Stephen Ayres, who took part in the Jan. 6 attack, and Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, are sworn in by the House select committee during the seventh public hearing in Washington on July 12.POOL / Reuters
Donald Trump organized a chaotic six-hour White House meeting in which he discussed the order in the military to confiscate voting machines to try to undo his loss in re-election, before issuing his infamous tweet summoning supporters who would eventually storm the U.S. Congress.
The meeting, described on Tuesday by the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, took place on December 18, 2020, four days after the polling station had confirmed the defeat of Mr. Trump by Joe Biden, and as Mr. Trump’s legal challenges to the outcome were failing.
At its seventh public hearing, the committee demonstrated that, although its closest advisers repeatedly told it that there was no evidence of election fraud, Mr. Trump continued to push false claims that the vote had been manipulated.
These efforts culminated, the committee said, with Mr. Trump gathering tens of thousands of protesters in Washington, including far-right militias with links to Mr. Trump’s circle. Trump, and sent them to the Capitol.
“President Trump convened a crowd in Washington,” said Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice president. “The president’s stolen electoral lies caused that crowd to attack the Capitol.”
January 6 hearings on Trump’s effort to cancel the 2020 election echo a story by Shakespeare
In the statements recorded on video at the hearing, several advisers of Mr. Trump said he had been urged to give in after the polling station vote on Dec. 14. In one of the statements, his daughter, Ivanka Trump, even acknowledged that she felt the fight was over.
But a group of conspiracy theorists – including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, then Overstock’s executive director – drafted an order. executive because Mr. Trump confiscated voting machines to propel false allegations of election fraud.
When conspiracy theorists arrived at the Oval Office on Dec. 18, then-White House attorney Pat Cipollone and other staff members rushed to intercept them. The meeting turned into a party of screams that lasted well into the afternoon as the two sides exchanged insults.
“The screams were completely out there,” Eric Herschmann, a former White House lawyer, explained in the videotaped statement. “What they were proposing, I thought, was crazy.” Giuliani said he mocked Trump staff with a sexually explicit term for not supporting his plan. “The meeting stalled,” another aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, later wrote.
Once the meeting was over, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress was scheduled to formally certify the results of the polling station. “Be there, it will be wild!” he tweeted.
The call sparked great activity, with groups jumping in to mobilize people to come to Washington that day.
Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, leaders of far-right groups the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, began a group talk with Ali Alexander, organizer of the Stop the Steal rally, to coordinate efforts. These groups were in contact with Mr. Flynn and Roger Stone, another external advisor to Mr. Trump, the committee said.
Members of a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol noted Tuesday ties between Trump’s allies and right-wing militant groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the Internet conspiracy movement QAnon.
Reuters
The committee showed videos and texts in which Trump supporters openly called for violence on January 6th. One promised a “firing squad”; another to see police officers “lying on the ground in a puddle of their own blood”; a third said he was “wearing shackles” and raised how to enter the Capitol through its system of underground tunnels.
In text messages revealed by the committee, both White House staff and protest leaders said during the days leading up to the riots that Mr. Trump had planned for his supporters to march on the Capitol, suggesting it was an organized plan.
Katrina Pierson, organizer of The demonstration of Mr. Trump on January 6, sent a text message before Mr. Trump “would ask everyone to march to the Capitol.” Mr. Trump spoke with Steve Bannon on Jan. 5, shortly before the latter told his podcast that “all hell will break free tomorrow,” according to phone records released by the committee.
At a rally near the White House on January 6, Mr. Trump finally urged his supporters to go to Congress and “fight like hell.”
Stephen Ayres, an Ohio cabinetmaker who pleaded guilty to violating the Capitol, said Tuesday in a live testimony that he joined the riots because he believed Mr. Trump election fraud. He said he now knows those claims were false. After his arrest, Mr. Ayres lost his job and had to sell his house.
“The president got everyone angry, he told everyone to keep going down, so we were basically just following what he said,” Ayres told the committee. “It drives me crazy, because I was paying attention to every word I said.”
Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for Oath Keepers, stated that the “racist” group intended to foment an insurrection.
“What would be an armed revolution,” he said. “People died that day. Law enforcement died that day. There was a gallows installed in front of the Capitol. This could have been the spark that started a new civil war.”
Even some of those who were in the orbit of Mr. Trump saw it the same way. On the night of January 6, Brad Parscale, its former campaign manager, sent a text message to Ms. Pierson. “It’s Trump pushing uncertainty in our country. An incumbent president is calling for a civil war,” he wrote, according to Tuesday’s committee hearing.
The committee has been building a case that Mr. Trump tried to frustrate the will of voters, first by putting pressure on statewide officials and his own vice president, Mike Pence, to reverse the election result, and then provoking the Capitol riot. , during which his supporters tried to prevent Congress from certifying the vote of the electoral college.
Mrs. Cheney said future hearings, scheduled for next week, will take a closer look at the riot.
He also said Mr. Trump had tried to speak with an unnamed committee witness before his testimony. The witness did not speak with Mr. Trump, but reported the contact to the committee, which referred him to the Justice Department.
“We will take any effort to influence the testimony of witnesses very seriously,” he said.
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