliani and his state of mind on election night, releasing a video from the testimony of Trump’s campaign spokesman Jason Miller, where he said Giuliani “had too much to drink.”
“I mean, the mayor was definitely intoxicated,” Miller said. “But I didn’t know his level of toxic intoxication when he talked to the president, for example.
The commission is revealing details of the campaign’s financial investigation
One of the key details the commission revealed on Monday (January 6th) during Monday’s hearing was how Trump’s election lies turned into millions of dollars to raise funds for Trump’s campaign and the political committee he set up after the election.
The panel said Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud coincided with his campaign’s fundraising efforts – which donated $ 250 million to Trump and his allies, including requests for an “official election protection fund.” which does not exist.
“The big lie was also a big scam,” said MP Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, during Monday’s hearing.
During the investigation, the commission went to court to try to extract financial documents such as bank notes, which were related to January 6 …
Add Comment