In the first of several sessions to release the findings of the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Rep. Bennie Thompson, its chairman, called it the “culmination of an attempted coup.” of State”.
January 6, he said, was a “spreading, multi-step conspiracy aimed at nullifying the election, nullifying the votes of millions of Americans.”
He also pointed to Donald Trump as the center of an armed conspiracy behind the false idea that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. “Donald Trump was at the center of that conspiracy. And ultimately, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, incited a multitude of internal enemies of the Constitution to march on Capitol Hill and subvert American democracy,” Thompson said.
The Committee Chairman also presented the first video evidence to the audience: a clip of former Attorney General Bill Barr saying that referring to the 2020 election as stolen was “nonsense,” which he told Trump personally.
The Committee transported the audience, of more than 20 million viewers, to January 6 with unpublished images and information about what happened that day. T
Donald Trump, his campaign team, data processors, and a steady stream of lawyers, investigators, and allies from his inner circle were told the same thing over and over again: There was no fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
But in the eight weeks following the loss to Joe Biden, the defeated Trump publicly, privately and relentlessly pushed his false claims of a rigged 2020 election and escalated a plan to try to undo Biden’s victory.
When all else failed in his effort to stay in power, Trump called thousands of his supporters to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, where extremist groups led the siege on Capitol Hill.
“For several months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to nullify the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, said at last night’s hearing. “Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States,” she said.
It was the first of at least six hearings. When the panel resumes next Monday, it will delve into its findings that Trump and his advisers knew all along that he had, in fact, lost the election, but engaged in a “massive effort” to spread false information with the goal of convince the public otherwise.
On Wednesday the panel will hear testimony from top Trump-era Justice Department officials: Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his top deputy Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel, the former head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The testimony of the three former Justice Department officials is expected to focus on a chaotic stretch in the final weeks of the Trump administration, when the president openly weighed the idea of replacing Rosen with a lower-ranking official, Jeffrey Clark. whom he considered more willing to defend in court his false claims about voter fraud.
Thursday will focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, a scheme proposed at the White House by outside counsel, John Eastman. During the insurrection, rioters prowled the halls of the Capitol yelling “hang Mike Pence” as the vice president rejected Trump’s plan to nullify the 2020 election.
Congress cannot bring criminal charges, but it can urge the Justice Department to investigate those responsible and use the evidence of the investigation.
Trump responded on his social media site Friday denouncing the “totally biased spark plug hunt.”
