The panel investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol showed testimony from several witnesses at its latest hearing on Tuesday, including Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House adviser, who met with the panel’s investigators last year. week. According to Cipollone and other witnesses, almost everyone close to the former president believed there was no hope of challenging the election result after December 14, 2020, the day electoral college voters met to certify the election results. “Did I think he should have conceded the election at the time? Yes, I believed that,” Cipollone said in an excerpt from his testimony presented at the hearing. He added: “There was insufficient evidence of electoral fraud to change the outcome of the election. When other people kept suggesting it existed, the response is, “What is it?” At some point you have to put up or shut up — that was my point.” Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican deputy chairwoman, said there was no excuse for Trump continuing to push his false claims. “Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information that showed that in fact the election was not stolen by almost any other American,” he said. “No sane or reasonable person in his position could ignore this information and come to the opposite conclusion.” However, there were some Trump advisers who wanted him to press his challenge, leading to what was described as howling during a White House meeting in December 2020. On one side were Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, and Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser. They wanted the former president to appoint Powell as special counsel to investigate conspiracy theories that foreign governments had helped alter the results recorded on automatic voting machines. The other side included Cipollone, Eric Herschmann, another White House lawyer, and White House aide Derek Lyons, who urged the president to reject such conspiracy theories. Herschmann told the committee: “It got to the point where the outcry was completely, completely out. When you let people in. It was late at night and it had been a long day and what they suggested I thought was crazy.’ The meeting ended after midnight, witnesses said. Less than two hours later, Trump tweeted: “Big protest in DC Jan 6th. Be there, it’s going to be wild!” That tweet “electrified and emboldened his supporters — especially the dangerous extremists in the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other racist and white nationalist groups who are spoiling for a fight against the government,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the committee. The committee presented multiple evidence that Trump’s call for supporters to march on Capitol Hill was well-planned, even if it was presented at the time as spontaneous. One was a draft tweet, shown to Trump but never sent, saying: “I’m going to give a big speech at 10am on January 6th in the Ellipse (South of the White House). Please arrive early, large crowds are expected. March to the Capitol afterwards.’ The commission has spent the past year investigating last year’s attack when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the official certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. The members held six public hearings in which they described how Trump insisted the election was rigged, even though his closest aides told him it wasn’t. State and federal officials have testified that they were pressured by Trump to halt the transition and investigate his allegations of voter fraud, despite being repeatedly told they were false.

In one of the most explosive hearings, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, described how Trump had attacked Secret Service agents on Jan. 6 as they tried to stop him from meeting supporters on Capitol Hill. The commission plans another hearing for next week as members review new evidence and potential witnesses. Over the weekend, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said he would testify, having previously resisted doing so. He is expected to stand trial next week for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Documents and Evidence Committee. The Justice Department called Bannon’s offer “the latest attempt to avoid accountability.” Commission officials said Monday that they still want him to testify and provide the documents they had requested.