The seventh public hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot focused on how Donald J. Trump and his allies turned their efforts to rallying a crowd of his supporters in Washington to protest the certification of the election after exhausting all legal avenues. Relying on testimony from Trump aides, right-wing media commentators and militia members, the commission demonstrated how Mr. Trump’s public statements led his supporters to believe the election was actually stolen and to storm the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification.
Here are the four main takeaways from the hearing:
Trump’s tweet mobilizes the crowd for January 6
In the early morning hours of December 19, 2020, Mr. Trump sent out a tweet urging his supporters to come to Washington on January 6.
“Major protest in D.C. Jan 6,” Mr Trump tweeted. “Be there, it’s going to be wild!”
The committee demonstrated how the tweet served as a rallying cry for Mr Trump’s supporters – including extremist organizations and right-wing media commentators.
They immediately began to gain support both within far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, and among ordinary citizens who believed Mr. Trump’s lies about the election. And in many cases, the online comments that followed what Mr. Trump’s supporters heard as a call to arms were laced with talk of violence.
“We will only be saved by millions of Americans moving into Washington, occupying the entire area if necessary, storming right into the Capitol,” Matt Bracken, a right-wing commentator, said in a video posted shortly after Mr. Trump’s tweet and released Tuesday by the committee. “We know the rules of participation. If you have enough people, you can knock down any kind of fence or wall.
After the crowd came to Washington, testimony on Tuesday showed that Mr. Trump’s supporters continued to take a cue from him.
“I hung on every word he said,” said one of his supporters, Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and disorderly conduct charges for his role in the Capitol attack.
Mr. Ayers said he had not planned to storm the Capitol but decided to do so after hearing Mr. Trump address the crowd on the Ellipse, near the White House.
“Well, basically, you know, the president, you know, he pissed everybody off, told everybody to get down, so we just followed what he said,” Mr. Ayers said.
Mr. Ayers said he is angry because he believes the election was stolen and something must be done to right that wrong. He said the crowd believed Mr Trump would meet them at the Capitol.
Key takeaways from the January 6 hearings
“I think everybody thought he was going to go down,” Mr. Ayers said. “You know, he said in his speech, you know, like he’s going to be there with us. So I mean, I believed it.
New evidence showed plans to go to the Capitol
The commission presented new evidence that showed Mr. Trump and his allies had more extensive plans than previously known for him and his supporters to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Documents obtained by the committee show a tweet was drafted for Mr Trump – which he saw – calling for his supporters to march on the Capitol after his address.
“Giving a big speech at 10:00 am on January 6th south of the White House,” the draft tweet read. “Please arrive early. Huge crowds are expected. March to the Capitol afterwards. Stop the theft!!”
The tweet was never sent, but the committee suggested it was just one piece of evidence showing that in the days before Jan. 6, Mr. Trump and his allies discussed plans for him to go to the Capitol grounds after the Ellipse rally.
The committee showed a text message that a Trump ally, Michael J. Lindell, head of the company My Pillow, received from an organizer of a Jan. 4 rally that the organizer said a second stage would be set up at the Supreme Court, across the street from the east front of the Capitol.
The organizer of the rally, Kylie Kremer, wrote: “Can’t figure out the second stage because people will try to create another one and sabotage it. He also can’t go out for the hike because I’ll be in trouble with the National Park Service and all the agencies, but POTUS will just call about it “unexpectedly.”
Other text messages sent at the time indicated that right-wing activists also believed Mr Trump would join them as they gathered at the Capitol.
“Trump should be ordering us to go to the capitol at the end of his speech, but we’ll see,” said Ali Alexander, who runs the Stop Theft campaign.
The commission also cited testimony from White House photographer Sheala Craighead, who attended an Oval Office gathering on the evening of Jan. 5 when Mr. Trump and some of his aides could hear a crowd of his supporters gathered nearby. Ms. Craighead testified that Mr. Trump said: “We have to go to the Capitol. What is the best route to the Capitol?”
An epic showdown in the Oval Office
Four days after states voted in the Electoral College, essentially ending all legal challenges to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, a group of Mr. Trump’s outside advisers were herded into the West Wing to meet with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. The advisers — including the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the retired general who served briefly as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — came armed with drafts of executive orders they wanted Mr. Trump to sign that would used the Department of Defense to seize voting machines to try to prove baseless allegations of election fraud.
Shortly after the meeting began, White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone — who did not believe the election had been stolen and insisted that Mr. Trump confess — learned of it and rushed to the Oval Office so quickly that Ms. . Powell said he set a “new land speed record.”
“I opened the door and I walked in and I saw General Flynn, I saw Sidney Powell sitting there – I was not happy to see the people that were in the Oval Office,” Mr. Cipollone said in a video he provided to the committee last Friday, clips of which were aired during Tuesday’s hearing.
Mr. Cipollone testified that he approached one of the counselors, whom he did not know, and asked him for his identity. He turned out to be the founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne. “I don’t think any of these people gave the president good advice,” Mr. Cipollone said.
“There’s a way to contest elections that happen all the time, but the idea that the federal government can come in and confiscate the voting machines? No — I don’t see why I even have to tell you why it’s a bad idea,” Mr. Cipollone testified. “That’s a terrible idea.”
In the hours that followed, a meeting was seen as one of the most contentious of Mr. Trump’s presidency, as Mr. Cipollone and other White House lawyers, including Eric Hershman, confronted Ms. Powell, Ms. n flynn and mr. Byrne.
“Sometimes there were people shouting at each other, insulting each other. It wasn’t just people sitting on the couch talking to each other,” said Derek Lyons, who was then White House press secretary.
Ms. Powell testified that she believed Mr. Trump had appointed her as a special counsel to investigate allegations of election fraud. But testimony played by the commission revealed that Mr. Cipollone strongly opposed such a move and essentially killed it by refusing to produce the necessary paperwork for such an appointment.
After all the fighting between outside advisers and White House lawyers, Mr. Trump refused to agree to a plan to use the military or other federal agencies to seize the voting machines.
Hours later, he would take to Twitter to post his call for supporters to come to Washington on January 6.
More warnings against witness tampering
As she did at the end of the previous hearing two weeks ago, Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, warned against tampering with witnesses in her closing remarks – and this time her message was aimed squarely at Mr Trump.
Ms. Cheney said a witness — whom she declined to identify, other than to say the person’s testimony had not yet been released — received a call within the past two weeks from Mr. Trump. The witness, Ms. Cheney said, received the call after the latest hearing in which Cassidy Hutchinson, a former West Wing aide, testified incriminatingly about Mr. Trump.
Ms. Cheney said the witness refused to pick up or answer Mr. Trump’s call. But the witness told his lawyer, who alerted the commission. The committee then forwarded the information to the Justice Department, which declined to comment on Tuesday.
“Let me say again that we will take any effort to influence testimony very seriously,” Ms. Cheney said.
After Ms. Hutchinson’s public testimony on June 28, the committee revealed efforts by Trump allies to reach a witness who turned out to be Ms. Hutchinson.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Ms. Cheney was spreading “innuendo and lies” but did not directly say whether Mr. Trump had tried to contact a witness.
Zach Montague contributed reporting.
Add Comment