Donald Trump electrified his far-right supporters by calling on them to protest in Washington on January 6th, 2021 before making a carefully-planned plea for them to march on the Capitol, a congressional committee has heard.
Members of the bipartisan panel investigating last year’s mob attack argued during a public hearing on Tuesday that the former president was directly responsible for inciting violence among his supporters who believed Joe Biden had stolen the 2020 election.
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Liz Cheney, the Republican deputy chair of the committee, also disclosed that the former president had attempted to contact an unidentified witness who is expected to testify before the committee next week. That witness did not pick up the phone, she said, but instead contacted their lawyer, who told the committee.
“This committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice, she said. “We will take any efforts to influence witness testimony very seriously.”
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Tuesday’s hearing focused on Mr Trump’s actions ahead of January 6th. Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the committee, said the former president had “electrified and galvanised” his supporters, including many on the extreme right, with a tweet urging them to come to Washington that day to protest the election results.
The committee displayed emails, text messages and a draft tweet all showing the former president had planned for days to use a speech near the White House to urge his supporters to march on Congress.
“When Donald Trump sent out his tweet, he became the first president ever to call for a crowd to descend on the capital city to block the constitutional transfer of power,” Mr Raskin said. “He set off an explosive chain reaction among his followers.”
The committee showed many of Mr Trump’s more extreme supporters using that tweet to generate enthusiasm for the January 6th protest. Alex Jones, a rightwing conspiracy theorist, filmed a video saying that Trump was “now calling on the people to take action to show our numbers”.
Jason Van Tatenhove, a former national media director of the Oath Keepers, a far-right group, told the committee that January 6th “could have been the spark that started a new civil war”.
Members of the committee also showed that many of those around the former president knew he was considering urging protesters to head towards the Capitol building.
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They displayed a draft tweet from Mr Trump, which was shown to the former president but never sent, saying: “I will be making a big speech at 10am on January 6th at the Ellipse (South of the White House). Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after.”
When Mr Trump made his call during his January 6th speech, it was presented as an off-the-cuff remark, but members of the committee argued he had deliberately sent an armed mob to attack the Capitol building.
Some of those around Mr Trump blamed him for the violence. The committee showed text messages sent by former campaign chief Brad Parscale, saying: “This is about Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country, a sitting president asking for civil war ... I feel guilty for helping him.”
The committee also heard evidence from multiple witnesses about how Mr Trump continued to push his false claims that the election had been stolen even while nearly all those closest to him told him it had not.
Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel and close Trump ally, told the committee: “Did I believe he should concede the election at the time? Yes, I did believe that.”
Yet there were some advisers to Mr Trump who wanted him to press his challenge, leading to what was described as a screaming match during a White House meeting in December 2020.
On one side was Mr Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com, and Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser. They wanted the former president to appoint Ms Powell as a special counsel to investigate conspiracy theories that foreign governments had helped change the results which were logged in automatic voting machines.
The other side included Mr Cipollone, Eric Herschmann, another White House lawyer, and White House aide Derek Lyons, who urged the president to reject such conspiracy theories.
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Mr Herschmann told the committee: “It got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there ... It was late at night and been a long day, and what they were proposing, I thought, was nuts.”
The meeting finished after midnight, witnesses said. Less than two hours later, Mr Trump sent the tweet at the centre of Tuesday’s hearing: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
Next week the committee will hold what is planned to be the last in a series of public hearings before members write their final report. “Our hearing next week will be a profound moment of reckoning for America,” Mr Raskin said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022