WASHINGTON – A House of Representatives commission investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, made a widespread case on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump has created and relentlessly spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him in the face of growing evidence from a growing chorus of advisers that he was legally defeated.
At its second hearing this month, the committee traced the origins and development of what it described as “Mr Trump’s big lie”. He testified live and recorded how the former president, opposing many of his advisers, insisted on declaring victory on election night before the vote was fully counted, and then tried to challenge his defeat with increasingly bizarre and baseless claims that he has been repeatedly informed are wrong.
“He’s detached from reality if he really believes in these things,” William P. Barr, a former attorney general, told Mr. Trump in a video interview released by the panel on Monday, at which point he did not he managed to control his laughter at the absurdity of the allegations the former president was making.
“There has never been an indication of interest in the facts,” Mr Barr said.
The panel also used the testimony of Mr Stephen, Mr Trump’s campaign leader, who told his investigators that Mr Trump had ignored his warning on election night to refrain from declaring an unwarranted victory. to claim. Instead, the president heeded the advice of Rudolf W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, who, according to Jason Miller, the campaign’s chief contributor, “is definitely intoxicated,” and said he had won, although votes were still pending.
All of this was part of the commission’s attempts to show how Mr Trump’s election fraud led directly to the events of January 6, when a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in the deadliest attack on the building in centuries by the president’s persuasion to “stop the theft.”
Investigators went further on Monday, detailing how the campaign by Trump and her Republican allies used allegations of rigged elections they knew to be fraudulent to mislead petty donors and raise up to $ 250 million for an entity that called the Official Fund for the Protection of Elections, the highest testimony of campaign aides has ever existed.
“Not only was there a big lie,” said Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who played a key role in the hearing, “there was a big theft.”
The money allegedly raised to “stop the theft” instead went to Mr Trump and his allies, including, as the investigation found, $ 1 million for a charity run by Mark Meadows, his chief of staff; $ 1 million for a political group run by several of his former employees, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda; more than $ 200,000 for Trump hotels; and $ 5 million for Event Strategies Inc., which held a rally on Jan. 6 ahead of the Capitol riot.
Assistants said Kimberly Guilfoil, a friend of Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., received $ 60,000 to speak at the event, a speech that lasted less than three minutes.
“It is clear that he deliberately misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that does not exist, and used the money raised for something other than what he said,” Ms Lofgren told Mr Trump.
Read more about the hearings of the House of Representatives committee on January 6
But most of the session was devoted to showing how firm it is for Mr. Trump to cling to the notion that he won the election, deepening only as an aide after an aide informs him that he has failed.
According to the commission’s presentation, the list of aides and advisers who tried to dissuade Mr. Trump from his false allegations was long and varied. They included low-level lawyers for the campaign, who described how they told the president that the results coming from the field indicated that he would lose the race. Among them were senior officials at the Ministry of Justice – including his former chief prosecutor – who looked into investigating allegations that the contest had been rigged or stolen, and found them not only unfounded but also meaningless.
“There were suggestions from, I believe it’s Mayor Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say we won it outright,” Mr Miller said in a video interview released by the panel.
Mr Stepien later said he was considered part of the Normal Team, while a group of outside advisers, including Mr Giuliani, encouraged Mr Trump’s false allegations.
The commission played out parts of the testimony of Mr Barr, Mr Trump’s last attorney general, who called the president’s allegations of stolen elections “nonsense” and “false”.
“I told them it was crazy and they were wasting their time,” Mr Barr said. “And that was a great, great bad service for the country.
Mr Trump was still working on it on Monday, issuing a shuffled 12-page statement hours after the end of the committee hearing, in which he doubled his allegations of fraud, complaining – again without any evidence – that Democrats had inflated the polls. lists, illegally collected ballots, removed Republican election observers from the polling stations, bribed election officials, and stopped the count on election night when he was still in charge.
“Democrats created the story for January 6 to divert from the much larger and more important truth that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen,” he wrote.
In the hearing room on Monday, the committee showed in striking detail how Mr Trump’s advisers tried and failed to persuade him to give up his lies and accept defeat. In his testimony, Mr Barr recalled several scenes in the White House, including one in which he said he had asked Mr Meadows and Jared Kushner, son-in-law and chief adviser to the president, how long Mr Trump intended to “go keep up these stolen election stuff. “
Mr Barr recalled that Mr Meadows had assured him that Mr Trump was “becoming more realistic” and knew “how far this could go”. As for Mr Kushner, Mr Barr said he had answered the question with the words: “We are working on this”.
After informing Mr Trump that his allegations of fraud were untrue, Mr Barr had a follow-up meeting with the President and his White House adviser, Pat Chipolon. Mr Barr described in his testimony how Mr Trump was outraged that his own Attorney General had refused to support his allegations of fraud.
“It’s killing me,” Mr Barr was quoted as saying. “You must have said that because you hate Trump.
In all, Mr Trump and his allies have filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results. But among the many allegations of fraud, Mr Barr told the committee, the worst – and most sensational – concerns an alleged conspiracy by Chinese software companies, Venezuelan officials and liberal financier George Soros to hack machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. and shift votes away from Mr. Trump.
These allegations were most prominently made by a former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell, who collected several unverified affidavits from witnesses suspected of having information about the Dominion. In the weeks following the election, Ms. Powell, working with a group of other lawyers, filed four federal lawsuits in the Democratic strongholds of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Phoenix, although Trump’s campaign had already found some of her allegations false. .
All the claims – known as the “Krakens”, a reference to a mythical, destructive sea beast – were eventually rejected and considered so frivolous that a federal judge sanctioned Ms. Powell and her colleagues. Dominion is suing her and others for defamation.
In his testimony, Mr Barr described the allegations against Dominion as “crazy things” – a feeling that was repeated by other Trump aides whose testimony was presented by the committee.
After Mr Barr resigned as Attorney General, his successor, Jeffrey A. Rosen, also told Mr Trump that his allegations of widespread fraud were “refuted”.
Another witness who testified on Monday and denied Mr Trump’s allegations of fraud was Bung J. Puck, a former U.S. atlanta attorney who abruptly resigned on January 4, 2021. After speaking with Mr. Barr, Mr. Pack reviewed allegations of election fraud in Atlanta, including a allegation made by Mr. Giuliani that a suitcase of ballots was pulled from under a table at a local counting station on election night.
Mr Trump and his allies also say there has been rampant fraud in Philadelphia, with the former president recently saying there were more people in the city than registered voters. In his testimony, Mr Bar called the allegation “rubbish”. To support this argument, the commission summoned Al Schmid, a Republican who was one of three city commissioners on the Philadelphia County Electoral Council.
Mr Schmidt dismissed allegations of fraud by Mr Trump and his allies, saying there was no evidence that more people voted in Philadelphia than registered there, or that thousands of dead people voted in the city.
Mr Schmid also testified that after Mr Trump posted a tweet accusing him of electoral fraud, he received online threats from people who posted his family members’ names, address and photos. at his home.
Zack Montague and Charlie Savage contributed to the reports.
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