The House Select Committee on the Mueller Investigation of the January 6th Cybercrime Against the U.S. President-Elect Donald J.P. Trump
The footage of congressional leaders mobilizing to ensure that Congress could both fulfill its constitutional duty by certifying the election results and protect the Capitol and the people inside provides a stark contrast to the actions of Trump that day. The committee shared evidence that Trump ignored the pleas from his advisors to make a statement to put an end to the violence.
The committee voted on Thursday to subpoena Trump for documents in order to get testimony from the former President.
The House committee lays out a number of criminal statutes it believes were violated in the plots to stave off Trump’s defeat and says there’s evidence for criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Trump, Eastman and “others.”
The top Republican on the panel said they are obligated to seek answers from the man who set this all in motion. Every American has the right to the answers so we can act to protect our republic.
The chairman of the select committee argued that the main focus of the story of January 6th was Trump. So we want to hear from him.”
A Conversation with the Senate Minority Committee on Capitol Hill Observations during the January 6 Session with the Pelosi-Pence Committee
Taking on Trump directly is a notable increase in taking on. There are rarely congressional subpoenas to sitting or former presidents. And if Trump does buck the subpoena, it would allow the committee to proclaim that it made a formal attempt to get Trump to talk to panelists, only to see him to refuse.
The January 6 committee that is currently being constructed will no longer exist if Republicans regain control of the House, giving it less than three months to issue a final report.
The footage was previously unseen and was aired by the committee.
Pelosi was on the phone to the governor of Virginia about sending reinforcements to the Capitol. The Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House spoke to the acting Attorney General.
The phone calls between Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence were shown in the footage.
Schumer was seen dressing down the Attorney General. During their heated phone call, Schumer implored Rosen to intervene directly with Trump, and tell Trump to call off the mob. Pelosi told the caller that the rioters were breaking the law because of the President of the United States.
In August, CNN reported that Elaine Chao, wife of Senate Minority LeaderMitch McConnell, met with the committee. After condemning the attack in her resignation letter, Chao has largely stayed out of the public eye, and her recent comments to the committee provide new insight into her thinking.
The events at a particular point made it hard for me to continue, even if I wanted to. I arrived in this country as an immigrant. I believe in this country. I think the transfer of power is done in a peaceful way. I believe in democracy. She said it was a decision she made on her own.
Hutchinson gave detailed accounts of Trump’s actions on the day of January 6 during the summer hearings.
“I remember looking at Mark, and I said ‘Mark, he can’t possibly think we’re going to pull this off. Like, that call was crazy.’ And he looked at me and just started shaking his head. He said that he knows it’s over. He knows he lost. Hutchinson told the committee that they were going to keep trying.
Hutchinson said that she saw a discussion between Trump andMeadows about the Supreme Court’s rejection of a lawsuit that sought to overturn the election result.
The President said that he did not want people to know we lost. This is embarrassing. It’s time to figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost,’” Hutchinson said.
The committee said that on January 6, one Secret Service agent sent a message saying, ” with so many weapons found so far, you wonder how many are unknown.” Is it possible to be sporty after dark?
The committee shared a text from Miller that said “I got the base fired up” and sent a link to a website that had violent comments.
Apparent No-Go Theorem for a White House Speaker During the 2020 National Reionization Rehearse
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.’”
The president planned to declare victory no matter what the result was, according to a committee member. “We also interviewed Brad Parscale, President Trump’s former campaign manager. She said that he understood that President Trump would proclaim himself the winner even if he lost the election.
After their conversation on November 3, 2020, Jacob drafted a memo to Short, which the committee said it obtained from the National Archives and presented for the first time on Thursday.
“It is essential that the Vice President not be perceived by the public as having decided questions concerning disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts,” the memo reads.
The committee also revealed new emails conservative legal activist Tom Fitton sent to two Trump advisers a few days before the election. One email contains a draft statement for Trump to declare victory on Election Night.
Despite saying for months that they wanted to hear from Thomas, members of the panel downplayed the significance of her testimony following her interview, and it was clear ahead of Thursday that she was not expected to be a central part of the hearing that was instead solely focused on Trump.
But her absence was notable considering the panel did use testimony from several other high-profile witnesses who had been interviewed since the committee’s most recent hearing earlier this summer.
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 vote on Trump’s platform was a flop and he criticized the committee for not being able to get him to testify.
Roger Stone is a long-time associate of Trump who was previously convicted of lying to Congress. Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison before Trump pardoned him weeks before leaving office.
Trump vowed to win, but he didn’t deny that he had a victory or a scandal he wouldn’t have
“I really do believe it will be up in the air,” Stone said. “When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Nine tenths of the law is possession. No, we won, f*** you.”
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right? He’s going to say it’s victory. It doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s the winner,” he said.
If Trump ended up losing the election, he would spread baseless allegations of a stolen election. Each time there was a new revelation about something that happened behind the scenes, such as the taped phone call with Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to “find 11,780 votes,” Trump displayed no shame or remorse. He merely doubled down, insisting that there was no scandal and that he was in the right to do whatever he did.
“I went to the Oval to give the president the headlines and see how he was doing, and he said I should tell you about it”, according to the communications director. He looked at the TV and said, “Can you believe I lost to him?”
A Call to the FBI: Kevin McCarthy’s Telling the Truth about the J.C. Electoral Corrigendum: “The Story of what happened on Jan. 6”
I vaguely recall that he mentioned he was a professor, but then he turned the calls over to Mr. Eastman, who spoke about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in the event that any legal challenges changed the result of the election.
“They think that they will have a large enough group to march into D.C. armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped,” a Secret Service email read.
The crowd that arrived on Jan. 6 was heavily armed and many wouldn’t get into the Ellipse even if they knew they had to go through magnetometers, a fact that Trump was aware of.
“Do you think it’s true?” The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, can be seen telling the Majority Whip, Jim Clyburn, that the members on the floor were wearing tear gas masks.
Secret Service feared for Pence’s safety. New documents from the agency show that after Trump tweeted his disappointment with his no. 2 on Jan. 6, an agent warned that it was “probably not going to be good for Pence.” Another agent noted there were 24,000 likes on Trump’s tweet within two minutes.
Mick Mulvaney confirms GOP Rep’s account of McCarthy’s call to Trump. GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington had previously shared details of a conversation between Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump on Jan. 6, in which McCarthy asked Trump to call off his supporters as his staff was “running for their lives.”
“The president told them something along the lines of, ‘Kevin, maybe these people are just more angry about this than you are. Maybe they’re more upset.’ “
The central player was Trump. 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.
“[Trump] tried to take away the voice of the American people in choosing their president and replace the will of the voters with his will to remain in power,” said Thompson. “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6.”
When told in subsequent weeks repeatedly by top election and legal advisers, such as then-Attorney General William Barr, that the claims of fraud were “bullshit,” Trump and his inner cabal ignored those warnings and moved forward with reckless abandon.
The Campaign to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election: Donald J. Trump’s January 6 Day of Chaos and Decay at the Capitol Hill
She claimed that the nation can’t just punish the foot soldiers who went to the Capitol. “With every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former president, we chip away at the foundation of our Republic.”
CNN political analyst, Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” You can follow him on his official account on social media. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
A bipartisan panel held public hearings in order to reveal the full context of what happened that day.
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.
In addition to filling out the story, the committee also provided shocking evidence and details about how the events of those months were more dangerous than we knew.
January 6 was not a single day of chaos that suddenly spread out of control, as the committee demonstrated. It was premeditated.
The panel examined how intentional the Trump administration had been in attempting to spread doubt about the election results – from testing different theories about challenging the results, to leaning on state officials – like their push in Georgia – to literally change the vote, to mobilizing supporters to intimidate Congress as they certified the Electoral College results.
On the day of the “Stop the Steal” rally, January 6, 2021, Trump knew that the protesters were armed and dangerous but did nothing to stop them. Indeed, he wanted to go to Capitol Hill but was only stopped because a Secret Service agent wouldn’t allow him to do so. 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.
Trump latched onto Eastman’s theories that incorrectly claimed Pence could overturn the election, and launched a pressure campaign against Pence in the days leading up to January 6. When congress certified the Electoral College vote on January 6, Trump tried to convince the Vice President to intervene when he was meeting with him in the Oval Office.
January 6 was just the beginning of a larger story. The January 6 committee is not a committee to investigate the campaign to overturn the 2020 election, but rather a committee to do so. This reframing is essential to understanding the months between November 2020 and January 2021.
Reply to the Chirchwood Committee on the “Censorship and Politics of a Great Explanation” for the 2018 Midterm Elections
The members of the committee made clear to Trump they were notduped or irrational, as Cheney said Thursday. He knew what he was doing. After the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit backed by the former president in December 2020, Trump, who the Secret Service said was “pissed,” was heard saying he didn’t “want people to know we lost.”
Then on January 6, Trump purposely ignored many warnings of violence. He wanted to lead the troops to Capitol Hill. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland reminded viewers that he sat passively, watching television, as the attacks against Congress unfolded and as staunch allies pleaded with him to call off the troops. It wasn’t that Trump didn’t act on January 6; it was that he didn’t want to act. “Can you believe this?” Pelosi was heard saying to Thompson that day.
Ongoing Threat: In its pivotal hearing Thursday, the committee wanted to make one thing clear, the danger is not over in 2022. “There remains a clear and present danger to our electoral system and to democratic institutions,” Raskin said, “So, that is something that will come through in our final hearing. This is not ancient history we’re talking about; this is 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 campaigning for office, ranging from the position of governor to secretaries of state in important states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona, which will have a big part in overseeing future elections. The former president still remains the top contender for the Republican nomination.
Cheney asked why Americans should think that the institutions will work if wrong people are in positions of power again. The story on January 6 is a string of officials who refused to go along with the scheme. She reminded us that our institutions are strong only when men and women of good faith are putting their faith in them.
The committee is considering criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but it is up to prosecutors to decide what will happen, according to Cheney. We will find out if Congress can complete work on reforms, such as the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, that renders some of the mechanisms Trump was counting on incapable of doing damage in the future. We will be watching to see if voters in the upcoming election send a message to Washington that messing with democracy will not be accepted. Right now, January 6 has not been a major issue in most of the campaigns.
The dark days of 2020 were explained by the committee. They were exposed in a clear way. The biggest mystery left is whether as a nation we will close our eyes and simply move forward without demanding accountability, justice and reform.
The Hutchinson Disciplinary Investigation Committee Reveals that “Licenses do not lie”: Afterward, the Committee voted to resign
Passantino and other Trump lawyers founded a political law practice after he left the White House, and have been receiving regular payments from groups that support the president. The Save America PAC will make distributions of more than $150,000 in the years 2021, and 2022, according to its website. The firm also has worked for major Republican congressional campaigns.
After the hearing, Lofgren told CNN that Hutchinson was told to not remember anything. That is serious stuff.
The committee has accused members of the Trump Organization of trying to obstruct their investigation.
Passantino stated that it is not uncommon for people to change lawyers because their interests or strategies change. He also said political committees sometimes cover client fees “at the client’s request.”
In response to an accusation from the committee that he also shared her testimony with other lawyers and the press even when she told him not to, he said, “External communications made on Ms. Hutchinson’s behalf while I was her counsel were made with her express authorization.”
Passantino said in his statement that he was on leave of absence from the firm and that his professional biography was removed from the website because he was focused on the matter. Michael Best & Friedrich was not involved in the situation, and Hutchinson wasn’t a client.
In Monday’s executive summary, the committee made sure to mention the issue in its hand off of the investigation.
According to the report, “the lawyer had advised the witness that the witness could, in certain circumstances, tell the Committee that she did not recall facts when she actually did recall them.”
A lawyer told a client that the issue would make a bad light of President Trump. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.
At the committee’s final public hearing, Lofgren said: “The witness believed this was an effort to affect her testimony, and we are concerned that these efforts may have been a strategy to prevent the Committee from finding the truth.”
Lawyers must follow ethics guidelines in order to represent their clients. According to legal ethics experts, a lawyer swaying their client’s testimony could be seen as obstruction of an investigation.
This year, Trump’s Save America PAC has made payments to several law firms representing witnesses in the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago investigation. Legal experts say that an issue only arises if the lawyer doesn’t follow the client’s wishes.
The committee said it believed that some witnesses, such as Trump’s former White House press secretary and his daughter, were not as direct as others.
The recommendation is among the conclusions of the panel’s final report, which covers the findings of a bipartisan panel about how Trump sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said on Monday that he has “every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a road map 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.”
Special counsel Jack Smith is leading the Justice Department’s investigations related to Trump, including both his post-election actions and classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this year.
In an effort to change election results in key states, Trump and his inner circle targeted election officials in 200 apparent actions between Election Day and the January 6 attack, according to the report.
The report says that Trump had outreach aimed at several officials in States he lost, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. He lost all of those states.
For example, during a January 2, 2021, call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the then-president went through a “litany of false election-fraud claims” and then asked Raffensperger to deliver him a second term by “finding” just enough votes to ensure victory, according to the report.
Conservative attorney John Eastman authored a now-infamous memo detailing step-for-step how then-Vice President Mike Pence could theoretically overturn the 2020 election results. But the committee points to Chesebro, a known associate of Eastman, as being responsible for creating the fake electors plot.
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.
The panel zeroes in on the section of the Constitution that states an individual who has taken an oath to support the US Constitution but has “engaged in an insurrection” or given “aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution” can be disqualified from office. The former president and others have been referred by the committee to the Department of Justice for assisting or aiding an insurrection.
It calls for congress to create a formal mechanism to evaluate whether individuals violate that section of the 14th Amendment, and if they should be barred from future federal or state office.
In addition to criminal referrals, the select committee is calling for lawyers involved in the efforts to overturn the election to be held accountable.
“Those courts and bar disciplinary bodies responsible for overseeing the legal profession in the states and the District of Columbia should continue to evaluate the conduct of attorneys described in this Report” the panel writes, adding that there are specific attorneys the report identifies as having “conflicts of interests” for the Department of Justice to evaluate.
The report calls on Congress to consider the severity of penalties against those who attempt to obstruct, influence or impede the Joint Session of Congress that certifies election results. It calls for statutes of federal penalties for certain types of threats against election workers to be strengthened.
Although the panel was successful in getting more than 1,000 witnesses to testify as part of its investigation, it still had difficulty gaining cooperation from everyone it wanted to speak to. Its report recommends congressional committees of jurisdiction “develop legislation” to create “a cause of action” for the House to enforce its subpoenas in federal court.
The panel calls on Congress to pass an overhaul of the 1887 Electoral Count Act aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election – the first legislative response to the insurrection and Trump’s relentless pressure campaign to stay in power.
The report summary first released Monday says there’s evidence to pursue Trump on multiple crimes, including obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements, assisting or aiding an insurrection, conspiring to injure or impede an officer and seditious conspiracy.
The panel says it also has the evidence to refer Eastman on the obstruction charge, and it names him as a co-conspirator in other alleged criminal activity lawmakers have gathered evidence on.
The committee outlines 17 findings from its investigation that underpin its reasoning for criminal referrals, including that Trump knew the fraud allegations he was pushing were false and continued to amplify them anyway.
It notes that Trump’s top allies, including those who testified before the committee, acknowledged they found no proof to back up the former president’s claims.
Although Giuliani repeatedly said in public that voting machines stole the election, he conceded during his Select Committee deposition that he did not think the machines stole the election.
The committee investigators described how Trump’s campaign and the RNC raised more than $250 million, but were met with resistance within their own organization.
Investigators describe three options that were considered for a post-election fundraising appeal by the campaign. The campaign decided against using it because they knew it wasn’t true. A second unused option said the campaign was waiting on results. Ultimately, according to the committee, the Trump campaign approved a message that Democrats are going to “try to steal the election” that was written before election night.
The committee describes, based on interview with Trump campaign officials, that much of the material in the fundraising emails was based on messages said by Trump – but were not checked for accuracy before being used to ask for donations.
Trump campaign’s deputy director of communications and research Zach Parkinson told investigators that reviews for accuracy were limited to “questions concerning items such as time and location.”
House investigators said that RNC lawyers directed copywriters not to use the term “rigged,” according to interviews conducted by the committee. Several examples of fundraising appeals were toned down because the panel found them to be accurate and less inflammatory.
White House communications director Hope Hicks told the January 6 committee that Donald Trump had laughed at one of his election lawyer’s claims about foreign powers interfering in the election, calling them “crazy,” according to the committee’s final report.
The day after the press conference, President Trump talked to Sidney Powell from the Oval Office. While on the call, Powell made similar claims about foreign interference in the election as she had made at the press conference, which occurred after the 2020 election.
While she spoke, the President silenced his speakerphone and laughed at Powell, telling the other people in the room that this does sound crazy. The report says something.
The committee lays out Trump’s failure to act as the riot unfolded, noting that as he watched the riot on television, he made no calls for security assistance and resisted efforts from staffers asking him to call off his supporters.
During day, president Trump did not speak to a top national security official. Not at the Pentagon, nor at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the D.C. Mayor’s office,” the committee writes. “As Vice President Pence has confirmed, President Trump didn’t even try to reach his own Vice President to make sure that Pence was safe.”
The committee was told by Milley that he had a response to Trump, who was the commander in chief. The Capitol of the US of America is being attacked. And there isn’t anything? No call? Nothing? Zero?
The committee said that the President did not have any photos for the rest of the day.
The FBI investigation of the January 6 attack against the U.S. Capitol on January 6: No evidence that the president felt guilty during the rally he attended
In the aftermath, on the evening of January 6, Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale told Katrina Pierson, one of the rally organizers, that he felt guilty helping Trump win, the report states.
In newly revealed testimony included in the final report, the aide, John McEntee, said Trump told him “[t]his is a crazy day” – and that he did not recall Trump expressing any sadness over the violence that had unfolded at the Capitol.
The attack on the Capitol was a shock to her father, who was a senior White House adviser at the time, told the select committee.
But when pressed by committee investigators, she could not provide any instances of the president discussing whether or not he did the right thing on January 6 or speaking about those who were injured or died that day.