The Sessions of the Senate Judgment Committee on Ethics in the U.S. Capitol: The Case of the 2016 Inspiral of Mark Meadows
The hearing was about a broad case against Trump. The panel wanted to show that he lost the 2020 election, that he was aware that Biden won, and that he tried to get other people to vote for him by intimidating election workers.
The committee articulated a very strong case about the many schemes of Mr. Trump, John Eastman and others. There have been no prosecutions of Mr. Trump for inciting insurrection or giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists since the Civil War. The referrals make it clear that the attempted coup was dangerous, and that our system was vulnerable to such assaults.
Mark Meadows was Donald Trump’s former chief of staff and has refused to testify. The committee’s litigation with him continues. The Department of Justice may uncover the hidden facts about these and other witnesses at some point. Today our duty is to our country, our children and our Constitution.
Cheney said the committee would seek answers from the man who set this all in motion. And every American is entitled to the answers, so we can act now to protect our republic.”
He is at the center of the story of what happened and we want to hear from him. The committee needs to do everything in our power to tell the most complete story possible and provide recommendations to help ensure nothing like January 6th ever happens again. We need to be fair and thorough in obtaining the evidence.
The current Congress ends on January 3, 2023, and that’s when the committee will cease to exist. But the Justice Department investigation, overseen by special counsel Smith, continues.
CNN obtained more footage from Fort McNair that was not shown by the committee. CNN will be airing the exclusive footage during Anderson Cooper’s special edition on Thursday. The footage shows congressional leaders, after evacuating from the Capitol, gathering at Fort McNair working the phones, trying to figure out what was going on at the overrun Capitol, and begging for help as they frantically scrambled to quell the insurrection.
The president’s cowardice created a leadership void as he watched the attack unfold on Fox, and Congress and other government officials stepped in to fill it. You’ll see previously unseen footage of Congressional leaders as they were taken to a secure location during the riot.
Pelosi was also showed talking on the phone to then-Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia about sending reinforcements to the Capitol. Other footage showed Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking to acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen.
In this video, you just saw Senator Chuck Schumer urging Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen to get President Trump to call off the rioters. Of course, acting AG Rosen did take action to defend the government, as did many other officials. President Trump was the only person who could make the mob leave the building, and Congressional leadership recognized this on a bipartisan basis.
“I think the events at the Capitol, however they occurred, were shocking and it was something that, as I mentioned in my statement, that I could not put aside,” said Chao, one of the former members of Trump’s Cabinet whose recorded testimony lawmakers aired on Thursday.
I’m a big believer in this country. I think a peaceful transfer of power is possible. I believe in the rule of law. I made the decision on my own. The end of the videotape.
The Secret Service woke up to the Capitol after the January 6th attack: Ms. Hutchinson describes what she heard from Mark Meadows
Mr. Cipollone’s testimony is corroborated by multiple other White House staff members, including Cassidy Hutchinson. Here’s Ms. Hutchinson describing what she heard from Mark Meadows. Begin videotape.
I remember looking at Mark. I said to Mark, we don’t have a chance of pulling this off. That call was crazy. And he looks at me and just started shaking his head. He knew it was over, you know. He knows he lost, but we’re going to keep trying. There are some good options out there.
Hutchinson also said that she witnessed a conversation between Meadows and Trump where he was furious the Supreme Court had rejected a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election result.
Mark, the president said that he didn’t want people to know that we lost. This is embarrassing. You must figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost. End videotape.
Since our last hearings, the select committee has received greater cooperation from the Secret Service. Nevertheless, Secret Service text messages from this period were erased in the days and months following the attack on the Capitol, even though documents and materials related to January 6th had already been requested by the Department of Justice and Congress.
By the morning of January 6th, it was clear that the Secret Service anticipated violence. It felt like the calm before the storm, one agent predicted, in a protective intelligence division chat group. The agents were watching crazies on the live stream. By 9:09 that morning, the Secret Service could also see that many rally goers were assembled outside the security perimeter.
The committee sent a link to a website with violent comments about the beginning of January and shared a text from Miller that said “I got the base fired up.”
What Did President Pence Tell Us Before The Capitol Insurrection? – A Subsequent Summary of What the Senate Select Committee Learned About Election Night
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said in Thursday’s hearing that that the Secret Service received alerts of online threats made against Vice President Mike Pence ahead of the Capitol insurrection, including that Pence would be “‘a dead man walking if he doesn’t do the right thing.’”
What did President Trump know? What was he told? He had a significant role in the multipart plan to overturn the election. This evidence will look familiar for those of you who have watched our previous hearings. We’ll give you a summary of some of the most important facts and urge you to watch our hearing in full on the internet.
Now following this conversation, Mr. Jacob drafted a memo to Mr. Short, which the Select Committee got from the National Archives. On Election Day, the memo advised the Vice President not to be seen as having made decisions regarding disputed electoral votes before the full facts are known. A few days before the election, Mr. Trump also consulted with one of his outside advisers, inside activist, Tom Fitton, about the strategy for election night.
The memo says that the public should not assume the Vice President has decided questions about disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts.
The Select Committee got this pre-prepared statement from the National Archives. As you can see, the draft statement, which was sent on October 31st, declares, “we had an election today – and I won.” There is a plan outlined in the Fitton memo that only those who vote by the Election Day deadline would matter.
The members of the committee interviewed Ginni Thomas last month, but her testimony wasn’t used in the committee’s last hearing before the election.
The panel used testimony from several well-known witnesses since the most recent hearing, but her absence was notable.
As the panel wrapped up its evidentiary hearings, it was not clear if it had been successful in persuading the jury. Americans who already blamed the rampage on Mr. Trump came away from four months of sensational and at times jaw-dropping hearings with more evidence for their belief, while those who started out in his camp largely remained there.
We live in a period today where it is unclear that any congressional investigation can still have an outsize impact. It’s hard for Congress to shift political momentum because it’s not easy to separate political sentiment from other concerns.
Which is a reminder that, when it comes to accountability and reform, the work extends well beyond the lifespan of the committee. Securing democratic systems is a matter for a variety of groups. The Department of Justice has to decide whether to act on the committee’s referrals, including the historic criminal referrals against Trump. Congress, too, finds itself in a post-Watergate position, acutely aware of the need to create far more legal constraints and consequences for executive malfeasance. The recent passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act is one step in that direction; many more await.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., noted in his opening remarks that the panel was convening as a “formal committee business meeting,” which meant that in addition to presenting evidence, it could also hold a committee vote on further investigative actions.
The committee waited until now to ask him to testify after the Truth Social platform vote, but Trump decried it as a total bust.
Another close associate of Donald Trump apparently knew of Mr. Trump’s intentions as well. Roger Stone is a political operative with a reputation for dirty tricks. He was sentenced to more than 3 years in prison after he was convicted of lying to Congress. He’s also a longtime adviser to President Trump and was in communication with President Trump throughout 2020. Mr. Trump pardoned Roger Stone on December 23rd, 2020. And recently the Select Committee got footage of Mr. Stone before and after the election from Danish filmmaker, Christopher Gilbranson [ph], pursuant to a subpoena.
The Committee on Investigations of the Mueller Investigation into the Case of a White Man Who Declared a Presidential Victory in the Late Hours of Election Night
“I really do suspect it will still be up in the air,” Stone said. When that happens, the first thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. “No, we won, f— you.”
The committee also played audio from another Trump adviser, Steve Bannon, who refused to testify before the committee and is awaiting sentencing for contempt of Congress. In the audio, a plan is described to declare the election invalid.
“What Trump will do is declare victory, right?” He’s gonna declare victory. That does not mean that he is a winner. He’s going to say he’s the winner.
But President Trump did declare victory in the late hours of election night. Not only did he declare victory, he also called for the ongoing count of votes to just stop. It would have been against the laws of both federal and state to stop the count.
“I went into the Oval to give him the headlines and see how he was doing,” said Communications DirectorAlyssaFarah, recalling a comment from Trump. He looked at the TV and said, “Can you believe I lost to this guy?”
And then essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors, in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states. [End videotape]
Trump and the Secret Service in the January 6, 2015 Insurrection: The Story of Kevin McCarthy, Bennie Thompson, and the Campaign to Overturn the Election
The Secret Service said that they believe they have the manpower to march into DC armed and that they can’t be stopped.
As my colleague Mr. Schiff just described, the Secret Service reported that thousands in the crowd near the Washington Monument would not enter the rally area because magnetometers used in screening attendees would detect any prohibited items they carried. Mr. Trump knew about it. His Secret Service told him about it during the morning.
Do you believe it? Nancy Pelosi told the majority whip that members on the floor were wearing their tear gas masks.
The people sworn to protect the safety of the president of the United States and who routinely put themselves in harm’s way were convinced that this was a bad idea. According to Secret Service documents, agents were poised to take President Trump to the Capitol later that afternoon. Agents were instructed to don their protective gear and prepare for a movement.
In the midst of this violent chaos. Kevin McCarthy implored Donald Trump to tell his supporters in the mob to leave the Capitol. And when that didn’t work, McCarthy called Trump’s adult children to try to get them to intercede with Trump to call off the insurrectionary violence. In our prior hearings, we showed you a description of what McCarthy told Republican Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Butler about his conversation with Trump during the violence.
He said, well, Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election, you know, theft than you are. You’ve heard of widespread reports of Kevin McCarthy and the President having a swearing conversation. The President said, no, I’m — that’s when he started to swear. I’m okay with this.
‘Trump was central player’. The hearing went into more details on then-President Trump’s state of mind after he lost the election and continued to pursue avenues to overturn the election results.
Bennie Thompson said that the Trump administration started a systematic plan to overturn the election. The rally, and the violence, of January 6 were just one piece of a much bigger strategy.
Even when top law enforcement officials told the President his election-fraud claims were false, Trump still repeated the nonsense to a wide audience, over and over again. There is a pic.
The Senate Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. I. Deputy Attorney General Lorentz Insights and Chairman’s Report
“Our nation cannot only punish the foot soldiers who stormed our Capitol,” she said. “We chip away at the foundation of our Republic because of every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former president.”
The Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol will be in order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any point. Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the chair announces the committee’s approval to release the deposition material presented during today’s hearing.
Good morning, and may God bless the U.S. In the last four months, the committee has presented their findings to the American people. We knew people would wrongly assume the committee’s investigation was partisan when they were watching it.
To those who were skeptical, I asked them to listen, listen to the evidence, listen to the testimony, and let the facts speak for themselves before making a decision. Evidence has proven that there was a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 election which was led by Donald Trump.
What Donald Trump proceeded to do after the 2020 election is something no president has done before in our country. Donald Trump betrayed his oath of office when he attempted to attack a pillar of our democracy. It’s still hard to believe, but the facts and testimony are clear, consistent, and undisputed.
How do we know this? How have we been able to present such a clear picture of what took place? We presented the evidence we gathered and made it available to you, the American people, because of what we’ve heard.
These aren’t people who are aligned with Democrats or were “Never Trump” or “Trump Haters,” as the former president likes to say. The testimony that has been aired by the committee depicts the opposite.
Who has that been? Aides who’ve worked loyally for Donald Trump for years, Republican state officials and legislators, Republican electors, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, political professionals who worked at the highest levels of the Trump campaign, Trump appointees who served in the most senior positions in the Justice Department, President Trump’s staff and closest advisers in the White House, members of the — President Trump’s family, his own White House counsel.
Bringing a Committee on Mueller’s Investigation into the White House: President Donald Trump’s State of Mind and Motivated Bidding to Prevent another January 6th
The committee is looking at additional information from the Secret Service and other sources because the testimony is not credible. The Secret Service was sharing the results of the monitoring they did and was keeping a record of online activity. They’d worked closely with other agencies, sharing intelligence about the joint session of Congress derived from social media and other sources.
There’s a difference today. Pursuant to the notice circulated prior to today’s proceedings, we are convened today not as a hearing but as a formal committee business meeting so that, in addition to presenting evidence, we can potentially hold a committee vote on further investigative action based upon that evidence.
What will come of the committee’s recommendations is unclear. While lawmakers made recommendations to the Department of Justice, it doesn’t necessarily mean the department has to act.
The preamble to our Constitution recites among its purposes, to “establish justice.” And our nation’s judiciary and our US Department of Justice have that responsibility. The committee’s main responsibility is to propose changes to keep January 6th from happening again. The House has passed a bill that will help make sure that no other plots to overturn an election can succeed.
He was personally and substantially involved in all of it. Exactly how did one man cause all of this? Today we will focus on President Trump’s state of mind, his intent, his motivations, and how he spurred others to do his bidding, and how another January 6th could happen again if we do not take necessary action to prevent it. The following points are what I would suggest as you see our evidence today.
What Happened to President Rodrigo Giuliani During the January 5th Rifle? The Case Against a Fictitious Election
Rudy Giuliani was one of many who stepped forward to help, but never had good evidence to change the result of the election. And on the evening of January 5th, they admitted they were still trying to find that phantom evidence. Making false claims of election fraud has caused Mr. Giuliani to lose his law license.
The evidence shows that the president was aware of the risk. The FBI, US Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police and other agencies all gathered and disseminated intelligence, suggesting the possibility of violence at the Capitol prior to the riot. We’re now going to show you just a sample of the evidence we have received.
Please consider who had a hand in defeating President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, such as the Department of Justice and State Republican officials, as well as the White House staff who tried to prevent military takeover of voting machines.
All of these people had a hand in stopping Donald Trump. This leads us to a key question. Why do Americans think that our republic is invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time? A key lesson of this investigation is this.
Our institutions only hold when men and women of good faith make them hold regardless of the political cost. We don’t know if they will be in place next time. Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way.
Our country is a country of laws where every person, including the President, must follow the law and respect the judgment of our courts. President Trump’s closest advisers held that view both then and now. Begin the tape.
That, my fellow citizens, breaks our republic. You should consider this as you view the evidence. President Trump knew from unassailable sources that his election fraud claims were false. He admitted he had lost the election. He believed in that belief and took actions that were consistent with it. The claims that President Trump really believed the election was stolen are not supported by fact or a defense.
There is no excuse for Donald Trump being fooled or irrational. The rule of law cannot be ignored by a president in a constitutional republic. Mr. Chairman, our nation’s federal judges are sworn to do impartial justice to preserve our Constitution and preserve our union. Dozens of judges have addressed January 6 cases, and many have given us warnings about the direction of our republic.
The people who brought us to the point of violence must be held accountable. With every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former president, we chip away at the foundation of our republic. Indefensible conduct is defended. The conduct is excused. Without accountability, it all becomes normal and it will recur.
When Donald Trump’s Advisers told him to vote in 2020, and he didn’t, it was too early to declare victory
So, as we watch the evidence today, please consider where our nation is in its history. Do we have enough time to survive for another 246 years? Most people in most places on Earth have not been free. America is an exception, and America continues only because we bind ourselves to our founders’ principles, to our Constitution.
Some principles are more important than any single American who has ever lived. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I let it go.
Thank you very much, Chairman. Very shortly after the election, oh — we begin this meeting by returning to election night, November 3rd, 2020. As the chairman noted, we’ve previously presented testimony about how the election results were expected to come in that night. Mail ballots that were cast before the polls closed on Election Day would only be counted after the polls closed.
The results of the election would not be known for a while. Although Bill Stepien, a member of Donald Trump’s campaign team, had urged him to encourage mail in voting, the president did not do so. Begin videotape.
People were arguing that mail in ballots could be a positive thing for us if we looked at it correctly.
I invited Kevin McCarthy to join the meeting, he being of like mind on — on the issue with me, in which we made our case for — for why we believed mail in balloting, mail in voting not to be a bad thing for his campaign, but, you know, the President’s mind was made up. The end of the videotape.
This was expected to happen before the election due to the fact that the initial counts of votes would be more Republican and this would cause a false perception of a lead for Trump. There could be trends towards the Vice President as the mail in ballots were counted.
Now on election night, Donald Trump’s advisers specifically told him he didn’t have a factual basis to declare victory, that he should wait for the remaining ballots to be counted. Here is campaign manager, Bill Stepien. [Begin videotape]
It was far too early to be making any calls like that. There were ballots still being counted. The votes would be counted for days. And it was far too early to be making any proclamation like that. I believe my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted. It’s too early to make a decision about the race.
This is a lie that the American public has reason to believe. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were about to win the election. We won this election. [applause] We want all voting to stop. End video.
Marc had indicated to me that there was a possibility that there would be a declaration of victory within the White House that some might push for, and this is prior to the election results being known. He was trying to figure out how to avoid the Vice President having to opine on that issue when he might not have enough information to do so. [End videotape]
Everyone knew that ballot counting would lawfully continue past Election Day, claiming that the counting on election night must stop before millions of votes were counted was as we now know a key part of President Trump’s pre-meditated plan. Mr. Fitton said he’d spoken to the President about the statement after Election Day.
And just a few days before the election, Steve Bannon, a former Trump chief White House strategist and outside adviser to President Trump, spoke to a group of his associates from China and said this. [Begin videotape]
I’m directing the Attorney General to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states. It’s going to be no, he is not going out easy. If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit. [End videotape]
All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. We’re at the point of attack now, as they say, and we’re going to have a good fight tomorrow. I’ll tell you that it’s not going to happen the way you think it will. That’s ok. It is going to be very different. And all I can say is strap in. Tomorrow is game day and you have made it happen.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
First Attorney General Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Enrique Tarrio: a Big lie about President Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign
I suspect it’ll be — I really do suspect it will still be up in the air. To claim victory is the most important thing to do when that happens. There is possession in less than half of the law.
Earlier that month, President Trump tried to do it. We know that Roger Stone was at the Willard Hotel on January 5th and 6th, and we know from other witness testimony that President Trump asked his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to speak with Roger Stone and General Michael Flynn that night.
He said he told the President how he could appoint a special counsel with full subpoena power to make certain that those who were attempting to steal the 2020 election through voter fraud were charged and convicted, so that Donald Trump continued as our President. As we know by now, the idea for a special counsel was not just an idle suggestion.
It’s a plan to use violent force against the United States in order to oppose their authority. Multiple associates of Roger Stone from both the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with this crime. Close associates of Roger Stone, including Joshua James, have pled guilty to this crime.
He pled guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of Congress earlier this year. Another example, is the married couple, Kelly and Connie Meggs. Kelly Meggs was the leader of the Florida Oath Keepers. He and his wife are charged with leading a military style stack attack of Oath Keepers attacking the Capitol on January 6th, and they provided security for Roger Stone. Roger Stone has a close relationship with the national chairman of the Proud Boys.
Roger Stone’s connection with Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys is well documented by video evidence, with phone records the Select Committee has obtained. Tarrio and other Proud Boys are being charged with multiple crimes, including seditious conspiracy, in connection with the January 6th attack. Tarrio wrote a message to other Proud Boys saying, we did that.
He went to the White House on December 12th. Later that day, he posted a disturbing video claiming credit for the attack. This video, posted on January 6th, was apparently created prior to the attack. This big lie, President Trump’s effort to convince Americans that he had won the 2020 election began before the election results even came in. It was intentional.
The committee proved that January 6 was not a one-off day of chaos, but an event that had been in the works. It was planned.
I know that the president was briefed on the network decision when the networks called it. A group of people went over to the President and shared with him that the odds of them succeeding in legal challenges were very small.
So we’re in the Oval and there’s a discussion going on. And the President says, I think — it could have been Pompeo, but he says words to the effect of, yeah, we lost. The issue needs to go to the next guy, we should let that happen.
I was in the Oval just a week after the election to see how the President was doing and give him the headlines. And he was looking at the TV and he said, can you believe I lost to this effing guy?
The President’s Task to Get US Forces Out of Somalia & Somalia after the Biden inauguration: A Jan 6 Committee Hearing Transcription
President Trump had only weeks left in office when he rushed to finish his unfinished business. One key example is this: President Trump issued an order for large-scale US troop withdrawals. There are concerns about the consequences of the fight against terrorism in fragile governments.
Knowing he was leaving office, he acted immediately and signed this order on November 11th, which would have required the immediate withdrawal of troops from Somalia and Afghanistan, all to be complete before the Biden inauguration on January 20th. As you watch these clips, recall that General Keith Kellogg was the national security adviser to the vice president and had served as chief of staff to the National Security Council for President Trump.
Are you familiar with a memo that the President reportedly signed on November 11, 2020, ordering that troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan and Somalia?
So I think you’ve probably seen a memo from Johnny McEntee or Douglas Macgregor. It says, here’s your task, to get US forces out of out of Somalia, get US forces out of Afghanistan. When you first met Col. Douglas Macgregor, did you discuss the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan?
So on that same day, just so I’m clear, he responded back to you that day, meaning DOD leadership was not going to do — take any of those steps without an order.
The answer I gave to McEntee was based on the language I used to explain it in the meeting. I said, If you want this to happen or the President wants this to happen, he’s got to write an order.
I sketched his key statements on a piece of paper. The President is responsible for directing. You know, this is — what’s the right word — boilerplate language?
McEntee brought it to the President. The President signs it and the faxes and e-mail come in. Kash Patel delivers it to me.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
The Commission on Reports on the Afghanistan Referendum, and the Resolution of the State Investigations Against the Interference of High-rank Members of the House of Representatives
I told Macgregor that if he ever saw anything like that, I would do something physical. Because I thought what that was then was a tremendous disservice to the nation. That was a very divisive issue. There were some people who did not believe in leaving Afghanistan.
So, I responded to that. I believe that the political process would have had dire consequences for the country, if the department had been involved this way. It may have caused us to be in a constitutional crisis. The end of videotape.
Keep in mind the order was for a withdrawal. It would have been terrible. And yet, President Trump signed the order. These are actions of a President who knows his term will end soon. There was no evidence of fraud or illegalities sufficient to change the outcome of the election when President Trump acknowledged privately that he had lost.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
Comment on Surprises in the Campaign against Voting Fraud and Other Incriminating Accusations” by G. A. Meadows
I remember a call with Mr. Meadows, where Mr. Meadows was asking me what I was finding and if I was finding anything. I said we weren’t able to change the results in any of the key states.
Stepien stated that they would have to tell you about the tip of the vote fraud or the tip of the person who told you about it. It is not a fun job to be telling the president about wild allegations, you know, but it is easier to tell the president about that than it is to be honest. It’s a difficult thing to tell him that that wasn’t true.
It was suggested that if the fraud, maladministration, abuse, or irregularity were aggregated and viewed most favorably to the campaign, it would be the outcome that mattered. I believe that everyone in the room believed that outcome was not the factor to be taken into account. [End videotape]
The Supreme Court denied President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the outcome of the November 18 December 2016 White House Reionization event. I was walking in the Rose Garden colonnade with Mark Meadows
It is the right of any candidate to argue their case in an election. Nobody argues that, but President Trump’s litigation was completely unsuccessful. We told you in the past that the committee had identified a number of election lawsuits that were filed by the Trump campaign and its allies. Those cases resulted in 61 losses and only a single victory, which did not affect the outcome for any candidate.
It’s strong language criticizing the lack of evidentiary support for the claims of election fraud in those lawsuits. A federal appeals court in Pennsylvania stated that the charges need to have specific allegations and proof. We don’t have either here. A federal judge in Wisconsin wrote, quote, the court has allowed the former president the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits.
Specifically, the panel said Trump “oversaw” the legally dubious effort to put forward fake slates of electors in seven states he lost, arguing that the evidence shows he actively worked to “transmit false Electoral College ballots to Congress and the National Archives” despite concerns among his lawyers that doing so could be unlawful.
Alex Cannon, one of the lawyers for the Trump campaign, stated in a late November call that he found no reason to change the results in any of the states.
Trump’s allies lost a lawsuit in the Supreme Court, which he believed was his final chance for success in the courts. The new leaked Secret Service message shows how angry President Trump was over the outcome. Quote, just FYI, POTUS is pissed. The Supreme Court denied his lawsuit.
He is angry. Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows, was present for that conversation and described it in this way. [Begin videotape]
This is the day that the Supreme Court had rejected that case. Mr. Meadows and I were in the White House residence at a Christmas reception. And as we were walking back from the Christmas reception that evening, the President was walking out of the Oval Office and we crossed paths in the Rose Garden colonnade.
The President was fired up about the Supreme Court decision. I had stepped back because I was standing next to Mr.Meadows. So I was probably two or three feet catty-cornered, diagonal from him. The President just raging about the decision and how it’s wrong, and why didn’t we make more calls, and just this typical anger outburst at this decision.
The states certified their votes on the 14th of December. And in my view, that was the end of the matter. I didn’t see — you know, I — I thought that this would lead inexorably to a new administration.
I told him that my personal viewpoint was that the Electoral College had met, which is the system that our country is — is set under to elect a president and vice president, and I believed at that point that the means for him to pursue litigation was probably closed.
A Times of Reconciliation: Secretary of Labor to the President, Gene Scalia, in December 2001, addressing a turning point in the campaign to ensure he stayed in power
Gene Scalia, Secretary of Labor, visited the President in December and explained the situation clearly. [Begin videotape]
I called the president after putting the call in. I might have called on the 13th. We spoke, I believe, on the 14th, in which I conveyed to him that I thought that it was time for him to acknowledge that President Biden had prevailed in the election. When the legal process is done and the voters have cast their ballot, that’s when the outcome should be expected, I told the president.
If fraud had not been discovered and the election outcome was changed, I told him that I believed he would have to concede the outcome. Continue the videotape.
I would like to thank you. There was a turning point in the month of December. President Trump made a decision, a choice, to ignore the courts and his advisers and to push forward to overturn the election. The effort to overturn the election were part of a plan to ensure that he stayed in power.
Donald Trump was the driver behind each part of this plan. He was involved in all aspects of the project. Of course, a key element of the plan was continuing to convince tens of millions of Americans that he did not in fact lose. He did this even though campaign advisers and Justice Department officials said his claims of fraud were incorrect.
Dominion — The Big Vote Dump in Detroit – It’s Not That Big But That’s What I’ve Learned
The voting machines from the Dominion were among the most disturbing allegations that I raised and I could not find a single basis for them. I told them that it was crazy and they were wasting their time on it and it was doing a grave disservice to the country.
We have a company that’s very suspect. Its name is Dominion. If you press a button with a dial or chip, the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this?
We talked about the county again. The hand recount had been done and so that was the end of it. This is an example of what people are telling you and what they’re doing in court, that isn’t supported by the evidence.
In addition, there is the highly troubling matter of Dominion voting systems. Thousands of votes were switched between Biden and Trump in oneMichigan county alone, using the same systems that are used in the majority of states.
I went into this and would, you know, tell him how crazy some of these allegations were and how ridiculous some of them were. And I’m talking about some of the ones like, you know, more votes — more absentee votes were cast in Pennsylvania than there were absentee ballots request — you know, stuff like that was just easy to blow up. There was never — there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.
There were more people voting than there were people voting. Do you think of that? You had more votes than you had voters. That’s an easy one to figure, and it’s by the thousands.
He dubbed it the big vote dump in Detroit. And that — you know, he said people saw boxes coming in to the counting station at all hours of the morning. I told Mr. President there were 630 precincts in Detroit. And unlike elsewhere in the state, they centralized the counting process so they’re not counted in each precinct.
We looked at the tape to see if we could find anything. The witnesses were interviewed. There is no suitcase. The president kept fixating on this suitcase that supposedly had fraudulent ballots and that the suitcase was rolled out from under the table. I told him there wasn’t a suitcase. You can watch that video multiple times.
There is no carry-on. They carry the ballots in a wheeled bin, and they move them around the facility. There’s no reason for it to be suspicious.
Election officials pulled boxes, Democrats, and suitcases of ballots out from under a table. You all saw it on television, totally fraudulent. Continue videotape.
The focus of an ongoing criminal investigation in Fulton County, Georgia is the call. Georgia is not the only state where the president tried to change the results. He also attempted to press — pressure state officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to change the results in those states as well.
So, look, now all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. Look, we need only 11,000 votes. We have more than that right now, and that is what we have. We’ll have more and more. What are we going to do here? I only need 11,000 votes.
I want to find 11,780 votes. The president already knew from the Justice Department that there wasn’t a genuine basis for this request. Nobody would think that the secretary of state could find votes for the president in order to win.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
The Attorney General’s Proposal: Jeff Clark tries to destroy the Department of Justice, and the White House has threatened to resign
That’s really what it is. You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And — and, you know, you can’t let that happen. It’s a lot of risk to you and Ryan. That’s a big risk. [End videotape]
Here is Jeff Clark who conspired with Donald Trump to corrupt the Department of Justice. Jeff Clark was recommended by the president to be the acting attorney general. And as you can see in this call log we obtained from the National Archives, he did so. Mr. Clark is testifying before a committee. [Begin videotape]
For example, when Richard Donoghue and Jeff Rosen, both appointed by President Trump, learned of Mr. Clark’s proposal, here’s why they said they forcefully rejected it. [Begin videotape]
And I recall toward the end saying what you’re proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election. This was not based on fact. This was contrary to the facts that were developed over the last few weeks and months.
The Department of Justice and his White House counsel threatened to leave the administration, so the President relented. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
John Eastman contacted Ronna McDaniel, Chair of the Republican National Committee, and told her that President Pence had no power to unilaterally decide the outcome of the election
This was something done not only with the President’s knowledge, but also with his direct participation. Ronna McDaniel, Chair of the Republican National Committee, testified before this committee that President Trump and his attorney Dr. John Eastman called her and asked her to arrange for the fake electors to meet and rehearse the process of casting their fake votes.
I don’t remember the exact date it was when I received the call, but it was the President who contacted me.
President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election, but President Trump is wrong. I don’t have the right to change the result of the election. The American people are in charge of the presidency. It’s un-American to think that you can choose the American President.
John Eastman instructed tens of thousands of angry protesters that the Vice President could change the outcome of the election. Donald Trump had known what he was attempting to do was illegal, according to Dr. Eastman. John was testifying before the committee.
In writing, Dr. Eastman confirmed this. Recall this email written on January 6 in which Vice President Pence’s counsel asked Dr. Eastman; did you advise the President that in your professional judgment, the Vice President does not have power to decide things unilaterally? Dr. Eastman replied, he’s been so advised.
And the word that she relayed to you that the President called the Vice President, I apologize for being impolite, but do you remember what she said her father called him?
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
The Capitol Crisis During President Donald Trump’s January 6 Re-Concluded: A First Call with a Protective Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist
The people who stood up in the face of enormous pressure were the Department of Justice officials and his own Vice President. Thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters had been summoned to Washington on January 6 to take back their country.
Other agencies were also hearing predictions suggesting possible violence at the Capitol. On a call with President Trump’s White House national security staff in early January 2021, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist had warned about the potential that the Capitol would be the target of the attack.
He was almost like a psychic and during these calls, I only remember. Norquist says during one of these calls, the greatest threat is a direct assault on the Capitol. I will never forget it. [End videotape]
One agent emailed, possibly because they have stuff that couldn’t come through would probably be an issue with this crowd. Just a thought. More than 25,000 people were reported by agents by 9:30 that morning. An hour later, the Secret Service reported that the crowd was on the mall watching, but not in line.
The head of the President’s Secret Service protective detail, Robert Engel, was specifically aware of the large crowds outside the magnetometers. He gave Tony Ornato that information while he was working in the chief of staff’s office. The documents we obtained claim that the agents were aware that the crowd was armed. Take a look at what they were seeing and hearing on the ground.
One report from the rally site at 7:58 a.m. said, some members of the crowd are wearing ballistic helmets, body armor, carrying radio equipment and military grade backpacks. Another from 9:30 a.m. said that there were possibly OC spray, meaning pepper spray, and/or plastic riot shields. At 11:23 a.m., agents also reported possible armed individuals, one with a glock, one with a rifle.
Over the next hour, agents reported possible man with a gun reported, confirmed pistol on hip located in a tree; and one detained at 14th and I Street northwest; individual had an assault rifle on his person.
Minutes before President Trump began his speech, members of the Federal Protective Service, an agency tasked with protecting federal buildings, were alerted about an arrest of a protester with a gun on his waistband. Weapons related arrests continued during the speech. At 12:13 PM, United States Park Police arrested a man with a rifle in front of the World War II Memorial. Some agents thought the situation could get worse because there were so many weapons seized that day.
If I had seen something like that, I probably would have flipped it to someone at the White — or if I had seen something of that nature, I would have said we gotta flag this for Secret Service or something of that nature.” Continue videotape.
The same day Jason Miller sent his text message, agents received reports about a spike in activity on another platform called Parler. This was December 30th. The agent received a report that stated a lot of violent rhetoric had been directed at the people who are protected by the Secret Service.
On the evening of January 5th, President Trump gathered several of his communications staff in the Oval Office. The door was open, allowing the president and others assembled there to hear the sounds of the crowd gathered at Freedom Plaza, just a few blocks from the White House. President Trump could tell that his supporters were riled up. Judd Deere, a deputy White House press secretary, is describing the president’s reaction.
Just that they were — they were fired up. They were angry. They feel like the election’s been stolen, that the election was rigged, that — he went on and on about that for a little bit. The end of the videotape.
The president knew that the crowd was angry and he made a big deal of it. He knew that they believed that the election had been rigged and stolen because he had told them falsely that it had been rigged and stolen. And by the time he incited that angry mob to march on the Capitol, he knew they were armed and dangerous, all the better to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
The Congresswoman for the Young People’s Campaign [Jan-6] Committee on Elections and Elections [The Correspondence to the Deputy Secretary of State, General Secretary Tom Hardy, [Applause]
The gentleman is about to give up. We’ll take a brief break at this point. The chairperson of the committee declared the committee in recess for a period of 10 minutes. In the middle of the year. The gentleman from California is recognized by the chair.
The time for the Ellipse rally was when intelligence officials, including a Secret Service official, were sending out an email that contemplated violence among the rally goers. “Trump has given us marching orders,” one post on TheDonald.win wrote. It’s possible if you’re east of the Mississippi.
He wanted it full, and he was annoyed that we weren’t allowing people with weapons to go through the mags. I overheard the president make a statement to the effect that he does not care that they have weapons.
They’re not here to hurt me. Take the magazines away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Allow the people in. Take that magazine away from you. [End videotape]
I would love to have tens of thousands of people allowed, and we want to thank the police and law enforcement for their hard work. You are doing a great job. [Applause] They might be able to come up with us. Is that possible? Let them come up, please.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
Is Donald Trump really trying to turn his attention on the Capitol, or why he didn’t go, and what he had to tell us about his altercation with the Secret Service
There is no scenario in which an American president should have engaged in that conduct. It did not matter whether President Trump believed the election had been stolen or not. This could not be justified on any basis for any reason. During the summer we heard testimony about Mr. Trump’s attempts to lead the mob to the Capitol, and his confrontation with the Secret Service when he was told it wasn’t safe for him to go. During the July 21st hearing, one former White House employee with national security responsibilities said that information about the altercation was in fact water cooler talk in the White House complex.
“They’d expressed to me that the president was irate, you know, on the drive up. The president was irate, that’s what Mr. Engle said. That of course corresponds closely with the testimony you saw this summer from Cassidy Hutchinson, a Metropolitan Police officer who was in the motorcade, and from multiple sources.
This will be noted by me also. The committee is examining testimony about the possible obstruction and advice given not to tell the committee about the topic. We will address this matter in our report.
To be completely honest, we were all in a state of shock. Why? Because — because we just — one, I think the actual physical feasibility of doing it, and then also we all knew what that indicated and what that meant, that this was no longer a rally, that this was going to move to something else if he physically walked to the Capitol.
I don’t know if you want to use insurrection or something like that. We all knew that this would move from a normal democratic, you know, public event into something else. Why were we concerned?
An Exchange between President Trump and the White House Counsel: A Civil Disturbance Unit Security Line on the West Side of the Capitol During a White House March
We have testimony from several members of the president’s White House staff establishing that President Trump refused entreaties from his closest advisers and family members to tell his supporters to stand down and leave the Capitol. Here’s the testimony of President Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone.
Here’s Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, describing an — an exchange she had with the president as soon as he arrived back at the White House. You can begin the videotape.
To my recollection, he said that if he had to, he would take the presidential limousine if he needed to because he wanted to walk in the march. [End videotape]
There is new evidence obtained by the Select Committee from the Secret Service. This hour was frantic for the Secret Service, trying to get the president to back down from a reckless decision that puts people in harm’s way.
The email was sent by the Secret Service at 1:09PM on January 6th when President Trump got out of his car to leave the White House. As soon as the president left the motorcade, leadership of the Secret Service contacted Bobby Engel, the lead agent for the presidential detail, and warned him that they were worried about an Off the Record movement to the Capitol.
Between 2:30 and 2:35, within 10 minutes of President Trump’s tweet, thousands of rioters overran the line that the Metropolitan Police Force’s Civil Disturbance Unit was holding on the west side of the Capitol. It was the first time that a security line like that had ever been broken in the history of the Metropolitan Police Department.
I cannot talk about conversations with the president, but I can state that people need to be told fast that they need to leave the Capitol.
Approximately when? Immediately after learning people were getting into the Capitol, it was violent.
I can’t think of a single person on that day who didn’t want the people in the Capitol to leave. I mean —
I’m sorry. I — I apologize. I suppose you said who on the staff. I am not able to reveal communications, but you know I think so. [End videotape]
He had said something to the effect that Pat had heard. He wants to not do anything anymore. He doesn’t believe they are doing anything wrong. End videotape.
A former White House employee recalled a conversation he had with another man about the mob assault on the Capitol. Mr. Herschmann said something to Mr. Cipollone. He seemed to say that the president didn’t want anything done.
Throughout this period, some of the president’s most important political allies, family members, and senior staff all begged him to tell his supporters to disperse and go home. They included Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other allies at Fox News, his son Donald Trump Jr, the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, others in Congress, and officials in the cabinet and the executive branch.
And to your knowledge, was the president in that private dining room the whole time that the attack on the Capitol was going on, or did he ever go to — again, only to your knowledge, to the Oval Office, to the White House Situation Room, anywhere else?
Yeah. The president or Mr.Meadows were in the dining room. What did they say during that brief encounter? What do you recall? Everyone was watching the TV, I think. Do you know whether he was watching TV in the dining room when you talked to him on January 6th?
When you were in the dining room in these discussions, was that it — was the violence at the Capitol visible on the screen on the — in — on the television?
You’ll see how everyone involved was working actively to stop the violence, to get federal law enforcement deployed to the scene, to put down the violence and secure the Capitol complex. Republicans like Vice President Biden, Senate Majority Leader McConnell and so many other appointees, even though they are just Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
We’re starting to be surrounded. They are on the north front scaffolding. Unless we get more munitions, we are not going to be able to hold. People are getting into the Capitol after a door was broken.
There has to be some way that we can maintain the sense of security that people have and that we can vote for the president of the United States. Was the session back into session?
We did go back into session, but now apparently everybody on the floor is putting on tear gas masks to prepare for a breach. I’m trying to find some more information.
I can’t. We need a area for the House members. They are walking through the tunnel. Bring her here. We are going in if you don’t bring her out.
I’m calling up the secretary of the DOD. Some of the Senators are currently in their hideaways. Massive personnel is what they need now. Can you get the Maryland National Guard to come too?
I have something to say, Mr. Secretary. I’m going to call the mayor of Washington DC and see what else she can do to get other police departments to help her, as Leader Hoyer mentioned.
Hi, Governor. This is Nancy. I’m not sure if you’ve been approached about Virginia’s National Guard. Mr. Hoyer was connect — speaking to Governor Hogan, but I still think you probably need the Ok of the federal government in order to come in to another jurisdiction. Thank you for your kind words.
They said someone was shot. It’s horrendous. At the instigation of the president of the United States. Ok, thank you, Governor. You’re doing a great job. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay in touch. Thank you for that, I appreciate it. Thank you.
You know, I was just talked to Governor Northam, and what he said is they sent 200 state police and a unit of the National Guard. They broke windows and went in and ransacked our offices. That’s not much. The concern we have about personal harm.
Personal safety is more than just one thing. But the fact is on any given day, they’re breaking the law in many different ways, and quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States. And now if he could — could — at least somebody.
They should leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility, a public statement from the president.
The Capitol Building. Is It Close? The Chief of Police in the U.S. Capitol Police — Addressing a very bad report about the Senate floor
I don’t want to speak for the leadership that’s going to be responsible for executing the operation, so I’m not going to say that. Because they are meeting on the ground and they’re the experts It’s inaudible.
Pretend for a moment that the Pentagon, the White House or other entity was under siege. Let me say you can logistically get people there as you make the plan. We’re trying to figure out how we can get this job done today. We spoke to him about it. He was with us earlier, he wasn’t in the room at the moment, but he said that he wanted to speed this up. and hopefully they could confine it to just one complaint, Arizona, and then we could vote and that would be — you know, then just move forward with the rest of the state.
The overriding wish is to do it at the Capitol. What we are being told very directly is it’s going to take days for the Capitol to be Ok again. We’ve gotten a very bad report about the condition of the House floor, defecation and all that kind of thing as well. I don’t think that it’s hard to clean up, but it’s more about making sure everyone is out of the building and figuring out how long that will take.
I said that it could take days to clean the Capitol of the poo poo that they’re making and that it could take a few days to get back.
The Capitol building is where I am. I’m standing with the Chief of Police of the US Capitol Police. He just informed me what you will hear through official channels, Paul Irving, your Sergeant-at-Arms, will inform you that their best information is that they believe that the House and the Senate will be able to reconvene in roughly an hour.
It was obvious that President Trump was the only one capable of ending this. He was the only one who could. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration. The President did not act quickly. He didn’t do his job. He didn’t take actions that would have made federal law executed and order restored.
Mick Mulvaney, the former chief of staff to President Trump, has come out and said he also corroborates her account. Begin with a videotape.
You know, I asked Kevin McCarthy who’s the Republican leader about this and — and he said he called –he finally got through to Donald Trump He told me that I have to get on TV. You’ve got to give it a whirl on the social networking site. You’ve got to call these people off. You know what the President said to him? This is as it’s happening.
Furthermore, the committee contended in its hearings that Trump also helped to plot a nefarious scheme to use fake electors to subvert the election in Congress. When those efforts failed, after then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to wield powers he did not have, the committee argued that Trump called a mob to Washington and incited a vicious attack on the Capitol. He was accused by committee members of failing in his duty to protect Congress, the Constitution and the rule of law as the violence raged.
But let me be very clear to all of you and I’ve been very clear to the President; he bears responsibilities for his words and actions, no ifs, ands or buts. I asked him today, does he have responsibility for what happened? Does he think it’s a bad thing? He told me, he does have some responsibility for what happened and he need to acknowledge that.
Finally, at 6:01, President Trump tweeted again not to condemn the mass violence in any way, but rather to excuse and glorify it. He made it clear that the violence was foreseeable and predictable. Check it out. When a sacred landslide election victory is stripped away from great patriots who have been badly treated, there are things and events that happen.
As the afternoon progressed, the company detected a surge in violent hashtags on the platform, including lines of lethal incitement like, execute Mike Pence. Listen to this former Twitter employee, Anika Navaroli, who first came to the committee anonymously, but has now bravely agreed to be named because she wants to speak out about the magnitude of the threats facing our people.
Yes, and after in response to this, too. It again fanned the flames because I think as many of Donald Trump’s posts did. It was people who were already constructing gallows that were ready and willing to execute someone and look for someone to be killed. The person was called upon to start this coup, now they are pointing their finger at another person as they prepare to do this.
Mike Pence, a traitor, has messed with us. What happened in the Capitol, and when did he quit?
Mike Pence is not in favor of Donald Trump. Mike Pence was a traitor. If you haven’t heard yet, Mike Pence has messed us up. What happened? What happened? I hear Mike Pence has messed with us. It is the word I am hearing more and more, that Mike Pence has messed us. This ends the videotape.
President Trump’s conduct that day was so shameful and so outrageous that it prompted numerous members of the White House staff and other Trump appointees to resign. You have heard why deputy national security advisers Matt Pottinger and Sarah Matthews decided to quit in the past.
I was stunned by violence, and I was stunned by the President’s apparent indifference to the violence. The time has come for the President to be in charge. I thought he failed at doing it. He was the type of leader the nation needed at a critical time.
The events at the Capitol were shocking. I stated in my statement that I could not put it aside. It was impossible for me to continue as I have personal values and my philosophy. I came to this country as an immigrant.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
The President is coming home: When Donald Trump says goodbye to the injured and wounded, when he speaks about the D-Day or the Battle of Yorktown
The President’s message is being delivered. Donald Trump has asked everybody to go home. That’s what we ordered. [Inaudible] He says, go home. End videotape.
The whole game will be given away, he said. Trump told us that the Vice President, Congress, and all of the injured and wounded cops were aware of what was coming to them. There is a truth to that according to Trump. January 6 should not be a day that lives in shame in infamy in our history, but rather in glory.
He wrote “remember this day forever, as if he were talking about the D-Day or the Battle of Yorktown”, as if that was what he meant. There were obvious reasons why Trump didn’t stop the violence. He thought the whole thing was justified. He supported it, even though he incited it. Begin the videotape.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
Defending Insurrection: Why the January 6th Reaction was Rigged and Why the Electorate Renewals Didn’t
If the president had wanted to make a statement and address the American people, he could have been on camera almost instantly. The White House press corps has offices in the same area as the briefings room. And so, if he had wanted to make an address from the Oval Office, we could have assembled the White House press corps probably in a matter of minutes to get them into the Oval for him to do an on camera address.
Our constitution strongly discourages insurrection and rebellion. Article I gives Congress the power to call forth the militia to suppress insurrections. Anyone who betrays the Constitution by engaging in rebellion or insurrection can’t hold a federal or state office.
The best explanation of why democracy rejects insurrection came from President Lincoln at the start of the Civil War. Insurrection, he said, is a war upon the first principle of popular government, the rights of the people. The American people own democracy, not a single man. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The gentleman yields back. During this committee’s first hearing in July of last year, our witnesses were four police officers who helped repel the riots of January 6th. We inquired about the committee’s intentions over the course of the investigation. Officer Grinnell would like to know why the rioters thought the election process was rigged.
Officer Fanone asked us to look into the actions and activities that resulted in the day’s events. Officer Hodges was wary of who had the right to make decisions. OfficerDunn told them to get to the bottom of what happened. We’ve worked for more than a year to get those answers. More than a thousand interviews have been conducted by us.
Subpoenaing the Testability of a President’s Fifth Amendment Right against Self-Incrimination: General Michael Flynn Walking with Oath Keepers on December 12, 2020
In American history, there’s precedent for Congress to subpoena the testimony of a president. Presidents have provided testimony to Congressional investigators before. We also recognize that a subpoena to a former president is a serious and extraordinary action.
That’s why we feel compelled to go in full view of the American people because the subject matter at issue is important and the stakes are very high for our democracy. I recognized the Vice Chair, Ms. Cheney, to offer a motion.
Thank you very much, Chairman. Mr. Chairman, our committee now has sufficient information to answer many of the critical questions posed by Congress at the outset. We have sufficient information to consider criminal referrals for multiple individuals and to recommend a range of legislative proposals to guard against another January 6th, but a key task remains.
January 6th’s central player must testify for us. More than 30 witnesses in our investigation have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and several of those did so specifically in response to questions about their dealings with Donald Trump directly. Here are a few examples.
This is General Michael Flynn walking with Oath Keepers on December 12, 2020, and here is General Flynn’s testimony before our committee. Begin the videotape.
It is possible to have conversations in the media directly with the President of the United States, but it is not possible to do the same with this committee.
The resolution is up for approval. A motion to reconsider is laid on the table without objection. The Chair requests that those in the hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have escorted members from the room. The committee was adjourned without objection.
The Dramatic Moments of January 6, 2021: After Giuliani, President Trump vowed to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election
The professor of history and public affairs at the university is a CNN political analyst. His forthcoming co-edited work, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggestlies and Legends about Our Past” is one of the 24 books he has written. Just follow him on his social media accounts. The views he expresses in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.
In public hearings during the past four months, the bipartisan panel attempted to reveal the full context of what happened that day and who was responsible.
Unlike the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974, one of the most distinctive elements of Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election is that so much of it happened in broad daylight.
The committee gave us shocking evidence and details as to how dangerous the events of those months were, so we can better understand them.
The protesters were armed and dangerous on January 6, 2021. Trump knew that but did nothing to stop them. He wanted to go to Capitol Hill and was stopped by a Secret Service agent. The former president even lunged at a Secret Service agent and tried to steer the wheel of the car when he was told he couldn’t go, according to former aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Various state officials were probed to see if they would work for Trump. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a staunch conservative who backed the administration, was unsettled as Giuliani and Trump pressured him during a phone call in late November 2020 to have the state legislature reconvene and invalidate the results in his state. The president’s lawyer John Eastman, who had written the road map for their attempted election steal, pressured Pence’s aides to have him reject the results.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/14/opinions/dramatic-moments-january-6-hearing-zelizer/index.html
The Democratic Committee on the Judiciary Campaign to Overturn the 2022 U.S. Capitol Controversy. I. Lee Zeldin of New York
Continuum: January 6 was just one piece of a much larger story. The committee is called the January 6 committee, but it is more likely to be a committee to investigate the campaign to overturn the election. Understand the months between November 2020 and January 2021, with this reframing.
We have learned that the president understood what was happening. He was told many times about how he was making claims that were untrue and warned of the dangers he was taking. Advisers, lawyers, and conservative media figures who supported him were privately urging him to stop.
Ongoing Threat: In its pivotal hearing Thursday, the committee wanted to make one thing clear, the danger is not over in 2022. There is a clear danger to the electoral system and to democratic institutions that will come through in our final hearing. This isn’t ancient history; it’s a continuing threat. There is a continued threat on many levels. The rhetoric of election denialism has taken hold among many of Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.
Republicans who subscribe to this agenda are also running for several key offices, ranging from gubernatorial positions to secretaries of state in key states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona, all of whom will play a key role in overseeing future elections. And, finally, the former president remains the top contender for the Republican nomination in 2024.
The dark days that followed the election were explained by the committee. They have been seen in a clear way by us. The biggest question left is whether as a nation we will close our eyes and move on, without demanding justice or reform.
Representative Lee Zeldin of New York went live on Fox News one day after the U.S. Capitol was vandalized and police were still counting the injured.
Other Republican leaders had already begun distancing the party from President Donald J. Trump, whose monthslong campaign to overturn his election loss helped incite the violence. Mr. Zeldin was prepared to exonerate him that evening.
“This isn’t just about the president of the United States,” he said, referring to what prompted the riot that he condemned. It’s about the people on the left who have double standards.
Biden did not mention in his speech at Union Station on Wednesday night that the issues were linked in a fateful way, because he may be speaking at cross purposes. The president’s failure – whether it is all his fault or not – to quell inflation and the worries of a nation already demoralized by a once-in-a-century pandemic created the electoral conditions that look likely to restore Trumpism to power, in the form of a volatile, extreme GOP majority in the House of Representatives at least, with the Senate still on a knife’s edge.
Biden made an election-closing argument in his speech that the US Capitol was attacked by Donald Trump’s mob in January of 2021. There is an election taking place next week.
But the essence of the Trump message exists in direct contradiction to Biden’s logic. When the party that they love wins, they love their country more because they see the Democrats as antipathy towards America. Dueling understandings of what America actually means are at the crux of the current, great political struggle that will not only play out next Tuesday but in the foreseeable future.
“You have the power, it’s your choice, it’s your decision, the fate of the nation, the fate of the soul of America lies, as it always does, with the people,” Biden told voters.
Elections should be about more than one thing. Voters can chew gum and walk at the same time. The threat to democracy in Washington feels very much like it did on January 6, as a result of the Capitol dome being only a glimpse of it.
In the heartlands of Pennsylvania, the suburbs of Arizona and the cities around the world the gut check issue is less about self- government and more about people. It is one of the basics of feeding a family. This election is more about the cost of a grocery store cart or the price of gas than America’s founding truths.
The Price of Everything Was Better When Donald Trump Weakens: Addressing the Reality that Inflation and the Future of Our Democracy is How We Vote
As a retiree in Arizona, Nancy Strong told CNN that the price of everything was better when Donald Trump was president.
There was a rush of bad news about job losses just before the polls opened, as well as in the tech industry, which raised doubts about a slowdown that may destroy one of the bright spots of the Biden economy. The Fed’s interest rate hikes make credit card debt and buying a home more expensive, so Americans have to deal with higher prices for food and gas, and also tip the economy into recession.
Biden’s argument is implicitly that while inflation will fall, and economic damage can be repaired, the current election – and its legions of anti-democratic Republican candidates – could cause political wreckage that is beyond mending.
But it’s a tough case to make in such a doom-laden political environment for Democrats. The millions of Republicans who believe Trump’s falsehoods about the last election don’t listen to Biden and his call for national unity anyway. His low approval ratings does not help. And in a new CNN/SSRS survey published on Wednesday, for instance, 51% of Americans said inflation and the economy was most driving their vote in the midterms. Abortion – the issue Democrats hoped would save them next Tuesday after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer – was the only other concern in double figures, polling at 15% of likely voters. Voting rights and election integrity were the focus of the speech the president gave on Wednesday night.
This year, I hope that you make the future of our democracy an important part of your vote, and how you vote, he said. “Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose?” he added, at the end of a campaign in which several GOP nominees have not guaranteed they would accept voters’ will.
The Biden White House and the War on Decelerating Prices: A Reply to the Biden-Trump Message in Philadelphia
Biden has been talking about high prices. Billions of dollars of spending in his domestic agenda will lower the cost of health care, lift up working families and create millions of jobs according to his pitch. There are things that can happen in the future but they can not relieve the pain at the moment.
Throughout history, inflation has often been a pernicious political force that breeds desperation in an electorate and seeds extremism as a potential response. It is so strange that the Biden White House did not take the surge of prices seriously, because they insisted it was a “transitory” problem caused by Covid-19.
The president renewed his call for national unity in a speech at the Capitol in 2021. The former president of the United States refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election and that led to American democracy being under attack.
He put his own interests ahead of those of the Constitution. And he’s made the Big Lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party – a minority of that party,” Biden said, being careful not to insult every GOP voter as he did when referring to “semi-fascism” earlier this year.
The president also argued that Trump’s threat was far broader now than it was in the 2020 election. “As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America: for governor, Congress, for attorney general, for secretary of state who won’t commit – who will not commit to accepting the results of the elections they’re running in,” the president warned.
Biden suggested that there is a lack of understanding of the Trump supporters who embraced his anti-democratic, populist, nationalist appeal to mostly White voters after the backlash to the first Black presidency of Barack Obama. The 44th president has defended democracy and rebuked Trump on the campaign trail in recent days.
Biden thinks that the voices calling for violence and intimidation are a minority in America. They are determined and loud.
The speech – a political event hosted by the Democratic National Committee, not the White House – underscored the points Biden has been making for weeks since a prime time speech in Philadelphia. The Democrats focused on economic recovery in the closing midterm message, but it differed from that.
Even as he was optimistic that Americans would reject the force he described, Biden was not optimistic at all. The address was delivered by Biden after the Speaker’s husband was attacked by a right-winger on social media.
Biden made sure to note that most Americans, and even most Republicans, would not resort to violence. He said that those who would have outsized influence.
Biden and his team had been contemplating giving a speech on the topic of democracy for some time, but their decision-making in recent days had been shaped by what they’ve viewed as a surge in anti-democratic rhetoric and threats of violence. The attack on Paul Pelosi, which left the elderly woman in the hospital for surgery, and caused a skull injury, was so shocking that it worried Biden and his advisers.
How can you say that you care about democracy if you don’t believe in a win? He told the audience there was only one way to win at the event, held in a backyard of a mansion.
The 2020 Midterm Campaign: What Will You Do? The Democratic Electoral Reform After Two Years of Perseening Donald Trump’s Claims
Vice President Biden was spotted carrying a copy of the new book “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle”, which explores how America’s 16th president confronted independence and threats to democracy.
But the final hours of this midterm campaign laid bare the polarized electoral environment, the specter of political violence and the possibility of disputed races – all of which have raised the stakes of the first nationwide vote since former President Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election and have augured an acrimonious two years to come.
The next Congress will count the electoral votes in the presidential election in 2024, and its members will be the ones to consider and act on any objections to the vote’s legitimacy. The results of the 2020 election were thrown out by eight Republican senators and 139 Republican representatives on the basis of spurious allegations of voter fraud. Many of them are likely to win re-election, and they may be joined by new members who also have expressed baseless doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election. Their presence in Congress endangers democracy, and should be on the mind of every voter casting a ballot this Election Day.
It will also be the first time that the U.S. electoral machinery will be tested in a national election after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, election “audits” and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. That test comes alongside the embrace of violent extremism by a small but growing faction of the Republican Party.
How bad are things? In an October Reuters/Ipsos poll, 43 percent of voters said they worried about threats of violence or intimidation while voting. New York Times/Siena College polling has found that insofar as people worry about threats to democracy in the United States, they attribute the problem to the opposing party — an untenable situation that is tough to resolve. Recently, people have shown up, armed, to watch voter drop boxes. Republican candidates are making false claims about the 2020 election. All over the country, election officials and workers have quit, citing threats and demands on them. One violent episode can alter individual lives forever, as well as reverberate through politics in deep and unexpected ways. You can picture a grim scenario in which voting and election work moves, like other facets of American life, into a permanent siege posture.
Nobody really thinks we could live like that. Understanding the scale of problems that haven’t changed is difficult.
In endless tension with more abstract questions about the big picture is the practical reality that in a democratic republic, real people, with real lives, set up the voting equipment in a middle school gym somewhere, check you in, hand you a ballot, hand you a sticker, make sure the tabulator is empty before the count begins — the full battery of mundane procedures that start in your neighborhood and filter up through the county and the state and, in a presidential year, all the way up through the country.
A nation that is worn down by crises and anxious about the economy votes Tuesday in an election that is more likely to cement its divisions than promote unity.
People choosing their leaders is one of the reasons why elections are often cleansing in setting the country on a new path.
Democrats will have to regroup, try again in two years and come up with a new plan if they lose on Tuesday. Republicans can argue voters gave them a mandate to fix things where Biden has failed if they take control of Congress. The GOP will be looking for a performance on the ballot in two years, after repeated elections in which disgruntled voters punished the party with the most power.
Above all, the midterm campaign turned on the cost of living crisis, with polls showing the economy by far the most important issue for voters, who are still waiting for the restoration of normality after a once-in-a-century pandemic that Biden had promised in 2020.
Tuesday appears to be a difficult day for Biden. The president did not spend the final hours of the campaign battling to get vulnerable Democrats over the line in a critical swing state. His low approval ratings will not hurt Democrats who are running for office and he was in the liberal bastion of Maryland. The venue of his last event, where he did stump for John Fetterman, encapsulated his political juices as he contemplates a 2024 reelection campaign.
“I think it’s going to be tough,” Biden told reporters. “I think we’ll win the Senate and I think the House is tougher,” he said, admitting life would become “more difficult” for him if the GOP takes control of Congress.
On the eve of a presidential election in which he doesn’t have a nomination, Trump made it all about himself, even though he claimed he didn’t want to overshadow the Republican candidates. At a rally ostensibly for GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance in Ohio, Trump unleashed a dystopian, self-indulgent dirge of a speech laced with demagoguery, exaggerated claims that America was in terminal decline, and outright falsehoods about the 2020 election. And he laid the groundwork to proclaim he is the victim of totalitarian state-style persecution if he is indicted in several criminal probes into his conduct.
Trump also vowed to make “a very big announcement” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on November 15, which appears to be the worst kept secret in politics – that he will seek another term in the White House. The fact that a twice-impeached president, who left office in disgrace after legitimizing violence as a form of political expression, has a good chance of winning underscores the turbulence of our time.
The shadow of violence that has hung over American policies since Trump incited the Capitol insurrection was exacerbated as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled the moment of trauma when she was told by police that her husband Paul had been attacked with a hammer. In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, she also condemned certain Republicans for joking about it.
“In our democracy, there is one party that is doubting the outcome of the election, feeding that flame, and mocking any violence that happens. That has to stop,” Pelosi said.
Kevin McCarthy, the likely next speaker of the House if Republicans keep the majority, blamed Democrats for invective during an exclusive interview with CNN. He did not rule out impeaching Biden, a step radical members of his conference are already demanding.
McCarthy said that impeachment will not be used for political purposes. “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”
And Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who says he’s in line to be chairman of the permanent subcommittee on investigations if he wins reelection and Republicans take the Senate, said he’d use the power granted him, in what is likely to be a very narrowly decided election, to further crank up the partisan heat in Washington.
The Magic of Donald Trump: Referring the FBI to the FBI for a Criminal Action Against Trump over the Jan. 6 Insurrection
There’s something magical about democratic elections, when differences are exposed in debates and fierce campaigns. But there’s mostly, until now, been an expectation that both sides would then abide by the verdict of the people.
The congressional committee investigated the deadly Jan. 6 riot and referred Donald Trump to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for four charges related to an insurrection that he inspired because he couldn’t publicly accept that he lost an election.
A Capitol Police officer told how she had slipped on spilled blood during the melee caused when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. A mother and daughter who worked as election workers in Georgia described how they faced racist threats after Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, accused them of vote stealing. Rusty Bowers, the outgoing Republican speaker of the Arizona state House, testified that Trump’s calls for him to meddle with the election were “foreign to my very being.”
Often, it was Republicans – some who were with Trump in the West Wing on January 6 – who courageously testified about his assault on the Constitution, including Cassidy Hutchinson. The ex-aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled, “It was unpatriotic. It was not American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
From the moment that conservative retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig warned in a June committee hearing that Trump and supporters still posed “a clear and present danger to American democracy,” it’s been clear the panel believes that Trump was in the middle of an alleged election-stealing conspiracy. With that in mind, it would be surprising if the 45th president, who earned his second impeachment over the insurrection, was not referred to the DOJ for the possibility of criminal action.
“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the January 6 committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. If it isn’t a crime, I don’t know what it is.
Now, that doesn’t mean Trump will be charged. The committee has no power over what the Justice Department does. The Justice Department has its own investigation of Trump that’s been ongoing and currently run by special counsel Jack Smith.
In practice, the referral is effectively a symbolic measure. It does not require the Justice Department to act, and regardless, Attorney General Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take on two probes related to Trump, including the January 6 investigation.
Will an impression that Trump is being hounded by any referrals nearly two years after he left office help rally Republicans to his misfiring 2024 campaign?
And do Americans as a whole, at a time of national strain amid high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic, really care about events that rattled US democracy nearly two years ago?
Reply to the Kinzinger Report on Trump’s January 6, 2020 Insurrection and the Way the DOJ Will Be Trying to Save Democracy
Kinzinger explained how he wanted to hold Trump to account in his speech on the House floor because he served on the Committee in defiance of his party and will not be returning to Congress.
In July, Cheney said at a public hearing that every American must think about this. “Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”
The sacrifice of her career in the GOP may be in vain after many of her fellow Republicans did not acknowledge Cheney’s conduct. Certainly, there was little sense during the compelling hearings that the public was as transfixed with this act of accountability as it was, for instance, with the Senate Watergate hearings in the 1970s that helped lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Today’s polarized times and the power of conservative media to distort what really happened on January 6 may help explain this dichotomy.
Still, Americans rejected many of Trump’s midterm candidates in swing state races who had amplified his false claims of 2020 election fraud, suggesting some desire to protect American democracy.
It is impossible to quantify how the committee’s work affected voters in November. Even as the ex-president launched a new campaign to cast the probes into his conduct as politically motivated persecution, it kept documenting Trump’s insurrection in the news all year. The pro-Trump Republicans like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene are going to escalate their attempts to distort what happened in the Capitol attack.
“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. Huge amounts of evidence, a huge amount of witnesses being identified,” former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom” on Saturday.
“I think it’s the detail that accompanies the referrals themselves and the report that will give a roadmap to DOJ. The Department of Justice is late to this party and they are working hard to catch them, but that detail will put a lot of pressure on them as well.
If nothing else, future generations will be able to judge the determination of the panel members, especially its two Republicans, and the courage of witnesses who told the truth to try save democracy.
The Illinois House Republican Advisory Committee on the “Corrupt Practices of the Judiciary Justice System” and a Report on the Commission on Investigating “Trojansky’s Truth”
“Unfortunately we now live in a world where a lie is Trump’s truth, where democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism,” the Illinois Republican said.
“If we, America’s elected leaders, do not search within ourselves for a way out, I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”
A summary of the full report was released Monday after the committee concluded its final public hearing. More documents are still expected to be released.
“Accountability that can only be found in the criminal justice system,” committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. said. “We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law will use the information we’ve provided to aid in their work.”
The House Ethics Committee of 2020: Why Donald Trump and his Senators fought so hard to lose the 2020 election, and why we will never see them again
That faith was broken by Donald Trump. He lost the 2020 election and knew it. But he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power,” Thompson said. He called a mob to Washington, and since they were angry and armed, he ordered them to fight at the Capitol. There is no question about this.
The executive summary states that President Trump was told over and over that his election fraud allegations were not true. The panel relied on the testimony of some of Trump’s top advisers to build its case as well as the public record.
The montage went step-by-step through Trump’s efforts to block his election loss, showed how his attacks upended the lives of election workers and played body-cam footage of officers attacked by rioters.
Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona – one of the four subpoenaed GOP lawmakers that the panel referred to the House Ethics Committee on Monday – tweeted before the hearing that the committee was a “partisan sham.” Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican who boycotted the committee, called it a “partisan witch hunt.”
It’s important to remember how this all started. While there was partisan squabbling over which Republicans would be allowed to serve on the panel, House Democrats were willing to give committee slots to GOP lawmakers who had literally voted to overturn the 2020 results. Instead, Republicans boycotted.
It is clear that there are outliers in the conference who are anti-Trump. The committee is stacked with people who dislike Trump, and that is the core of Trump’s criticisms. Still, even if they oppose Trump, Cheney and Kinzinger are still deeply conservative Republicans. Kinzinger and Cheney lost their congressional primaries in the summer, and neither is returning next year.
Kinowitz said that his House GOP colleagues were involved in the effort to overturn the election. He pointed to evidence that Trump wanted top Justice Department officials to make sure that his voter fraud claims were seen as legitimate by Republicans so they could destroy the 2020 election results.
No matter what Trump and his allies say, Democrats will forever be able to accurately assert that the panel’s findings, conclusions, its final report and its criminal referrals are bipartisan.
Thompson said the full report will be out later this week. This will be a historical document that will be studied for generations. Never before has a sitting president tried to steal a second term.
These upcoming releases will provide fodder to Trump’s critics. Some of Trump’s allies want the panel to give the full context of its interviews. (Up until this point, the panel has been very selective about which snippets of witness interviews got played at public hearings.)
The Committee on Investigations of the 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidate Insights into the Trump-Born-Infeld Corrupt Incident
Four of the nine members will not be returning to Congress. The Democrats lost a lot of seats in the House in the last month of the year.
The committee did a good job of demonstrating its seriousness of purpose by refusing to give a laundry list of defendants. The committee members have all along thought as legislators and public educators, but also have put themselves in the minds of prosecutors. That led them to rightly focus on a short list of prospective defendants against whom the evidence is most damning, providing critical context to the prosecutors. The best cases are the ones the prosecutors can actually win and avoid the effect of referrals with more tenuous theories against a lot of actors.
The implication is that Mr. Eastman, who was an outside coup counsel, and his client Mr. Trump, should consider charges for their role in the coup. The committee wrote that Mr. Clark “stands out as a participant in the conspiracy.” This was an attempted coup and it’s driven by evidence that the committee has accumulated, so a focus on the client and his counsel is powerfully symbolic. It shows that a strong case can be made against Mr. Trump and others.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith once Trump announced he was running for president again as a way to show independence from the investigation.
The House Ethics Committee Reports on a Remark by the former communications director, Hope Hicks, about the Trump presidency and the role of fraud
“Ours is not a system of justice, where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” said committee member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., announcing the referrals.
They are all allies of Trump, and their opposition to the rules has been indicative of the new style of U.S. politics.
Republicans will control the ethics committee in the next Congress and McCarthy is predicted to be the next speaker, so it is not certain if anything happens to them.
That’s been evident to those of us who’ve covered Trump for a while, but it was affirmed by Hope Hicks, a former communications adviser in the Trump White House, someone who was very close to Trump.
During the course of the hearings Monday, we heard for the first time that Trump’s former communications director, Heather Hicks, had told him that the false claims of fraud were damaging his legacy.
“He said, ‘You know, no one cares about my legacy if I lose,’ and he said it in a roundabout way: Winning is the most important thing,’” she said.
“He was—he had—usually he had pretty clear eyes,” said Bill Stepien, the Trump 2020 campaign manager, according to written testimony released in a report by the committee. He understood what we meant, and we told him where we thought he had a chance of winning, and I think he was pretty realistic with our viewpoint.
Eighty percent of Democrats and 55% of independents said they were paying “a lot” or “some” attention to the hearings. The Republicans said they weren’t.
Summary of the House January 6 Committee on Investigations of the 2021 Insurrection: J. W. Garland, A.M. Smith, and J. B. Schur
Finally, Attorney General Merrick Garland now faces a politically perilous decision of whether to indict Trump, especially since he is now officially one of President Joe Biden’s campaign opponents in 2024. Garland has appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, who is overseeing the investigations of Trump and will make recommendation s.
There is no need for them to act on the committee’s recommendations because they are paying close attention to the findings. But don’t expect to hear much about the special counsel’s progress, as the DOJ tends to stay pretty quiet, if not wholly silent, on the details of ongoing investigations until they present them in court.
It will be up to voters to make a decision. Trump’s supporters will likely stick with him. As we noted, Republicans have been the least likely to be paying close attention to these hearings. In a multi-candidate primary, Trump remains the front-runner for the GOP nomination.
But he’s in legal trouble in multiple states, not just federally, and many of his preferred candidates — and election deniers — lost in swing states. The threat to U.S. democracy and faith in its elections has been presented by Trump, whether it be because of the chaos that often surrounds him, or because his brand is not a winner in states where Republicans probably need to win to take over the White House and Congress.
And the members of this committee — some of whom won’t be returning to Congress because of the wrath, or potential wrath, of Trump’s base — certainly hope voters respond.
Concluding its final public meeting Monday, the House January 6 committee released a summary of its key findings — the conclusions of which are devastating, even if they lack all the details expected in the final report.
For anyone who continues to believe that the January 6, 2021, insurrection was exaggerated or was a haphazard, amateurish effort gone bad, the final report should throw cold water on those beliefs. The recommendations of the committee are historic.
The committee said the White House was slow to respond to the insurrection in the US Capitol because Trump had created the violence by making comments about immigrants.
One Republican said that the transfer of power was a miracle because only one President, Donald Trump, had failed to abide by it.
The findings are among the worst Presidential scandals of all time. It is fair to say that the abuses of power that President Nixon committed, and the violations of law that the Reagan administration committed during the Iran-Contra hearings, stand alongside a sitting President who is part of a concerted effort to reverse his own election.
In other words, the committee concluded that Trump made history by participating in an unrivaled abuse of presidential power that threatened the very foundation of our democracy: elections. While the term “unprecedented” has been grossly overused, in this case the term works.
The “smoking gun” tape that allowed legislators to hear Nixon obstructing an investigation were enough in 1974 for politicians in both parties to say enough.
There were a number of resignations, indictments, and convictions in relation to the arms-for-hostage deals that resulted from the Reagan administration. Some officials who had been implicated in scandals were allowed to walk free, but to return to high-profile roles within the Republican Party and conservative movement. (“The Iran-Contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed,” the special prosecutor said in response to the pardons.)
The president was saved by the fact that the committee could not directly link the illegal operation to him and by the fact that the administration mounted an effective PR campaign to win back public support. Congressional Democrats, moreover, decided that they wouldn’t pursue impeachment.
Even Clinton’s scandal, which was over an issue far less relevant than what faced Nixon or Reagan, clearly contradicted his public statements and legal testimony about the subject after DNA evidence emerged of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Even 9/11 or the pandemic didn’t produce a serious political realignment. Even though a party’s leader has committed egregious abuses of power, polarization is almost always triumphant.
Another related challenge stems from what social scientists call “asymmetric polarization.” The Republican Party has moved further to the right than Democrats have to the left. And much of the extremism in the GOP has been tactical, where some party leaders have embraced a form of smashmouth partisanship with no guardrails as to what is permissible.
In this case, the odds that the relevant party will change its ways or respond are minimal. It is worth remembering that Senate Republicans originally filibustered the plan to set up an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate January 6 and did not cooperate with the congressional committee set up instead.
The sort of response that took place with Watergate doesn’t happen in our media world. While there was a time, such as the 1970s, when professional journalists coalesced around the facts presented by a judicious investigation, those times are gone.
Partisan media outlets such as Fox News ignore the weight of evidence. Show hosts are more than willing to spin the news in a particular direction that satisfies political yearnings.
In the coming weeks, there will likely be stories that misrepresent what the committee discovered and that will promote conspiratorial claims with no basis in fact. The filter-less world of social media probably will offer ample opportunity to push disinformation that contradicts the harrowing stories found in the report.
And some of the forces that will check the impact of the report stem from a broader national culture that seems incapable of staying focused on issues for long. In our short attention span, everything must be new and fresh; we push the media from one issue to the other — and much of the news media happily oblige — with the lightning speed of TV commercials.
The January 6 committee already has experienced this challenge as dramatic televised hearings, which proved capable of shifting attention to how bad the coup attempt had been, were quickly drowned out by the latest celebrity scandal or news story coming from Washington. It is nearly impossible to keep the public eye focused on a single topic because there are many outlets for information.
The Watergate scandal was the story that defined much of the period between 1972 and 1974, but for many Americans January 6 has just become one other thing among many that happened in the chaos of our era.
Counting Electoral College Votes: An Implications for the State of the State, or In the Light of Trump’s Defend and the 2020 Presidential Cycle
The question is whether the report will push Garland toward taking action in order to make accountability paramount rather than concern about division within the electorate.
January 6’s report is a stress test for the state of our democracy. It is unlikely, however, to change the basic dynamics.
It took almost two years, but on Thursday, as part of a government spending package, the Senate passed the first federal elections legislation to that aim.
The omnibus spending bill includes a section that would reform the Electoral Count Act, a 1887 law that governs the counting of Electoral College votes in Congress.
Legal scholars for years have worried that the law was poorly written and needed clarification and that former president Donald trump and his allies tried to overturn the election on account of this.
During the time after voting ended in 2020, Trump and his team argued that the vice president could interfere with the counting of electoral votes if he chose, because the law at the time said the presiding officer was the president.
Legal experts across the political spectrum debunked that reading of the law, but Trump’s pressure campaign still led to the powder keg that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” rang through the halls of Congress.
Importantly, the measure also would raise the bar for objecting to a state’s slate of electors. It takes only one member of congress to challenge a state’s electors and send both houses into a potential days-long debate period, even without legitimate concerns.
Legal experts and many lawmakers had said it was imperative to get this certification update done before the next Congress, and especially before the 2024 presidential cycle heats up. A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, spent much of 2022 negotiating the changes.
At an event hosted by the National Council on Election Integrity, Manchin stated that the legislation was holding on. “By a very, very thin thread of democracy.”
The Senate Select Committee on Elections 2020: What Happened Between Joe Biden and the White House and Who Wanted to Go?
There were no major new bombshells in the report that the committee released Thursday – instead the committee focused on laying out the depth and detail of its work across its investigation.
The report offered the most comprehensive account to date of what transpired in the two months between Election Day on November 3, 2020, and Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021.
The narrative goes far beyond the public hearings that took place in the summer and takes readers on a tour of various schemes Trump orchestrated and the help he got inside and outside his administration.
The report puts in one place intelligence assessments before January 6 from the federal government, including key messages that law enforcement had seen among Trump supporters on online forums.
The committee interviewed leaders of the agencies that were directing law enforcement response such as the Washington, DC Mayor and police force heads.
The select committee also says it interviewed 24 witnesses and reviewed 37,000 pages of documents for a review of the response of the DC National Guard, which attempts to explain the delayed response of the force to the Capitol.
The committee was told, for instance, that commander of the DC National Guard, Major Gen. William Walker, “strongly” considered deploying troops to the US Capitol on the afternoon of January 6 without approval from his superiors even if it meant he would have to resign the next day.
Perhaps in an attempt to pivot beyond the explosive anecdote itself, the select committee emphasized that their goal was to discover the intent behind Trump’s actions in the SUV. Many witnesses, including Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and the Secret Service press secretary, have said Trump wanted to go to the Capitol and was angry when told he could not.
The panel states that Engel did not describe the exchange in the way Hutchinson described it, and that Ornato didn’t recall President Trump gesturing toward him.
But, the driver described Trump as “animated and irritated,” and testified that Trump said shortly after getting in the vehicle, “I’m the President and I’ll decide where I get to go.”
The Mueller Committee on Electoral Crimes (Civil Rights Defenders) Investigated by the House Select Committee on Investigations of the January 6 Insurrection
The committee’s report underscores how the House’s successful court fights to pry loose documents, emails and phone records played a major role in helping the committee flesh out its narrative of January 6.
The committee obtained Eastman’s emails after a judge sided with the House in a lawsuit where the committee accused both Eastman and Trump of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress and to defraud the government.
In addition to Eastman, the committee identifies a little-known pro-Trump attorney as being the original architect of the legally dubious fake electors plan: Kenneth Chesebro. An outside legal advisor to the Trump Campaign wrote a bunch of legal memos that led to the fake elector plan.
The committee has started to release some of the transcripts from closed-door depositions and interviews with witnesses who invoked their Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination as well as bombshell testimony from Hutchinson, following its summary and report released this week.
There are more transcripts expected in the committee’s final days from other witness testimony, teasing out evermore details in the hours before the committee is dissolved, as is expected in the new Congress.
Several parties will be eagerly awaiting their release, including GOP lawmakers and Trump himself, who is still facing legal scrutiny on several fronts related to his role in the January 6 insurrection and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
These unprecedented referrals suggest that Mr. Trump, who as president took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not only violated that oath, but also committed a series of specifically indictable crimes. The crime of inciting an insurrection, which the former president was accused of, is the most stunning and crucial, and the remedy for it is barring the former president from holding political office.
In making these referrals, the committee was certainly considering the past as well. Representative Liz Cheney spoke movingly of her great-great-grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, who served in the Union’s 21st Regiment, Ohio Infantry, during the Civil War. He passed the President in the reviewing stand after the war while he and his fellow soldiers were participating in the Grand Review of the Armies. She could have added that the 17th president, Johnson, would soon be impeached. Like Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump, he was acquitted.
From the Church Committee to the 9/11 Commission: The Story of Grant’s Comeback to the State of the Art and a Crisis for the First Lady
After Ulysses S. Grant won the election of 1868, Johnson went home to Tennessee, where he began to plot his comeback. Since he possessed a talent for uniting moderate and radical Republicans along with Democrats and former secessionists, many of whom either hated him or now wanted nothing more to do with him, it wouldn’t be easy. But it wasn’t illegal.
These high-profile reports often captured public attention for the secrets they revealed. The Church Committee report, the result of investigations in the mid-1970s into the intelligence community, exposed wide-ranging wrongdoing: assassination attempts, support for international coups, drug experiments, domestic spying. It led then-President Gerald Ford to issue an executive order barring political assassinations, but it also broke the reign of secrecy that had allowed intelligence operatives to act in lawless and often bizarre ways.
Reports often found eager audiences, in part for their explosive revelations but also in part for their style. The Starr Report, which covered investigations into then-President Bill Clinton’s sexual relationships and his efforts to conceal them, combined a peek-through-the-keyhole tone with lascivious details of the president’s liaisons. It became a hit. As did the 9/11 Commission Report, which presented the details of the terror attacks and their causes in such captivating detail that it not only sold briskly, but it was a finalist for the National Book Awards. (The report on the Attica prison uprising, written for a state-level commission in 1972, was also a finalist for the prestigious prize.)
That moment inspired Hutchinson to come back to the committee and give her shocking testimony, that sheshared in public hearings this summer. It is a guide for the rest of us. The January 6 committee report provides a detailed account of an intentional, carefully planned attack on democratic governance, an account that creates an obligation for Americans who want that form of government to continue — a mirror test for 330 million people and the government agencies that serve them.
Which led to a crisis when she realized that, in a character-defining moment, she had failed what she called the “mirror test” — the ability to look in the mirror and be proud of who she was. “I was disappointed in myself,” she told the committee. “I was frustrated with myself. To be blunt, I was kind of disgusted with myself. I didn’t think I would become a person.
The Select Committee on the January 6 Attack: Actions to Charge the Vpc for his Role in the Election, and Update to the Electoral Count Act
The document, which is more than 800 pages long, recommends the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in the attack. Congress should take action to bar Trump and others involved in the January 6 insurrection from ever being in office again.
Nancy Pelosi said “As the Select Committee concludes its work, their words must be clarion call to all Americans, to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of our Constitution.”
In addition to the criminal referrals to the DOJ, the committee laid out 11 recommendations aimed at better protecting the American democratic system from future attacks. Those recommendations include clarifying that the role of the vice president in the transition of power is purely ceremonial and a new federal law enforcement emphasis on anti-government extremist groups.
But at least one point from the committee has taken hold already: an update to the Electoral Count Act, which Congress passed this week in connection to a major spending bill. The updated legislation further clarifies that the vice president’s role in certifying the election is entirely ceremonial.
NPR’s Halimah Abdullah, Claudia Grisales, Giulia Heyward, Eric McDaniel, Muthoni Muturi, Barbara Sprunt, Katherine Swartz and Rachel Treisman contributed to this report.