August 15, 2022
January 6 hearings: some parallels, some contrasts
Here
are my thoughts about the first eight
hearings by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack:
I. As
the hearings on the events of January 6, 2021 proceeded, dealing with efforts
by Trump to overturn the 2020 election, it was difficult not to think of
Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, which involved another Republican
President running for re-election. As
evidence emerged, Republicans reluctantly turned against Nixon. By contrast,
Trump’s support among voters and in Congress has remained bafflingly strong.
Liz
Cheney has been a notable exception to the pattern of loyalty to Trump. In her opening remarks at the first broadcast
hearing of the Select Committee, Representative Cheney left no doubt as to
responsibility for the riot at the Capitol:
Those who invaded our capital and battled law
enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them,
that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful President. President
Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. .
. .
. . . On
the morning of January 6th, President Donald Trump's intention was to remain
President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election
and in violation of his constitutional obligation to relinquish power. . . .
Later, she gave this warning: “Tonight I say this
to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come
a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
There
have been other exceptions to Republican support for Trump, including those who
voted to impeach or convict. The
hearings identified others outside Congress; its case against Trump was made by
Republican witnesses.
The
first hearing described the presentation to be made in later hearings and
anticipated a few points, one of which was that Trump had been told that his
claims were baseless. The Committee
played a tape of an interview with former Attorney General William Barr:
I had three discussions with the president that I
can recall. One was on November 23rd, one was on December 1st, and one was on
December 14th. . . . I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying
the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president
was bullshit. . . . . I observed, I
think it was on December 1st, that, you know, how can we — you can't live in a
world where — where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its
view, unsupported by specific evidence, that the election — that there was
fraud in the election.
Barr again:
I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations,
but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing
a lot of people, members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption
in the system and that their votes didn't count and that these machines
controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete
nonsense. . . . And I told them that it
was — that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that. And it
was doing a great, grave disservice to the country.
The
hearing also anticipated coverage of the events of January 6 by noting Trump’s
tweet on December 19, part of which read: ”Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.
Be there, will be wild!" The
Committee played a tape of Steve Bannon saying, on January 5, “All hell is
going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this. All hell is going to break
loose tomorrow.”
As
these examples show, the evidence relevant to the events of January 6 was not
presented in an entirely systematic fashion, resulting in some repetition and
some matters presented out of chronological sequence. The case against Trump was no less convincing for that.
II. At
the second hearing, the Committee, in the words of Rep. Zoe Lofgren, examined
“the false narrative that the 2020 election was ‘stolen.’ " Trump's “plan to overturn the election
relied on a sustained effort to deceive millions of Americans with knowingly
false claims of election fraud.”
Trump
claimed fraud before votes were counted; Barr: “Right out of the box on
election night, the President claimed that there was major fraud underway. I
mean, this happened as far as I could tell before there was actually any
potential of looking at evidence.” The
Committee pointed out that Trump referred to
fraud well before the election, including at a speech in Wisconsin on
August 17, where he alleged: “The only way we're going to lose this election is
if the election is rigged.” An article
on Politico quotes his claims of fraud from July 30 through September 24, 2020,
a comment on July 19 of that year that he might not accept the results of the
election, and a refusal on September 23 to “commit here today for a peaceful
transferral of power after the November election.”[27] Trump babbled about fraud at the first 2020 presidential
debate on September 29.[28]
The
pattern goes back still further. In
2016, his campaign website pleaded: “Help me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging
This Election!” In an interview, he
declared: “that election is going to be rigged.” During the last 2016 debate, he refused to say whether he would
accept the result if he lost. Already
during that campaign, he had convinced many that elections were not to be
trusted. “A Politico/Morning consult
poll carried out in mid-October [2016]
found that . . . 73 percent of Republicans believed that the election could be
stolen from Trump.”[29]
The electoral college saved him from defeat but, embarrassed by his loss
in the popular vote, he trotted out allegations of fraudulent voting to explain
that result.
III. At the opening of the third hearing, Ms.
Cheney summarized its theme: “Today we're focusing on President Trump's
relentless effort to pressure Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes on
January 6th”
The
hearing drew a sharp contrast between the behavior of Trump and that of his
Vice President. Trump tried to persuade
Pence that he had the right and duty to interfere with the counting of the
electoral votes, but the hearing made clear that the arguments offered to
support interference by the Vice President were false. The principal theorist and supporter of
Trump’s ploy, John Eastman, acknowledged to Greg Jacob, counsel to Pence, that,
if his argument were presented to the Supreme Court, it would be rejected
unanimously. Mr. Jacob was asked
whether Eastman ever said that he would want other vice presidents to have the
power to decide the outcome of the election.
Jacob reported his question and Eastman’s baffling response:
I mean, John, back in 2000, you weren't jumping up
and saying Al Gore had this authority to do that. You would not want Kamala
Harris to be able to exercise that kind of authority in 2024 when I hope
Republicans will win the election. And I know you hope that too, John. And he said, absolutely. Al Gore did not
have a basis to do it in 2000, Kamala Harris shouldn't be able to do it in 2024,
but I think you should do it today.
The
Vice President refused to play along. A
video clip was shown in which he said, in part, “President Trump is wrong. I
had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American
people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more
un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American
President.”
Trump
continued until the last moment to claim that Pence could and should reject the
certified votes. During his speech at
the Ellipse on January 6 he said this: “All Vice President Pence has to do is
send it back to the states to recertify and we become president.”[30]
When
Pence did not do so Trump, of course,
turned on him. The Committee transcript[31]
refers to but does not include the exact text of this tweet by Trump at 2:24 PM
on January 6, minutes after rioters had entered the Capitol: “Mike Pence didn’t
have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and
our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts,
not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously
certify. USA demands the truth!”[32]
IV. At the opening of the fourth hearing Rep.
Cheney described the effort to reverse results in several states: “Today we
will begin examining President Trump's effort to overturn the election by
exerting pressure on state officials and state legislatures. Donald Trump had a
direct and personal role in this effort, as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John
Eastman. In other words, the same people who were attempting to pressure Vice
President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes illegally were also
simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election at the state
level.”
The
hearing illustrated another exception to the continuing Republican support for
Trump: the principled action of elected officials. Two of them, Russell Bowers,
Speaker of the Arizona House of
Representatives, and Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia,
described their refusals to go along with Trump’s attempts to alter state
electoral results.
Rep.
Adam Schiff read a statement by Trump which, referring to a conversation in
November 2020 with Bowers, claimed: "During the
conversation he told me the election was rigged and that I won
Arizona." Bowers denied saying
that and confirmed that Biden won his state.
Giuliani
proposed to Bowers that somehow Arizona “remove the — the electors of President
Biden and replace them” with Trump electors.
He proposed that Bowers assemble “an official committee” for that
purpose. Bowers declined. In his attempts to pressure Bowers,
Giuliani appealed to him as a fellow Republican; as Bowers put it, Giuliani
“would say, aren't we all Republicans here? I — I would think we would get a better
reception. I mean, I would think you would listen a little more open to my
suggestions, that we're all Republicans.”
Eastman
also contacted Bowers, proposing that “we would in fact vote — to take a vote
to overthrow or — I shouldn't say overthrow, that we would decertify the
electors . . . .” Bowers refused.
A
comment by Giuliani sums up the phoniness of the Trump scheme; Bowers recalls
that Giuliani said “we've got lots of theories. We just don't have the
evidence.”
In a
phone call to Raffensperger, Trump made various false claims about fraud in
Georgia. When Raffensperger stood by
the election count, Trump resorted to threats, as shown by this video played at
the hearing:
I think you're going to find that they are
shredding ballots because they have to get rid of the ballots because the
ballots are unsigned, the ballots are — are corrupt and they're brand new and
they don't have seals and there's a whole thing with the ballots, but the
ballots are corrupt and you're going to find that they are — which is totally
illegal.
It's — it's more illegal for you than it is for
them. Because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a —
you know, that's a criminal — that's a criminal offense. And you know, you can't
let that happen. That's — that's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.
And that's a big risk.
Ultimately
Trump’s attempt to alter the outcome came down to this plea: “So, look, all I
want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes. . . . “ Again: “ So — so
what are we going to do here? Because I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need
11,000 votes. Give me a break.” Just
“find” enough votes to reverse the outcome.
Secretary Raffensperger told the Committee: “There were no votes to
find. That was an accurate count that had been certified.”
The
Trump quotes above were taken from an hour-long call he made to Raffensperger
on January 2, 2021, to which Ryan Germany, General Counsel to the Secretary of
State, among others, was a party. Trump
went on and on about imaginary fraud and made nonsensical claims, such as
these:“As you know, every single state, we won every state. We won every
statehouse in the country.” “And we won
the House. . . .” “There’s no way I
lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”[33]
The
testimony by Bowers and Raffensperger was made more powerful and their stand
more praiseworthy by their general support for Trump. They acknowledged that they wanted President Trump to win the
2020 election. Bowers went further. The
day before the hearing, he said this about 2024: “If he [Trump] is the nominee,
if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again.”[34]
According
to the Committee, Trump ”posted messages on Facebook, listing the contact
information for state officials and urging his supporters to contact them to
‘Demand a vote on decertification.’ " Whether or not the result of those
messages, the principled stand by these officials earned them threats and
accusations. Here is a description by
Speaker Bowers:
[W]e received, my secretaries would say, in excess
of 20,000 emails and tens of thousands of voicemails and texts which saturated
our offices. . . . [A]t home, up till even recently, it is the new pattern or a
pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on Saturdays because we have
various groups come by and they have had video panel trucks with videos of me
proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and
blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood and leaving literature both on my
property, and — but arguing and threatening with neighbors and with myself.
This was Secretary Raffensperger’s experience:
Well, after the — after the election, my email, my cell phone was
docked [sic, doxxed]. And so I was getting texts all over the country.
And then eventually my wife started getting the text and hers typically came in
a sexualized attacks which were disgusting. . . . And so they started going
after her I think just to probably put pressure on me. . . . And then some
people broke into my daughter in law's home and my son has passed and she's
widow and has two kids. And so we're very concerned about her safety also.
In
testimony before the Committee, Gabriel Sterling, Chief Operating Officer in
the Georgia Secretary of State's office, related this incident: a contractor
for Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to Georgia,
received threats; a video had been posted which ”had his name, [said] you committed
treason, may God have mercy on your soul,” and had an image of a slowly
twisting noose. The committee showed a
video of Mr. Sterling, in a December 1 press conference, addressing some of his
remarks directly to Trump: “Mr. President, . . . you have the rights to go to
the courts. What you don't have the ability to do, and you need to step up and
say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.
Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get
killed, and it's not right. . . .”
Another
Republican official, Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler, received daily
voice mails from Trump's lawyers in the last week of November. “Mr. Speaker, this is Rudy Giuliani and
Jenna Ellis. We're calling you together because we'd like to discuss obviously
the election. . . . Hey, Bryan. It's Rudy. I really have something important to
call to your attention that I think really changes things.” The Committee noted that “Cutler felt that
the outreach was inappropriate and asked his lawyers to tell Rudy Giuliani to
stop calling.” However, he persisted:
“I understand that you don't want to talk to me now. I just want to bring some
facts to your attention and talk to you as a fellow Republican.”
Eventually, there were protests; Trump ally
Steve Bannon announced this plan: “We're getting on the road and we're going
down to Cutler. We're going to start going to offices. And if we have to we're
going to go to homes and we're going to let them know what we think about
them.”
Cutler
testified: “There were multiple protests. I actually don't remember the exact
number. There was at least three, I think, outside of either my district office
or my home. . . . All of my personal information was doxxed online. It was my
personal email, my personal cell phone, my home phone number. In fact, we had
to disconnect our home phone for about three days because it would ring all
hours of the night and would fill up with messages.”
The
threats were directed not only to high-level officials; ordinary election
workers were subjected to unconscionable pressure and calumny. Two election workers, mother and daughter,
testified and clips were shown of the abuse they received. Here’s Rudy Giuliani claiming that a video
showed that they engaged in fraudulent activity: “Tape . . . of Ruby Freeman
and Shaye Freeman Moss and one other gentleman quite obviously surreptitiously
passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine. I mean,
it's our — it's obvious to anyone who's a criminal investigator or prosecutor
they are engaged in surreptitious illegal activity again that day, and that's a
week ago, and they're still walking around Georgia lying.”
Presumably
Rudy meant they were passing around thumb drives, no doubt concluding, in the
inane manner of all of the election-fraud nonsense, that they were somehow
introducing false information into election machines. (In fact, one was handing the other a ginger mint). Rudy ranted on: “They should have been —
they should have been — should have been questioned already. Their places of
work, their homes, should have been searched for evidence of ballots, for Ellis
— evidence of USB ports, for evidence of voter fraud.”
The
Donald piled on during his call with Secretary Raffensperger, making as little
sense as usual: ”We had at least 18,000. That's on tape. We had them counted
very painstakingly, 18,000 voters having to do with the Ruby Freeman. That's —
she's a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler.”
Shaye
Moss referred to “a lot of threats wishing death upon me, telling me that, you
know, I'm — I'll be in jail with my mother . . . .” She received a call from her grandmother “saying that there are
people at her home and they, you know, they knocked on the door and of course
she opened it seeing who was there, who it was. And they just started pushing their way through, claiming that
they were coming in to make a citizen's arrest. They needed to find me and my
mom. They knew we were there. . . . “
Ms.
Moss summarized the effect of the attacks: “This turned my life upside down. I
no longer give out my business card. . . . I — I don't want anyone knowing my
name. I don't want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name
out over the grocery aisle or something. I don't go to the grocery store at
all. I haven't been anywhere at all.”
Similarly,
Ruby Freeman testified: “Now I won't even introduce myself by my name anymore.
I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my
name. I'm worried about who's listening. I get nervous when I have to give my
name for food orders. I'm always concerned of who's around me. I've lost my
name, and I've lost my reputation.”
It was
so bad for her that, “[a]round the week of January 6th, the FBI informed me
that I needed to leave my home for safety.. . . . I — I stayed away from my
home for approximately two months. It was horrible. I felt homeless. . . . I
can't believe this person has caused this much damage to me and my
family.” She summed up the experience
powerfully: “Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United
States to target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent
every American, not to target one. But he targeted me, . . . a small business
owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who [stood] up to help Fulton County
run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”
Representative
Cheney summed up the threat to the country: “We cannot let America become a
nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence.”
V.
The presentation at the fifth hearing was primarily by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the
only Republican on the Committee apart from Rep. Cheney. He was no more reluctant than she to point
out failings by members of his Party.
He quoted several of them supporting the stolen-election claim, with
this comment: “Republican Congressman
amplified the stolen election message to the American public.”
At this hearing, we learned of a plan by Trump
to replace the honest leader of the Justice Department with someone he thought
would support his claims of fraud, providing an echo of Watergate, of the
Saturday Night Massacre in which the Special Counsel was fired.
Trump
wanted to appoint Jeffrey Clark, a Department of Justice lawyer with no
relevant experience, to replace the Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, who
had been appointed on the resignation of Attorney General Barr. That plan was
prompted by Trump’s desire to send a letter to the leadership of the Georgia
state legislature, with variations for other swing states. As summarized by Rep. Cheney, the letter,
drafted by Clark, claimed that the
Department of Justice's investigations "identified significant
concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states,
including the state of Georgia. . . . In light of these developments, the
department recommends that the Georgia General Assembly should convene in
special session," and consider approving a new slate of electors.
Mr.
Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, had informed Trump that no fraud had
been found. Here is Mr. Donoghue’s
summary:
As we got later in the month of December, the
President's entreaties became more urgent. He became more adamant that we
weren't doing our job. . . . And he had this arsenal of allegations that he
wanted to — to rely on. And so I felt in that conversation that it was
incumbent on — on me to make it very clear to the President what our
investigations had revealed, and that we had concluded based on actual
investigations, actual witness interviews, actual reviews of documents that
these allegations simply had no merit.
Accordingly, Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue refused to
issue the letter, leading to Trump’s plan to appoint Clark.
Notes
taken by Mr. Donoghue recorded that Mr. Rosen said to Trump, "DOJ can't
and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election." Donoghue described Trump’s reply: “He
responded very quickly and said essentially that's not what I'm asking you to
do. What I'm just asking you to do is to say it was corrupt and leave the rest
to me and the Republican Congressmen.”
On
December 31, Trump proposed seizing voting machines from state
governments. Rosen: “we had seen
nothing improper with regard to the voting machines. And I told him that the —
the real experts that had been at DHS and they had briefed us, that they had
looked at it and that there was nothing wrong with the — the voting
machines.” Donoghue: “Toward the end of
the meeting the President again was getting very agitated and he said people
tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make
a change in the leadership. Put Jeff Clark in, maybe something will finally get
done.”
The
issue came to a head in a meeting on January 3. White House counsel Pat Cipollone was present, along with Rosen
and Donoghue. Trump complained that
DOJ wasn’t doing what he wanted; “You don't even agree with the — the claims of
election fraud, and this other guy [Clark] at least might do something.” As Donoghue put it, “the conversation at
this point was really about whether the president should remove Jeff Rosen and
replace him with Jeff Clark. And
everyone in the room I think understood that that meant that letter would go out.
So, that was the focus.”
They
warned Trump that appointing Clark would result in mass resignations. Donoghue added, perhaps sensing Trump’s
vulnerable spot, “Mr. President, within 24, 48, 72 hours, you could have
hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire Justice
Department because of your actions. What's that going to say about you?” Donoghue testified: “And I think at that
point Pat Cipollone said, yeah, this is a murder suicide pact, this
letter.” Trump relented. Clark was not appointed.
Rep.
Kinzinger commented: “So, in today's hearing, we've showcased the efforts of
the Americans before us to stand up for democracy. Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue
stayed steadfastly committed to the oath they take as officials in the Department
of Justice. . . . My colleagues and I . . . also take an oath. Some of them
failed to uphold theirs, and instead chose to spread the big lie. Days after
the tragic events of January 6th, some of these same Republican members
requested pardons in the waning days of the Trump administration.”
In a
closing comment, Rep. Kinzinger captured Trump’s character: “[W]e're here today
because the facts were irrelevant to President Trump. It was about protecting
his very real power and very fragile ego, even if it required recklessly
undermining our in — our entire electoral system by wildly casting baseless
doubt upon it. In short, he was willing to sacrifice our republic to prolong
his presidency. I can imagine no more
dishonorable act by a president.”
In her
closing, Rep. Cheney appealed to Trump’s followers:
[L]et me also today make a broader statement to
millions of Americans who put their trust in Donald Trump. In these hearings so
far, you've heard from more than a dozen Republicans who've told you what
actually happened in the weeks before January 6th. You will hear from more in
the hearings to come. Several of them served Donald Trump in his
Administration, others in his campaign. Others have been conservative
Republicans for their entire careers. It can be difficult to accept that
President Trump abused your trust, that he deceived you. Many will invent
excuses to ignore that fact. But that is a fact. I wish it weren't true, but it
is.
VI. The sole witness at the sixth hearing was
Cassidy Hutchinson, principal aide to the White House Chief of Staff, Mark
Meadows. She revealed what was
happening in the White House on and before January 6.
On
January 2, Rudy Giuliani met with Meadows.
Ms. Hutchinson walked with Giuliani as he left. He said: “Cass, are you excited for the
6th? It's going to be a great day. I remember looking at him saying, Rudy,
could you explain what's happening on the 6th? He had responded something to
the effect of, we're going to the Capitol.
It's going to be great. The President's going to be there. He's going to
look powerful. He's — he's going to be with the members. He's going to be with
the Senators. Talk to the chief about it, talk to the chief about it. He knows
about it.”
She
returned to Meadows’ office and reported Giuliani’s comments. Meadows “said something to the effect of,
there's a lot going on, Cass, but I don't know. Things might get real, real bad
on January 6th.”
There
was talk of potential violence on January 6. Ms. Hutchinson: “I recall hearing the word Oath Keeper and
hearing the word Proud Boys closer to the planning of the January 6th rally
when Mr. Giuliani would be around.”
She received a call from Robert
O'Brien, the National Security Advisor.
“He had asked if he could speak with Mr. Meadows about potential violent
— words of violence that he was hearing that were potentially going to happen
on the Hill on January 6th.”
Describing a meeting between Meadows and Tony Ornato, Deputy Chief of
Staff, she said: “I just remember Mr. Ornato coming in and saying that we had
intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th.”
On
January 6, Trump gave a speech at the Ellipse, south of the White House. Those entering the Ellipse were screened for
weapons by magnetometers (“mags”). Many
weapons were detected, and some of the potential audience remained outside the
Ellipse, not wanting to surrender them.
Trump
was angry that those with weapons were not admitted. Ms. Hutchinson: “He was furious because he wanted the arena that
we had on the Ellipse to be maxed out at capacity for all attendees.” She recalled Trump saying: “I don't effing
care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take that effing mags
away. Let my people in.
According
to Ms. Hutchinson, Trump was told that those outside “don't want to come in
right now. They — they have weapons that they don't want confiscated by the
Secret Service. And they're fine on the mall. They can see you on [from?] the
mall and they're — they want to march straight to the Capitol from the
mall.”
People at the White House were aware of
the situation at the Capitol. Ms.
Hutchinson: “It was becoming clear to us and to the Secret Service that Capitol
Police officers were getting overrun at the security barricades outside of the
Capitol building. And they were having short — they were short people to defend
the building against the rioters.”
Trump’s
chief legal counsel was worried about Trump’s plan to go to the Capitol. Ms. Hutchinson: “On January 3rd, Mr.
Cipollone had approached me knowing that Mark [Meadows] had raised the prospect
of going up to the Capitol on January 6th. Mr. Cipollone and I had a brief
private conversation where he said to me we need to make sure that this doesn't
happen. This would be a legally a terrible idea for us. We're — we have serious
legal concerns if we go up to the Capitol that day.”
She
reported a further conversation on the 6th: “Mr. Cipollone said
something to the effect of please make sure we don't go up to the Capitol,
Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We're going to get charged with every crime
imaginable if we make that movement happen.”
Asked what crimes Cipollone referred to. Ms. Hutchinson replied: “In the
days leading up to the 6th, we had conversations about potentially obstructing
justice or defrauding the electoral count. . . . And he was also worried that
it would look like we were inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to erupt on
the Capitol — at the Capitol.”
Ms.
Hutchinson testified that, on the 6th, she was informed by Ornato
that Trump had attempted to go to the Capitol, not by accompanying marchers,
but by car. “Tony proceeded to tell me
that when the president got in the beast [the presidential limo], he was under the
impression from Mr. Meadows that the . . . movement to the Capitol was still
possible and likely to happen . . . . So, once the president had gotten into
the vehicle with Bobby [Engel, a Secret Service agent], he thought that they
were going up to the Capitol. And when Bobby had relayed to him we're not, we
don't have the assets to do it, it's not secure, we're going back to the West
Wing, the president had a very strong, a very angry response to that.”
As the
riot developed, Cipollone tried to persuade Meadows to tell Trump to intervene.
Ms. Hutchinson described his response: “I remember Pat saying something to the
effect of, Mark, we need to do something more. They're literally calling for
the vice president to be f'ing hung. And Mark had responded something to the
effect of, you heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn't think
they're doing anything wrong . . . . I understood ‘they're’ to be the rioters
in the Capitol that were chanting for the vice president to be hung.”
All of
this apparently happened in the general time frame of Trump’s tweet at 2:24
PM. The text of that tweet bears
repeating in full: “Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have
been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance
to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones
which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!.” Here is Ms. Hutchinson’s reaction when she
saw that tweet:
As a staffer that worked to always represent the
administration to the best of my ability and to showcase the good things that
he had done for the country, I remember feeling frustrated and disappointed,
and really it felt personal. I — I was really sad. As an American, I was
disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol
building get defaced over a lie, and it was something that was really hard in
that moment to digest, knowing what I've been hearing down the hall and the
conversations that were happening. Seeing that tweet come up and knowing what
was happening on the Hill, and it's something that I — it's still — I still
struggle to work through the emotions of that.”
She was a loyal aide, thought the administration
had done good things for the country, but knew that the election-fraud claim was a lie, and the tweet
disgusting and unpatriotic.
VII. Here is Rep. Cheney’s summary of the seventh
hearing: “Today's hearing will take us from December 14th, 2020, when the
Electoral College met and certified the results of the 2020 presidential
election, up through the morning of January 6th. . . . We will also
see today how President Trump summoned a mob to Washington and how the
president's stolen election lies provoked that mob to attack the Capitol. . .
.”
Rep.
Stephanie Murphy stated that “members of President Trump's Cabinet and his
White House staff . . . told President Trump that it was time to concede the
election to Mr. Biden.” She ran a tape
of Secretary of Labor Gene Scalia: “So I had to put a call into the President.
. . . We spoke, I believe, on the 14th [of December, 2020] in which I conveyed
to him that I thought that it was time for him to acknowledge that President
Biden had prevailed in the election.”
Videos
were run of interviews of Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel:
Q: “I want to start by asking if you agree, Mr.
Cipollone, with the conclusion of Matt Morgan and Bill Barr, of all of the
individuals who evaluated those claims that there is no evidence of election fraud
sufficient to undermine the outcome in any particular state?”
A:“Yes, I agree with that.”
Q: “Did you in your mind form the belief that the
President should concede the election loss at a certain point after the
election[?]
A; “]I]f
your question is did I believe he should concede the election at a point in
time? Yes, I did.”
He also
commented on one of the wilder ideas put forth by some of Trump’s allies, that
the Secretary of Defense seize voting machines. “To have the federal government seize voting machines? That's a
terrible idea for the country. That's not how we do things in the United
States. There's no legal authority to do that. . . .”
That
proposal had been put forth in a contentious, six-hour meeting on December 18
attended by Trump supporters and White House counsel. The outcome, as Rep. Jamie Raskin put it, was that “President
Trump turned away from both his outside advisers' most outlandish and
unworkable schemes and his White House counsel's advice to swallow hard and
accept the reality of his loss.
Instead, Donald Trump issued a tweet that would galvanize his followers,
unleash a political firestorm, and change the course of our history as a
country.” The transcript contains part
of the text of the tweet, sent at 1:42 AM on the 19th, which in full
is as follows: “Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud
'more than sufficient' to swing victory to Trump https://t.co/D8KrMHnFdK . A
great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election.
Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”[35]
The
Committee played some reactions to Trump’s message:
Alex
Jones: “It's Saturday, December 19th. The year is 2020, and one of the most
historic events in American history has just taken place. President Trump, in
the early morning hours today, tweeted that he wants the American people to
march on Washington DC on January 6th, 2021. . . . H e is now calling on we the
People to take action and to show our numbers.”
Matt
Bracken: “We're going to only be saved by millions of Americans moving to
Washington, occupying the entire area, if — if necessary storming right into
the Capitol. You know, they're — we know the rules of engagement. If you have
enough people, you can push down any kind of a fence or a wall.”
Tim
Pool: “This could be Trump's last stand. And it's a time when he has
specifically called on his supporters to arrive in DC. That's something that
may actually be the big push Trump supporters need to say this is it. It's now
or never.”
Rep.
Raskin described the situation: “While Trump supporters grew more aggressive
online, he continued to rile up his base on Twitter. He said there was
overwhelming evidence that the election was the biggest scam in our nation's
history. As you can see, the president continued to boost the event, tweeting
about it more than a dozen times in the lead up to January the 6th.” Here is one of the tweets, from December 26,
2020: "The Justice Department and the FBI have done nothing about the 2020
Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history,
despite overwhelming evidence. They should be ashamed. History will remember. Never
give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th."[36]
According
to White House visitor logs obtained by the Committee, Republican members of
Congress visited Trump on December 21st.
Rep. Murphy: “We've asked witnesses what happened during the December
21st meeting, and we've learned that part of the discussion centered on the
role of the vice president during the counting of the electoral votes. These members of Congress were discussing
what would later be known as the Eastman theory,” about Vice President Pence’s
alleged right to refuse to certify electoral votes.
Mr.
Cipollone was asked about the issue. He
responded: “My view was that a vice president had — didn't have the legal
authority to do anything except what he did.
He added: “I thought that the vice president did not have the authority
to do what was being suggested under a proper reading of the law. I conveyed
that. . . . I think the vice president did the right thing. I think he did the courageous thing. . . . I
think he did a great service to this country. And I think I suggested to
somebody that he should be get — given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for —
for his actions.”
Returning
to the events leading up to January 6, Rep. Murphy said: “The committee has
learned from the White House phone logs that the president spoke to Steve
Bannon, his close adviser, at least twice on January 5th. . . .
Listen to what Mr. Bannon said that day after the first call he had with the
President: ‘All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging and
now we're on, as they say, the point of attack, right, the point of attack
tomorrow. I'll tell you this, it's not going to happen like you think it's
going to happen, Ok? It's going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all
I can say is strap in.’ ”
There
was a preliminary rally in Washington on January 5 by Trump supporters. Here are some of the statements they made:
Roger
Stone: “This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this
country, between dark and light, between the Godly and the godless, between
good and evil. And we will win this fight or America would step off into a
thousand years of darkness.”
Michael
Flynn: “The members — the members of Congress, the members of the House of
Representatives, the members of the — of the United States Senate, those of —
those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don't have the
moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow we the people are
going to be here. And we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie. We
will not stand for a lie.”
Ali
Alexander: “I want them to know that 1776 is always an option. These
degenerates in the deep state are going to give us what we want or we are going
to shut this country down.”
Alex
Jones: “It's 1776, 1776, 1776, 1776.”
Rep.
Murphy referred to a tweet by Trump at 5:05 PM on January 5, about that rally,
in which he said:: “Washington is being inundated with people who don't want to
see an election victory stolen by emboldened Radical Left Democrats. Our
Country has had enough, they won't take it anymore! We hear you (and love you)
from the Oval Office. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” [37] It was more fuel on the fire. Trump’s January 6 speech at The Ellipse
contained these lines, further goading his followers:
. . . And after this, we're going to walk down, and
I'll be there with you, . . .we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're
going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're
probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our country
with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have
come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who
have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.[38]
He ended the speech with this:
I think one of our great achievements will be
election security. Because nobody until I came along had any idea how corrupt
our elections were. . . . And we fight.
We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have
a country anymore. . . . So we're going
to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. . . . [W]e're going to try
and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any
of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness
that they need to take back our country.
So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
President
Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, recognized the impact of the
speech; this is what he said on January 6th in excerpts from text
messages: “[T]his is about Trump
pushing for uncertainty in our country". . . . A sitting President asking for civil war."
VIII. Witnesses at the eighth hearing were Matthew
Pottinger, Deputy National Security Advisor to the President and Sarah
Matthews, Deputy Press Secretary and Special Assistant to the President.
The
hearing was designed in part to show that Trump not only failed for hours to
call off the rioters, but that he ignored advice and pleas to do so. The Committee did a careless job of
establishing the latter, often noting only that his advisors, staff and family
wanted hin to do so. However, there
were enough references to conversations with Trump to make the point.
Reps.
Elaine Luria and Adam Kinzinger led the discussion. According to Rep. Luria,
“A White House employee informed the President as soon as he returned to the
Oval about the riot at the Capitol. . . . At 1:25, President Trump went to the
private dining room off the Oval Office. From 1:25 until 4:00, the President
stayed in his dining room.” There he
watched Fox News coverage of the events at the Capitol. The Committee showed this excerpt from the
broadcast, apparently at about 1:43 PM:
The President, as we all saw, fired this crowd up.
They've all — tens of thousands, maybe 100,000 or more have gone down to the
Capitol or elsewhere in the city and they're very upset. Now I jumped down as
soon as we heard the news that Bret gave you about Mike Pence. I started
talking to these people. I said, what
do you think? One woman, an Air Force veteran from Missouri said she was quote,
disgusted to hear that news and that it was his duty to do something. And I
told her, I said there's nothing in the Constitution unilaterally that Vice
President Pence could do. She said, that doesn't matter. He should have fought
for Trump.
The low
point in Trump’s behavior on January 6 came in his tweet at 2:24 PM. The temporal context is interesting; rioters
had broken into the Capitol at 2:13. The tweet was cited in earlier hearings,
but deserves restatement in full: “Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do
what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving
States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or
inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the
truth!”
This
was Matthew Pottinger’s reaction to that tweet:
I — I read it and was quite disturbed by it. I — I
was disturbed and worried to see that the President was attacking Vice
President Pence for doing his constitutional duty. So the tweet looked to me
like the opposite of what — what we really needed at that moment, which was a
de-escalation. And that's why I had said earlier that it looked like fuel being
poured on the fire.
So that was the moment that I decided that I was
going to resign, that that would be my last day at the White House. I — I
simply didn't want to be associated with — with the events that were unfolding
on the Capitol.
According to Rep. Kinzinger, in the time
prior to 2:24, Trump’s ”staff repeatedly came into the room to see him and
plead that he make a strong public statement condemning the violence and
instructing the mob to leave the Capitol.”
The transcript does not contain direct evidence of that but a tape of
Pat Cipollone’s cautious testimony indicates that he so told Trump after
learning of violence at the Capitol:
UNKNOWN: [I]t sounds like you from the very outset
of violence at the Capitol, right around 2:00, were pushing for a strong
statement that people should leave the Capitol. Is that right?
PAT CIPOLLONE: I was, and others were as well.
UNKNOWN: Pat, you said that you expressed your
opinion forcefully. Could you tell us exactly how you did that?
PAT CIPOLLONE: Yeah, I can't — I don't have, you
know, I have to — on the privilege issue, I can't talk about conversations with
the President, but I can generically say that I said, you know, people need to
be told, there needs to be a public announcement fast that they need to leave
the Capitol.
The
transcript also includes a reference to a video which includes this comment by
Mark Meadows: “I've already talked to the president. I called him. I think we
need to make a statement, make sure that we can calm individuals down.” The
video shows Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher making this statement: “Mr. President, you have got to stop this.
You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is
over. Call it off.”
Trump
did eventually issue two tweets calling for the mob to be peaceful: “Please
support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of
our Country. Stay peaceful!” (2:38 PM). “I am asking for everyone at the U.S.
Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law
& Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
(3:13 PM).[39]
Trump
eventually, at 4:17 PM, told the rioters to go home, but laced his request with
stolen-election nonsense, ensuring that the election result would not be
accepted by his followers:
I know your pain. I know you're hurt.
We had an election that was stolen from us. It was
a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you
have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We
have to respect our great people in law and order. We don't want anybody hurt.
It's a very tough period of time. There's never been a time like this where
such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me,
from you, from our country.
This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play
into the hands of these people. We have to have peace.
So go home. We love you. You're very special.
You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad
and so evil.
I know how you feel. But go home and go home at
peace.[40]
Sara Matthews had this reaction to Trump’s
statement:
I was struck by the fact that he chose to begin the
video by pushing the lie that there was a stolen election. And as the video
went on, I felt a small sense of relief because he finally told these people to
go home. But that was immediately followed up by him saying, we love you,
you're very special. And that was disturbing to me because he didn't
distinguish between those that peacefully attended his speech earlier that day
and those that we watched cause violence at the Capitol.
Instead, he told the people who we had just watched
storm our nation's Capitol with the intent on overthrowing our democracy,
violently attack police officers, and chant heinous, things like, hang Mike
Pence, we love you, you're very special. And as a spokesperson for him, I knew
that I would be asked to defend that.
And to me, his refusal to act and call off the mob
that day and his refusal to condemn the violence was indefensible. And so I
knew that I would be resigning that evening. . . .
In her
closing remarks, Rep. Cheney added to the evidence that claims of fraud were
not something that materialized after the election, but were part of the
strategy, She played a video of Steve Bannon speaking on October 31, 2020:
And what Trump's going to do is declare victory,
right? He's going to declare victory, but that doesn't mean he's a winner. He's
just gonna say he's a winner. The Democrats — more of our people vote early
that count. Theirs vote in mail. And so they're going to have a natural
disadvantage and Trump's going to take advantage — that's our strategy. He's gonna declare himself a winner. So when you wake up
Wednesday morning, it's going to be a firestorm. Also — also if Trump is — if
Trump is losing by 10 or 11:00 at night, it's going to be even crazier. Because
he's gonna sit right there and say they stole it. If Biden's winning, Trump is
going to do some crazy shit.
Rep.
Cheney also offered a theory as to why Trump’s followers have swallowed his
lies. The usual explanations look to
gullibility, fear of loss of status, partisanship, tribalism, separatism,
hostility to government, etc. Rep.
Cheney suggested that Trump “is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their
sense of justice. And on January 6th,
Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and
our Constitution.” He accomplished that
by creating “the false impression that America is threatened by a foreign force
controlling voting machines or that a wave of tens of millions of false ballots
were secretly injected into our election system or that ballot workers have
secret thumb drives and are stealing elections with them.” That’s an interesting theory, and it
probably is accurate in adding a factor to the mix, but other influences must
be at work to persuade people that Trump speaks for patriotism and
justice.
_________________________
27. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/24/trump-casts-doubt-2020-election-integrity-421280
28 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/24/trump-casts-doubt-2020-election-integrity-421280
29. Levitsky and Ziblatt,
How Democracies Die (2018), p. 61
30. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-
trial
31. I have used the
transcripts furnished by NPR.
32. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2021. Time: 19:24:22. That source uses a
twenty-four hour system — so 2:24 PM Eastern Time would be 14:24 — and uses
Universal Time Coordinated, which is 5 hours ahead of ET.
33. Transcript at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-
vote/ 2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html
34. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/22/arizona-rusty-bowers-jan-6-trump-vote. Continuing to support Trump in the
circumstances baffles me, and Bowers has had second thoughts, saying in late
July, “I’ll never vote for him.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rusty-bowers-donald-trump-arizona-gop_n_
62e7a6fbe4b00fd8d8411100
35. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-december-19-2020.
Time: 06:42:42. A Washington Post article
described Navarro’s “report” thus: “This might be the most embarrassing
document created by a White House staffer.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/18/this-might-be-most-
embarrassing-document-created-by-white-house-staffer/
36. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-december-26-2020. Time: 13:14:54
37. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-5-2021. Time 22:05:56
38. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-
trial
39. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2021. Time: 19:38:58, 20:13:26.
40. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/videotaped-remarks-during-the-insurrection-the-united-
states-capitol
1
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/24/trump-casts-doubt-2020-election-integrity-421280
2
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/30/trump-unleashed-torrent-disinformation-about-
voter-fraud-debate/
3
Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (2018), p. 61
4
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial
5 I have used the transcripts furnished by NPR.
6
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2021. Time: 19:24:22. That source uses a
twenty-four hour system — so 2:24 PM Eastern Time would be 14:24 — and uses
Universal Time Coordinated, which is 5 hours ahead of ET.
7 Transcript at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/
2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html
8
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/22/arizona-rusty-bowers-jan-6-trump-vote. Continuing to support Trump in the
circumstances baffles me, and Bowers has had second thoughts, saying in late
July, “I’ll never vote for him.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rusty-bowers-donald-trump-arizona-
gop_n_62e7a6fbe4b00fd8d8411100
9
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-december-19-2020.
Time: 06:42:42.
A Washington Post article described Navarro’s
“report” thus: “This might be the most embarrassing document created by a White
House staffer.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/18/this-might-be-most-
embarrassing-document-created-by-white-house-staffer/
10
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-december-26-2020. Time: 13:14:54
11
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-5-2021. Time 22:05:56
12
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial
13
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2021. Time: 19:38:58, 20:13:26.
14
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/videotaped-remarks-during-the-insurrection-the-united-
states-capitol
