The January 6 Committee revealed Tuesday that Donald Trump had attempted to contact a person who was speaking to the panel about its investigation of the former president and the 2021 attack on Capitol Hill.
“We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming. The person Trump tried to contact refused to answer her call, Cheney said. But she alerted her lawyer, who contacted the Committee.
Over the past month, the panel has socialized a defeated Trump “cut off from reality,” clinging to false claims of voter fraud and working feverishly to try to reverse his electoral loss.
Tuesday’s session revealed details of a “crazy” late-night meeting at the White House with outside lawyers for Donald Trump, who suggested the military seize state voting machines in a last-ditch effort to prove false claims of voter fraud.
As dozens of voter fraud lawsuits floundered, Trump met late into the night on December 18 with his lawyers at the White House before tweeting the invitation to the January 6 rally: “Being there will be wild!”
“This tweet served as a call to action and, in some cases, a call to arms,” said panel member Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.
The panel featured new video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former attorney, recalling the explosive meeting when the president’s legal team submitted a draft executive order to seize state voting machines, a “terrible idea.” , said. “This is not how we do things in the United States,” Cipollone testified.
Another attendee called the meeting “unhinged.” Cipollone and other White House officials rushed to intervene in Trump’s late-night meeting with attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others. Trump erupted in screaming and yelling, another aide testified. “Where is the evidence?” Cipollone asked.
“What they were proposing, I thought, was crazy,” another White House official, Eric Herschmann, testified. But Trump was intrigued and essentially told his White House lawyers that at least Powell and his outside allies were trying to do something. “You guys are not tough enough,” Giuliani recalled in video testimony. The president told White House lawyers: “You are assholes.”
In the morning, Trump tweeted the call for supporters to Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress would count the results of the Electoral College. “There are
In vulgar and often racist language, messages broadcast on far-right forums planned for the big day they said Trump was calling for in Washington. It would be a “red wedding,” said one, referring to the mass murders. “Bring handcuffs
At the witness table was Jason Van Tatenhove, a former ally of Oath Keepers frontman Stewart Rhodes. Another witness was Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty last month to disorderly conduct in a restricted building.
