Post by Admin on Jun 13, 2022 19:24:07 GMT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection systemically made the case in its second hearing Monday that Trump and his advisers knew that his claims of fraud in the 2020 election were false.
The argument is key to the committee’s investigation as the nine-member panel details its evidence about what led to the violent insurrection. The rioters who broke into the Capitol that day and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory were echoing Trump’s falsehoods that he, not Biden, had rightfully won the election.
Takeaways from Monday’s hearing:
A WITNESS PULLS OUT, BUT VIDEO TELLS THE STORY
The hearing began with a scramble as Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien, the panel’s top Monday witness, said he would not appear due to a “family emergency.” The committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, said Stepien’s wife was in labor.
But the committee had a plan B — hours of Stepien’s previous interview with the panel that was recorded on video. The committee aired multiple clips of that interview, along with others, as the hearing unfolded.
Stepien told investigators that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was urging Trump to declare victory on election night, despite Stepien’s warnings that it was “way too early” to make a prediction like that.
“My belief, my recommendation, was to say that votes were still being counted, it’s too early to tell, too early to call the race,” Stepien said in one clip.
Yet Trump went to the podium in the White House press room and said that the early results were “a fraud on the American public” and that “frankly, we did win this election.”
TRUMP’S ‘MIND WAS MADE UP’
Trump’s advisers told him repeatedly that he should wait on the results and should not declare that there was widespread election fraud. But Trump would not listen, and increasingly relied on wild claims that were pushed by Giuliani and Trump attorney Sidney Powell, among others, according to testimony.
The panel showed video from Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, her husband, Jared Kushner, and campaign aide Jason Miller. Ivanka Trump told the panel that “it was clear” the election wouldn’t be called on election night, and Kushner said he had told Trump at one point that Giuliani’s advice was “not the approach I would take.” But Trump responded that he had confidence in Giuliani.
Miller said there was a meeting on election night in which he told Trump that they shouldn’t declare victory until they had a better sense of the numbers. But Trump told a room of advisers that anyone who didn’t agree with Giuliani was being “weak.”