WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday accused Donald Trump of inciting a mob of followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a last-ditch bid to stay in power fueled by a chaotic meeting with some of the most his zealous supporters.
The House committee also presented evidence that aides and outside campaigners knew before the riot that Trump would call on thousands of his supporters to march on the Capitol that day.
The panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans used the hearings to build a case that Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat constituted illegal conduct that went far beyond normal politics.
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At the end of the three-hour hearing, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said Trump tried to make a phone call to a potential committee witness, raising the possibility that he may have illegally tried to influence testimony. Read more
In video testimony shown at the hearing, witnesses described a raucous late-night, six-hour meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, in which Trump ignored White House officials who urged him to concede the November 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Instead, Trump sided with outside advisers who urged him to continue pushing his baseless claims of election fraud.
Committee members said Trump was ultimately responsible for the chaos that followed.
“President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He’s not an impressionable kid … He’s responsible for his own actions and his own choices,” said Cheney, the committee’s vice chairman.
Committee members said Trump had fueled the rebellion through his refusal to admit he had lost the election and through comments such as his Dec. 19, 2020, Twitter post shortly after the meeting calling for supporters to flock to Washington for a “big protest “, saying, “Be there, it’s going to be wild.”
Trump, a Republican who has hinted he will seek the White House again in 2024, denies wrongdoing and falsely claims he lost only because of widespread fraud that benefited Biden, a Democrat.
“NOT HEALTHY ENOUGH”
The commission released taped testimony from White House aides describing the angry Dec. 18 meeting in which a handful of Trump’s outside advisers, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, attorney Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, encouraged to contest the election result.
“I don’t think any of these people gave good advice to the president. I didn’t understand how they got in,” Pat Cipollone, a former Trump White House adviser, said in video testimony.
A video clip of former US President Donald Trump plays as Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the Trump administration, testifies during a public hearing before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, at the Capitol, in Washington, U.S., June 28, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Pool via REUTERS
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Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democratic committee member, showed a text from White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who gave explosive testimony last month, saying of the meeting: “The West Wing is unstable.”
Giuliani, who was escorted off the White House grounds, said in video testimony that his argument was: “You guys are not tough enough. Or maybe I’ll put it another way: You’re a bunch of dicks, excuse the pun. I’m pretty sure the word was used.”
The attack on the Capitol, following a speech Trump gave at a rally outside the White House, delayed the certification of Biden’s election by hours, injured more than 140 police officers and resulted in several deaths.
“THEY ORGANIZED MAF”
The commission presented evidence that Trump’s call for his supporters to march in front of the Capitol was not spontaneous but planned in advance.
The panel showed an unsent Twitter message about the rally, with a stamp indicating Trump had seen it: “Please arrive early, huge crowds expected. Then march to the Capitol. Stop the theft!”
The commission also released audio testimony from a former Twitter employee describing his fear after Trump’s December tweet and deep concern on Jan. 5 about the possibility of violence on Jan. 6.
“It felt like a crowd was being organized and they were gathering their weapons, their logic and their reasoning behind why they were willing to fight,” the Twitter official said in a muffled voice.
About 800 people have been charged with involvement in the Capitol riot, with about 250 guilty pleas so far.
The hearing also looked at the ties between right-wing militant groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the internet conspiracy movement QAnon, to Trump and his allies. Many oath-keepers and proud boys participated in the January 6 attack.
Two witnesses testified in the courtroom — Steven Ayres, who pleaded guilty to federal charges for his part in the attack on the Capitol, and Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers.
Ayres said he joined the march because he believed Trump and that he has since lost his job, sold his house and no longer believes Trump’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen. “It changed my life, you know, definitely not for the better.”
Trump and his supporters — including many Republicans in Congress — dismiss the Jan. 6 panel as a political witch hunt, but the panel’s supporters say it is a necessary investigation into a violent threat against democracy.
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Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan, additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Doina Chiacu and Rose Horowitch; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Howard Goller
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