A House of Representatives committee reviewing last year’s attack on the Capitol accused former President Trump of deliberately lying to the public to stay in power and raise money from sympathetic supporters – an organized effort that led to the deadly uprising. January. 6, 2021
Gathered on Capitol Hill for the second in a series of public hearings on its investigation, the committee relied heavily on the testimony of some of Trump’s leading figures in the political orbit to dispel the idea that it’s not just Trump’s allegations of violent voter fraud fake, but also that he knew they were.
At the head of the prosecution was former Attorney General William Barr, who presented a horrific portrait of the former president as a man increasingly detached from reality after the election.
Barr said his justice ministry had been forced to play “hit the mole” with a stream of false accusations of fraud pouring in from Trump supporters across the country. One by one, the department investigates the allegations, but does not find any wrongdoing. The allegation that Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine company, installed software to transfer votes from Trump to Joe Biden is “idiotic,” Bar said, while another claim that more people voted in Philadelphia than there are voters in Philadelphia. the city – is “absolute garbage.”
“And I told him that the things his people were throwing out to the public were nonsense, I mean, the allegations of fraud are nonsense,” Barr told the committee in an earlier interview during Monday’s hearing. “And, you know, he was outraged by that.”
Evidence presented Monday showed a clear behind-the-scenes rift between Trump and some of his top aides who told the commission they were directly confronted by Trump about his allegations of widespread fraud in the weeks after the 2020 election, only for to be ignored.
“Allegations of electoral fraud are false. Mr. Trump’s closest advisers knew it. “Mr. Trump knew that,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California) at the start of the hearing. This did not stop him from imposing false allegations and urging his supporters to “fight like hell” to “get their country back.”
The commission uses videos of Trump making great allegations of rampant fraud and contrasting them with interviews with the White House and campaign collaborators who dispute those allegations.
They showed that Trump was laying the groundwork for his final claim – that only fraud could bring him election loss – back in April 2020, a topic he reconsidered when he declared victory on election night and then stepped up on January 6. .
Former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donohue testified that he personally explained to Trump that Justice Department officials had investigated allegations of fraud in Georgia, Nevada and elsewhere, but that much of the information the president received was inaccurate. In response, Trump will shift his focus to other allegations of fraud.
“There were so many accusations that when you gave him a very direct answer to one of them, he wouldn’t fight you, he would move on to another,” Donohue said.
Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who was promoted in July 2020, was due to testify in person on Monday, but resigned after his wife was born.
In his absence, the commission used footage from Stepien’s personal testimony, in which he discussed his efforts to convince Trump of the benefits of voting by mail, the time it will take to count the ballots and declare the winner of the 2020 election, and the need to allow the votes to be counted before a victory is declared. As part of that effort, he enlisted House Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) to help with the case. He remained deaf.
“My recommendation was to say that the votes are still being counted. “It’s too early to say, it’s too early to announce the competition,” he said.
“I do not remember the specific words. He thought I was wrong. He told me so and, you know, they will do it, he will go in another direction.
Instead, Trump relies on the advice of Rudy Giuliani, a key proponent of the Dominion conspiracy theory, who has emerged as one of the leading public defenders of Trump’s lie about stolen elections.
The commission used footage of Giuliani on Fox News and appeared before a commission in Pennsylvania that said the dead had voted for Biden in large numbers and that ballots had been brought to erase Trump’s lead in Michigan – both distracted by witnesses in Monday.
“There were two groups, my team and Rudy’s team. I didn’t mind being part of the Normal Team, Stepien told the committee, saying he did not believe Giuliani’s tactics were “honest or professional.” In a surprise hearing Monday, the commission revealed that former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller testified that Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” on election night.
The Commission has also devoted considerable time to the concept of the “red mirage” – a historical trend that predicts that Republicans will perform well at the start of the counting process due to their preference for personal voting on the same day. Democrats are increasing. later, as early and absentee ballots are counted in the days after polls close.
Chris Steeworth, a former political editor at Fox News, said the trend is expected again in November 2020, but Trump’s willingness to use this “fad” to mislead the public about the presidential results has prompted the network to change its approach. to the coverage of elections.
“In principle, in every election, Republicans win election day and Democrats win early voting,” Stirwalt said. “We had tried – and I’m proud of the pain we took care of – to make sure we informed viewers that this was going to happen. Because the Trump campaign and the president have made it clear that they will try to use this anomaly.
Trump’s advisers said they had informed him of the vote count, but that did nothing to stop Trump from declaring immediate victory.
“We want all the voting to stop. We don’t want them to find ballots at 4 a.m., “Trump said on election night, a video released during Monday’s hearing.
But what are Trump’s chances of winning at this point, Lofgren asked Stirewalt, who helped make Fox News’s controversial decision to call Arizona for Biden.
“No one,” he replied.
As Trump continued to insist on election fraud, his fundraiser was activated, the commission said. Senior Adviser Amanda Wick found that the Trump campaign has sent more than 1 million emails to supporters asking for donations on the pretext of fighting election fraud between election day and Jan. 6.
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In the end, Trump and his allies raised about $ 250 million. But the so-called election defense fund that Trump promoted did not exist, and former campaign officials acknowledged that it was simply a marketing tool. Instead, millions of dollars went to conservative groups run by Trump’s allies, including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
“During the commission’s investigation, we found evidence that the campaign of Trump and her surrogates was misleading voters as to where their money would go and what it would be used for. So not only was there a big lie, there was a big theft, “Lofgren said.
Michael Schnell contributed.
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