Donald Trump hosted a chaotic six-hour meeting at the White House in which he discussed ordering the military to seize voting machines in a bid to overturn his election loss, before issuing his infamous tweet calling for supporters who would eventually storm Congress of the USA. The meeting, described on Tuesday by the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, took place on December 18, 2020, four days after the Electoral College had confirmed Mr. Trump’s defeat of Joe Biden, and as Mr. Trump’s legal challenges to the result failed. In the seventh public hearing, the committee showed that despite being repeatedly told by his closest advisers that there was no evidence of voter fraud, Mr. Trump continued to promote false claims that the vote had been rigged. Those efforts culminated, the panel said, with Mr. Trump rounding up tens of thousands of protesters in Washington — including far-right militias with ties to Mr. Trump’s circle — and sending them to Capitol Hill. “President Trump invited a mob to Washington,” said Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chair. “The President’s Stolen Election Lies Caused This Mob to Attack Capitol Hill.” Jan. 6 hearings on Trump’s bid to swing the 2020 election echo a Shakespearean tale In videotaped testimony played at the hearing, several of Mr. Trump’s advisers said they urged him to concede after the Dec. 14 electoral college vote. In one of the depositions, 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, lawyer Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, then the chief executive of Overstock — drafted an executive order for Mr. Trump to confiscate voting machines. promote false allegations of electoral fraud. When the conspiracy theorists arrived in the Oval Office on December 18, then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other staffers rushed to intercept them. The meeting turned into a shouting match that lasted late into the night as the two sides exchanged insults. “The screaming was completely out there,” Eric Hersman, a former White House counsel, said in the video deposition. “What they suggested, I thought, was crazy.” Mr. Giuliani said he taunted Trump’s staff with an explicit sexual term for not supporting his plan. “The meeting was ABSOLUTE,” another aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, later texted. After the meeting ended, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress was scheduled to formally ratify the Electoral College results. “Be there, it’ll be wild!” he wrote on Twitter. The call sparked a flurry of activity, with groups jumping to mobilize people to come to Washington that day. Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, leaders of the far-right groups Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, started a group chat with Ali Alexander, organizer of the Stop the Steal rally, to coordinate efforts. Those groups were in contact with Mr. Flynn and Roger Stone, another outside adviser to Mr. Trump, the committee said. Members of a US House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill pointed to ties Tuesday between Trump allies and right-wing militant groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the online conspiracy movement QAnon. Reuters The commission showed videos and texts in which Mr. Trump’s supporters openly called for violence on January 6. One promised a “shooting squad.” another to see police officers “lying on the ground in a pool of their own blood;” a third said to “wear handcuffs” and strategized how to enter the Capitol through the underground tunnel system. In text messages revealed by the committee, both White House staff and protest leaders said in the days before the riot that Mr Trump planned to have his supporters march on Capitol Hill, suggesting it was an organized plan. Katrina Pierson, organizer for At Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, he sent a message ahead that Mr. Trump would “call on everyone to march on Capitol Hill.” Mr. Trump spoke to Steve Bannon on Jan. 5, shortly before the latter said on his podcast that “all hell will break loose 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 minister who pleaded guilty to tampering with the Capitol, said in live testimony Tuesday that he joined the riot because he believed Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud. He said he now knows those claims were false. After his arrest, Mr Ayres lost his job and was forced to sell his house. “The president got everybody up, he told everybody to go down, so basically we were going along with what he said,” Mr Ayres told the committee. “It’s driving me crazy because I was hanging on every word he was saying.” Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, testified that the “racist” group intended to incite a riot. “What was about to happen was an armed revolution,” he said. “People died that day. Law enforcement died that day. A gallows was erected in front of the Capitol. This could have been the spark that started a new civil war.” Even some of those in Mr. Trump’s orbit saw it the same way. On the evening of Jan. 6, Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, texted Ms. Pierson. “This is Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country. A sitting president is asking for civil war,” he wrote, according to Tuesday’s committee hearing. The committee has built a case that Mr. Trump sought to thwart the will of voters, first by pressuring state officials and his vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn the election result and then by stirring turmoil on Capitol Hill. , in which his supporters tried to block Congress from certifying the electoral college vote. Ms Cheney said future hearings, expected next week, would take a closer look at the rebellion itself. He also said that Mr. Trump had tried to speak to an unnamed committee witness before their testimony. The witness did not speak to Mr. Trump, but reported the contact to the committee, which forwarded it to the Justice Department. “We will take any attempt to influence testimony very seriously,” he said. The Morning Update and Afternoon Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.
