At the Jan. 6 committee hearing Monday, Trump staff explained the ways they dismissed election fraud claims to the president while Trump pushed them publicly.
WASHINGTON – Following Thursday’s prime-time introduction to the Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol attack’s findings, the second of eight hearings will dig into the details of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The latest:
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A hopeless challenge: Trump campaign officials say they told Trump that challenging the 2020 election results based on theories about election fraud almost certainly would be unsuccessful.
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Who was Trump listening to? Testimony from campaign insiders suggested Trump listened to Rudy Giuliani, who witnesses said was drunk, about how to react to the election results instead of advisers who told him he lost.
- Advisers caution against declaring victory: Some of Trump’s top campaign advisers told the committee during depositions that they discouraged the president from declaring victory prematurely on election night 2020.
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AG Garland is ‘watching’
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday that he has been watching the first public hearings staged by the special House committee investigating the Capitol assault and intends to view them all as the panel offered up dramatic evidence Monday in which top aides to former President Donald Trump repeatedly counseled that his pursuit of election fraud claims were baseless.
“I can assure you the Jan. 6 prosecutors will be watching,” Garland told reporters at an unrelated Justice Department gun enforcement briefing.
Garland’s remarks were his first public comments on the hearings since they opened Thursday and as pressure has mounted for the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against Trump and other former administration officials.
The attorney general, however, defended the pace of the ongoing criminal investigation, which has so far resulted in charges against 800 people in the past 17 months.
“We are not obstructed from proceeding in any way,” Garland said, emphasizing the need for the inquiry to proceed in “secret.”
“We will follow the facts and the law wherever they lead,” he said.
- Debunked PA, GA claims of voter fraud: A panel of witnesses during the committee’s second session debunked conspiracy theories about a “suitcase” full of ballots in Georgia and claims that thousands of dead voters cast ballots in Pennsylvania.
Watch live:View the Jan. 6 committee’s hearing here
Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, adjourned today’s January 6 hearing after giving a glimpse of what is to come in future hearings, showing a video of January 6 protestors. “We know they were there because of Donald Trump,” said Thompson.
“I know exactly what’s going on right now, fake election. They think they’re gonna f—ing cheat us out of our vote?” said one protestor. Another protestor referred to the Dominion voting machine conspiracy theories often espoused by Trump, saying they “can’t really trust the software.”
The committee’s next hearing is scheduled for Wednesday at 10:00am.
– Kenneth Tran
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday that he has been watching the first public hearings staged by the special House committee investigating the Capitol assault and intends to view them all as the panel offered up dramatic evidence Monday in which top aides to former President Donald Trump repeatedly counseled that his pursuit of election fraud claims were baseless.
“I can assure you the Jan. 6 prosecutors will be watching,” Garland told reporters at an unrelated Justice Department gun enforcement briefing.
Garland’s remarks were his first public comments on the hearings since they opened Thursday and as pressure has mounted for the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against Trump and other former administration officials.
The attorney general, however, defended the pace of the ongoing criminal investigation, which has so far resulted in charges against 800 people in the past 17 months.
“We are not obstructed from proceeding in any way,” Garland said, emphasizing the need for the inquiry to proceed in “secret.”
“We will follow the facts and the law wherever they lead,” he said.
– Kevin Johnson
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., led Monday’s second public Jan. 6 hearing, where the committee presented evidence that Trump dismissed voter fraud claims even after advisers told him they were wrong.
Lofgren, who is a former lawyer, has participated in four impeachment investigations.
In 1974, Lofgren helped prepare articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon as a staffer for the House of Judiciary Committee. Lofgren, who assumed office in 1995, also participated in former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.
Lofgren in January 2020 served as one of seven impeachment managers for President Donald Trump’s impeachment investigation. Trump was impeached twice by the House of Representatives.
– Rebecca Morin
Members of the House Jan. 6 committee said the hearing Monday featuring Trump administration officials and campaign experts proved former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and was told so repeatedly by his aides in the campaign and in government.
“These were his people. This is Trump World telling the president what he was saying was false,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who led the questioning of witnesses. “This is Trump World telling the president what he was saying was false.”
The chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said two former attorneys general appointed by Trump and their aides each told Trump that his claims of widespread election fraud were wrong.
“I f you can’t believe the person who is put in charge of all the law enforcement in the country, who can you believe?” Thompson asked.
– Bart Jansen
The committee previewed a future hearing by playing a video of a Trump lawyer telling another Trump lawyer to stand down from voter fraud claims after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said he told private attorney John Eastman: “Are you out of your effing mind? … I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition.”
The tape did not provide context, but Eastman is the attorney who told Trump that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to throw out electoral votes that elected President Joe Biden.
Pence, Herschmann, and other White House officials disagreed with Eastman, and some blamed him in part for the Jan. 6 violence.
– David Jackson
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., in a closing statement said the Trump campaign “misled” campaign donors that their funds would be used for election fraud claims.
Lofgren said that Trump and his campaign used voter fraud claims to “raise millions of dollars” from Americans.
“Those donors deserve the truth about what those funds will be used for,” Lofgren said. “Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used.”
– Rebecca Morin
Benjamin Ginsberg, who has represented Republican presidential candidates in three elections (200,2004, 2012), said former President Donald Trump filed dozens of legal challenges for alleged voter fraud, but none were substantiated.
In 2000, the victory margin in the key state of Florida in favor of George W. Bush was 537 votes. In 2020, the closest margin was more than 10,000 votes in Arizona and Trump would have needed several states to change their results. “You just don’t make up those sorts of numbers in recounts.
Trump’s campaign lost 61 cases challenging the election in state and federal courts.
“The simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case,” Ginberg said.
– Bart Jansen
Al Schmidt, the only Republican city commissioner overseeing the 2020 presidential election in Philadelphia, said that the threats against him became more specific and graphic after Trump tweeted about him. He said the threats also included the names and ages of members of his family.
Schmidt tells Jan. 6 committee about death threats after Trump tweet
A Republican city commissioner during the 2020 election in Philadelphia said threats against him became graphic after Trump tweeted about him.
Damien Henderson, Associated Press
On screen, the committee showed a screenshot of an email and a text targeting Schmidt. The text read “Perhaps 75cuts and 20bullets will soon arrive … Rino stole election we steal lives.”
The email to Schmidt’s spouse threatened his children, said he would be fatally shot, and read “HEADS ON SPIKES. TREASONOUS SCHMIDTS.”
– Dylan Wells
Testifying to the January 6 committee, Al Schmidt, a former city commissioner from Philadelphia, says after investigation, he found no claims of voter fraud in the City of Brotherly Love.
Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren from California questioned Schmidt, specifically asking about a claim from Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani “that 8,000 dead people voted in Pennsylvania.”
“Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t even evidence of eight,” replied Schmidt. “We took seriously every case that was referred to us, but no matter how fantastical, no matter how absurd, we took every one of those seriously, including these.”
– Kenneth Tran
The committee returned from recess to hear video testimony by a former official from Georgia about how Trump’s claims of voter fraud in that state were simply false.
Former U.S. Attorney Byung “BJay” Pak broke down one such claim: “We found that the suitcase full of ballots, the alleged black suitcase that was being seen pulled from under the table, was actually an official lock box where ballots were kept safe.”
Trump’s pressure on Georgia officials to “find” votes from these kinds of false claims are the subject of a grand jury investigation in Atlanta.
– David Jackson
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn – in uniform – stopped by the Cannon Caucus room in advance of the second day of hearings.
Former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone was also present watching in the hearing room. Fanone was beaten unconscious as he tried to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Both Dunn and Fanone testified before he panel last year.
Some members of Congress were also in the audience, including Democratic Reps. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, though less than the crowd that watched during the first primetime hearing Thursday.
– Dylan Wells
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack of the U.S. Capitol took a recess shortly after noon ET after a first half of testimony that focused on how Trump knew he lost the 2020 election but ignored the advice of his top aides who shot down the president’s claims of election fraud.
The hearing leaned heavily on videotaped testimony of former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and former Attorney General Barr. The latter said he determined Trump was “detached from reality” because of some of his fantastical election fraud claims and that were “completely bogus and silly and usually based on complete misinformation.”
The first half of the hearing also detailed how Trump was aware that mail ballots cast late on election night would heavily favor Joe Biden but that Trump falsely claimed victory anyway.
The committee is back from its recess.
– Joey Garrison
Several aides to former President Donald Trump told the House Jan. 6 committee he was told repeatedly allegations of election fraud weren’t substantiated through investigations.
Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said Trump was told he received bad information that wasn’t correct. Derek Lyons, a former assistant to the president, said no allegations were substantiated for litigation. Alex Cannon, a former Trump campaign lawyer, said trade adviser Peter Navarro accused him of being a member of the ‘Deep State’ for dismissing technology concerns in Georgia based on a hand recount of ballots.
“In our point of view, it was debunked,” Rosen said of election fraud.
– Bart Jansen
Richard Donoghue, former deputy attorney general, said he told Trump “much of the info you’re getting is false” when the former president asked about voter fraud theories.
Donoghue said he told Trump that many of the theories were not supported by evidence gathered. He noted that while Trump would accept that one allegation was false, he would move on to another conspiracy theory.
There were so many of these allegations, that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it, but he would move to another allegation,” Donoghue said.
– Rebecca Morin
Barr tells Jan 6 hearing he worried Trump had ‘detached from reality’
In a deposition to the January 6 committee, former Attorney General Barr testified he was “demoralized” by President Trump’s election fraud claims.
Damien Henderson, Associated Press
Then-President Donald Trump summoned his attorney general Bill Barr up to his office after Barr told a news reporter there was no amount of fraud in the 2020 election that would have changed the outcome.
“The president was as mad as I’d ever seen him and he was trying to control himself,” Barr, who had told his secretary she may have to pack up if he gets fired, told the House committee investigating Jan. 6. “The president said, ‘Well this is killing me. You didn’t have to say this. You must have said this because you hate Trump. You hate Trump.’”
Then the president went into a conspiracy theory about votes in Detroit, at which point Barr debunked his theory and pointed out that Trump did better in Detroit in 2020 than in 2016.
“I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bull—,” Barr said. “He was indignant about that.”
– Erin Mansfield
Former Attorney General Bill Barr told the January 6 committee that Trump was convinced of a conspiracy theory that voter fraud was conducted through Dominion voting machines. If Trump truly believed the theory, Barr said “he’s become detached from reality.”
Trump “went off on a monologue saying that there was now definitive evidence involving fraud through the Dominion machines,” he said.
Trump also told Barr that the Dominion report was “absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged. The report means I am going to have a second term.” Looking through the report, Barr said “it looked very amateurish to me” and he “didn’t see any real qualifications.”
“I was somewhat demoralized, because I thought, boy if he really believes this stuff, he’s become detached from reality, if he really believes this stuff,” Barr said.
– Kenneth Tran
The committee replayed then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s pungent description of Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.
“The stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bull—-, that the claims of fraud were bull—- and he was indignant about that,” Barr said in video testimony.
Barr used the same term in his book and the committee played a clip of him on Thursday night using the traditional barnyard epithet.
– David Jackson
In video testimony, Former Attorney General William Barr said he asked Dan Scavino, “How long is (Trump) going to carry on with this stolen election stuff?”
Trump’s tweeter: He writes Trump’s tweets and has been with Trump’s campaign since day one
Scavino served in the Trump administration as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications from 2017 to 2021. As director of social media, Scavino was the man behind many of Trump’s tweets.
– Katherine Swartz
Former Attorney General William Barr recounted a conversation in the days after the election that he had with Jared Kushner and Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who were both convinced that Trump was ready to tamp down his wild claims of a stolen election.
“Look, I think that he’s becoming more realistic and knows that there’s a limit to how far he can take this,” Meadows told Barr, according to videotaped testimony from Barr.
Kushner told Barr: “Yeah, we’re working on this.”
– Joey Garrison
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and one of his top advisers, testified Monday that Rudy Giuliani’s approach to claim victory in the 2020 presidential elections and promote voter fraud conspiracy theories was a bad idea.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr and Bill Stepien, Trump’s former campaign manager, also said they expressed that they were against Giuliani’s approach. Barr said he didn’t want to be part of that approach and attributed it as to one of the reasons he decided to leave the administration.
Kushner said he told Trump that it is “not the approach I would take if I was you.”
“‘I have confidence in Rudy,’” Kushner recalled Trump saying.
— Rebecca Morin
Bill Stepien, former President Donald Trump’s campaign manager, told the House Jan. 6 committee he had no trouble with his team being labeled separately from Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani challenging election results.
“I didn’t mind be characterized as being part of Team Normal,” Stepien said in a videotaped deposition.
In contrast, Stepien said Giuliani pursued complaints about thousands of illegal immigrants casting votes when the contested ballots were actually mailed from citizens overseas. Stepien said he earned a reputation for honesty and professionalism during 25 years of representing candidates as varied as Trump, John McCain, George W. Bush and Chris Christie.
“I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that time,” Stepien said.
– Bart Jansen
With 11 electoral votes, Arizona is a key swing state with the power to push a close election in one direction or another.
Trump won Arizona in the 2016 election by just 4 percentage points. But Democratic candidates broke through later in key statewide elections, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in 2018. Democrat Mark Kelly also won a special election in 2020 after the death of Senator John McCain, defeating Republican Martha McSally.
Biden won Arizona by a slim margin, coming down to Maricopa county — home to Arizona’s largest city Phoenix — which leans bluer than more rural areas of the state which Trump carried.
– Katherine Swartz
Bill Stepien, former campaign manager to Trump, told the January 6 committee that Trump grew increasingly frustrated with debunked claims of election fraud to the point of replacing his campaign’s legal team, which “paved the way . . . for Mayor Giuliani to be moved in.”
Trump’s campaign team was forwarded a claim that “illegal citizens” were voting in Arizona’s election. After the investigation, the team found no evidence of fraud and informed Trump. After continually finding no tangible evidence of voter fraud, Trump “was growing increasingly unhappy with his team,” said Stepien.
– Kenneth Tran
Former President Donald Trump had no chance of winning the election in a recount, even in the most generous of circumstances, according to Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor for Fox News who led the team that called Arizona for Biden before any other major news organization.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., asked Stirewalt Monday morning the chances, after Nov. 7, that Trump could have won the election. Stirewalt responded, “After that point? None.”
Stirewalt said recounts traditionally tend to uncover hundreds of ballots, and at times may even uncover thousands, but he said the history of recounts show a recount would not have changed the outcome.
– Erin Mansfield
A slew of witnesses are backing the committee’s claim that Trump protested the 2020 election even though he was shown plenty of data that he had in fact lost – one of them being Trump’s own campaign manager.
In his videotaped testimony, Stepien said that Trump’s chances of victory were “very, very, very bleak” in the hours after Election Day ended – and that Trump knew it.
Yet Trump persisted in claiming election fraud, a campaign that ended with the Jan. 6 insurrection, committee members said – his self-knowledge is a key legal point should the former president be prosecuted for inciting a riot.
– David Jackson
Trump’s Attorney General William Barr told the committee that the president started falsely claiming voting fraud early on election night.
“Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway,” Barr said in videotaped testimony. “I mean, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential evidence.”
Barr said Trump’s claims seemed to hinge on the fact that mail ballots that would be counted later would favor Biden – a dynamic called the “blue shift” and “red mirage.”
“That seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud. And I didn’t think much of that because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night,” he said.
– Joey Garrison
Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor, said he felt it was necessary to be honest with viewers about the “red mirage,” which was showing Trump ahead of votes on election day, but began to drop behind as mail-in votes came in.
Stirewalt explained that Republican candidates typically have a higher voter count from same day election votes, while Democrats typically vote early or by mail. He said “the Trump campaign and the President had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly.”
“We wanted to keep telling viewers, ‘hey, look, the number that you see here is sort of irrelevant, because it’s only a small percentage of these votes,’” Stirewalt said.
– Rebecca Morin
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign officials told the House Jan. 6 committee that 2020 election results were too uncertain to declare victory that night, but that Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani each sought to claim they won.
Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said in a videotaped deposition it was too early to declare victory. Bill Stepien, Trump’s final campaign manager, said in a videotaped deposition he recommended for any speech that night Trump should say votes were still being counted and it was too early to call, but that the campaign was proud of the race.
“The president disagreed with that. He thought I was wrong. He told me so. He was going to go in a different direction,” Stepien said.
“This is a fraud on the American people,” Trump said that night. “Frankly, we did win this election.”
– Bart Jansen
Ivanka Trump said she did not press her father to concede or to declare victory on election night, even if other people on the former president’s team were forming strong opinions on the matter.
Ivanka’s insight: What else does Ivanka Trump know about Jan. 6? Election lies, phone records and other possibilities
“I don’t know that I had a firm view as to what he should say in that circumstance,” Ivanka Trump said. “The results were still being counted. It was becoming clear that the race would not be called on election night.”
– Erin Mansfield
On election night 2020, Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden ahead of any other network, with Biden ahead by 7 percentage points in the race.
Fox White House correspondent John Roberts noted there were hundreds of thousands of votes left to be counted when Fox made the call.
Arizona or Biden: Fox News second-guessed calling Arizona for Biden. It was 100% election night’s best moment
After Fox made the call, Arizona still was one of the closest states on election night, and one later targeted by Trump and his supporters demanding a recount. An audit conducted actually increased Biden’s margin of victory in the state.
– Katherine Swartz
‘The mayor was definitely intoxicated’: says senior adviser to Trump
In opening the hearing, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said “Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he won.”
And in deposition to the January 6 Committee, Senior Adviser to Trump’s re-election campaign Jason Miller said Trump lawyer and former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” on the night of the election.
“The mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president for example,” said Miller. “There were suggestions by I believe it was Mayor Giuliani to go and declare victory and say we’d won it outright.”
– Kenneth Tran
The committee heard video from witnesses about the anger from Trump and top aides over the fact that Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden well in advance of other networks.
Adviser Jason Miller quoted Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani as saying “we won it, they’re stealing it from us.”
The Arizona call – which held up – began promotion of what committee members called the “Big Lie” of voter fraud, leading to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
– David Jackson
Liz Cheney said Trump’s campaign experts repeatedly told him that his claims about irregularities in voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems were false but that he pushed the lies nonetheless.
“I never saw any evidence whatsoever to sustain those allegations,” Trump attorney Eric Herschmann said in a videotaped deposition presented by the committee.
Trump Attorney General William Barr called the allegations “complete nonsense.”
– Joey Garrison
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said Monday’s hearing will look at the initial part of former President Donald Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Cheney said Trump’s effort was “to convince millions of Americans that the election was stolen from him by overwhelming fraud.”
“A federal court has already reviewed elements of the committee’s evidence on this point, and said this: ‘In the months following the election, numerous credible sources from the President’s inner circle to agency leadership and statisticians informed President Trump and Dr. (ohn) Eastman that there was no evidence of election fraud,’ sufficient to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
– Rebecca Morin
The chairman of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Monday’s hearing would show how former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, knew he lost and “as a result decided to wage an attack on our democracy.”
“He betrayed the trust of the American people,” Thompson said. “He lied to his supporters and the country.”
Biden win verified: Fact check: Joe Biden legally won presidential election, despite persistent contrary claims
“In doing so, he lit the fuse that led to the horrific violence of Jan. 6 when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol, sent by Donald Trump the transfer of power,” Thompson said.
– Bart Jansen
BJay Pak, a former U.S. attorney in northern Georgia, is expected to testify Monday about former President Donald Trump pressuring Georgia state officials to overturn 2020 election results.
Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a Jan. 2 call to “find” 11,780 votes he needed to beat Joe Biden in the state. Pak, who had already announced his departure as U.S. attorney but was still in office, sped up his departure after Trump called him a “never Trumper” during the call.
Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, told the committee Trump wanted to fire Pak during a Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, but that Pak had been vetted and was doing his job. White House counsel Pat Cipollone called the proposal “ridiculous” because Pak was already leaving, according to Donoghue.
– Bart Jansen
Who is Al Schmidt? Former Philadelphia city commissioner testifying at Jan. 6 hearing
Al Schmidt, a former city commissioner in Philadelphia, is testifying before the Jan. 6 committee Monday.
Schmidt, the only Republican city commissioner overseeing the 2020 presidential election in Philadelphia, defended the 2020 presidential election results. Former President Donald Trump criticized Schmidt days after the election for his stance, calling him a RINO — Republican in name only — who was “being used big time by the Fake News Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the Election in Philadelphia.”
Schmidt resigned as city commissioner in November 2021 and currently serves as CEO of the Committee of Seventy, an independent and nonpartisan advocate for better government in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
— Rebecca Morin
Kevin Marino, Bill Stepien’s lawyer, is appearing in his place at the Capitol after Stepien’s wife went into labor this morning.
Marino said “Mr. Stepien was in town preparing for his testimony here today in response to the subpoena,” before his wife went into labor.
Marino said it was his understanding that there would be video testimony from Stepien showed during the hearing.
— Dylan Wells
Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor, is expected to testify Monday at the House Jan. 6 committee hearing about how he helped the network become the first to declare former President Donald Trump’s loss in Arizona in the 2020 election.
Arizona, which President Joe Biden won, was one of seven states that Trump contested after the election and that submitted alternate slates of fake electors to deny Biden the White House.
Stirewalt was let go after the controversial election call and Bill Sammon, managing editor of Fox’s Washington bureau, retired. Two days after the call, Stirewalt said in his last appearance on air that “Arizona is doing just what we expected it to do and we remain serene and pristine.”
– Bart Jansen
The committee said the hearing would start a half-hour later than the 10 a.m. scheduled time.
– Bart Jansen
Bill Stepien, who was former President Donald Trump’s final campaign manager, won’t be testifying Monday as scheduled at the latest House Jan. 6 committee hearing.
“Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning. His counsel will appear and make a statement on the record,” the committee announced.
– Bart Jansen
The committee was expected to ask Bill Stepien, former President Donald Trump’s final campaign manager, about evidence Trump knew he lost the 2020 election and pursued baseless claims of election fraud anyway. Stepien will not testify Monday.
The committee sought Stepien’s testimony about converting the election campaign to focus on “Stop the Steal” messaging and related fundraising, according to other witnesses. The messaging included false claims about unreliable voting machines and an internal campaign memo in which campaign staffers determined the claims were false, according to the committee.
“President Trump invested millions of dollars of campaign funds purposely spreading false information, running ads he knew were false, and convincing millions of Americans that the election was corrupt and he was the true President,” the committee vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Thursday. “As you will see, this misinformation campaign provoked the violence on Jan. 6.”
– Bart Jansen
Monday’s hearing is set to begin at 10 a.m. ET.
There are two more hearings this week: Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET and Thursday at 1 p.m. ET.
The remaining four hearings have not yet been scheduled.
– Ella Lee
Capitol Police Officer on Jan. 6: ‘I was slipping in people’s blood’
During the January 6 House committee hearing, Officer Caroline Edwards described what she saw on that day when a mob stormed the Capitol.
Patrick Colson-Price, USA TODAY
The first panel of witnesses Monday features Bill Stepien, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor. In testimony revealed Thursday, a campaign spokesman and Trump campaign lawyer each said Trump was told election results showing he lost. The spokesman, Jason Miller, later said Trump didn’t believe his aides.
Stirewalt helped Fox News declare Trump’s loss in Arizona. The committee request for testimony from Stepien said the campaign reportedly urged state and party officials to delay or deny certification of election results by sending alternates slates of electoral votes to Congress.
The second panel of witnesses features Benjamin Ginsberg, an election attorney; BJay Pak, a former U.S. attorney for northern Georgia; and Al Schmidt, a former city commissioner in Philadelphia.
Pak reportedly expedited his departure from the U.S. attorney’s office after Trump complained during his Jan. 2 call with Georgia state officials he considered Pak a “never Trumper” who opposed his efforts to overturn the election.
– Bart Jansen
- Chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
- Vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.
- Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va.
- Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
- Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.
- Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.
- Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.
- Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
- Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
The House committee investigating the attack will focus during its June hearings on Pence’s key role presiding over the Electoral College vote count.
Rather than single-handedly rejecting electors from states then-President Donald Trump lost, as the president and his allies urged, Pence refused to interfere with or delay the count certifying President Joe Biden’s victory while a mob ransacked the Capitol and threatened the vice president’s life.
Thompson said lawmakers discussed having Pence testify, but that it might not be necessary because of cooperation from his top advisers. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and counsel, Greg Jacob, were among more than 1,000 witnesses, including more than a dozen from the White House, who met with the committee.
– Bart Jansen
Thursday’s hearing featured two witnesses: a U.S. Capitol Police officer who was injured during the riot and a documentarian who filmed parts of the violence.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards was the “first law enforcement officer injured by rioters storming the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021,” according to the committee. She told lawmakers Thursday that she was called “Nancy Pelosi’s dog” and “a traitor to my country, my oath and my constitution” during the violence, describing the Capitol grounds as an “absolute war zone.”
British documentarian Nick Quested filmed the leaders of two far-right groups, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, meeting in a parking garage near the Capitol. He told lawmakers Thursday that he met up with hundreds Proud Boys at about 10:30 a.m. on Jan 6, noting he was “confused to a certain extent” why they were walking away from the president’s speech because “that’s what I felt we were there to cover.”
-Marina Pitofsky, Ella Lee
- Former Attorney General William Barr told the House panel investigating the Capitol attack he resigned in December 2020 from the Trump administration rather than challenge the election results.
- Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter and senior adviser, said she accepted the Justice Department’s finding of no fraud sufficient to overturn the 2020 – in contrast to her father.
- Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards described how she suffered a concussion while grappling with rioters over bike racks. “I was slipping in people’s blood,” she said. “I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage.” She also recalled seeing Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the next day, turn ghostly white after being sprayed with chemicals.
During first of eight hearings held by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the room remained mostly quiet, the crowd engaged, aside from reporters’ rapid typing on computers during moments of new information. Revelations evoked murmurs and sometimes tears from the audience.
Audience members’ moods abruptly shifted when a video chronicling the events of Jan. 6, 2021, played, many shifting in their seats and visibly on edge. During the video, Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn embraced the widows of two officers who died as a result of the attack, who used tissues to wipe tears from their eyes.
In gripping testimony often stifled by emotion, Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards recalled navigating a “war zone” that day, slipping on the blood of fellow officers and catching them as they fell while the rioters stormed the Capitol.
– Ella Lee
Testimony: ‘It was carnage, it was chaos’: Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards recounts Jan. 6
Members of a House Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol began Thursday outlining their case that the insurrection was the final act of an intricate scheme orchestrated by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election.
The committee said that Trump knew he lost the 2020 presidential election, and despite that, enacted a “sophisticated seven-part plan” to overturn the election results. But not all Trump loyalists – or family – went along with Trump’s plans, the committee said.
The committee also sought to tie Trump to the actions of the Proud Boys, framing the extremist organization as a vehicle for Trump that was inspired to attack the Capitol by the former president.
– Joey Garrison, Ella Lee
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