The commission, at its second hearing this month, identified the origins and evolution of what it described as a “big lie” by Mr. Trump. He showed through live testimony of witnesses and recorded testimonies how the former president, defying many of his advisers, insisted on declaring victory on election night before the full counting of votes and then tried to challenge his defeat with increasingly curious and unfounded claims that they were repeatedly informed were wrong. “He has distanced himself from reality if he really believes these things,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, told Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview with the panel on Monday in which he could not control his laughter. to the absurdity of the allegations made by the former president. “There has never been an interest in the facts,” Barr said. The commission also used the testimony of Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign leader, who told investigators that Mr. Trump ignored his warning on election night to avoid declaring a victory that had no basis in claiming victory. Instead, the president followed the advice of Rudolph W. Giuliani – the lawyer’s staff who was, according to Jason Miller, a top campaign aide, “definitely drunk” – and said he won even when the vote was still being counted. It was all part of the commission’s effort to show how Mr. Trump’s dissatisfaction with the election results led immediately to the events of January 6, when a mob of supporters stormed the Capitol in the deadliest attack on the building in centuries. at the urging of the president “to stop the theft”. Investigators went further on Monday, detailing how the Trump campaign and its Republican allies used allegations of rigged elections that they knew were false to mislead small sponsors and raise up to $ 250 million for an official election campaign. . campaign assistants testified that they never existed. “It was not just the big lie,” said Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who played a key role in the hearing. “There was also a big misunderstanding.” The money ostensibly raised to “stop the theft” went to Mr. Trump and his allies, including, according to the investigation, $ 1 million to a charity run by Mark Meadows, his chief of staff. $ 1 million to a political group led by many former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. more than $ 200,000 in Trump hotels. and $ 5 million to Event Strategies Inc., which held the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol Uprising. Aides said Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was paid $ 60,000 to speak at the event, a speech that lasted less than three minutes. “It is clear that he deliberately misled his donors, asked them to donate to a non-existent fund and used the money raised for something other than what he said,” Lofgren told Trump.
Read more about the hearings of the Parliamentary Committee on January 6
But most of the session was devoted to showing how determined Mr. Trump was to cling to the fiction that he had won the election, only to dig deeper as his aide informed him that he had not won. The list of aides and advisers who tried to remove Mr. Trump from his false allegations was long and varied, according to the commission presentation. They included low-level campaign lawyers who described how they told the president that returns from the pitch showed he would lose the match. Among them were also top Justice Department officials – including his one-time attorney general – who described how they had investigated allegations that the race had been set up or stolen and found them not only unfounded but also fools. “There were suggestions from, I think it was Mayor Giuliani, that we should go and declare victory and say that we had won it completely,” Miller said in a video interview with the committee. Mr Stepien later said he considered himself part of the “Normal Group”, while a separate group of outside advisers, including Mr Giuliani, encouraged Mr Trump’s false allegations. The committee played many parts of the testimony of Mr. Barr, Trump’s last attorney general, who called the president’s allegations of stolen elections “bullshit” and “fake.” “I told them it was crazy and they were wasting their time,” Barr said. “And it was a big, big injustice for the country.” Mr. Trump was still in it Monday, issuing a bizarre 12-page statement hours after the committee’s hearing ended, doubling his allegations of fraud, again – without any evidence – that Democrats had inflated them. electoral rolls. he illegally collected ballots, removed Republican observers from polling stations, bribed election officials, and stopped counting on election night when he was still in charge. “The Democrats created the January 6 narrative to diminish the much larger and more important truth that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen,” Trump wrote. In the courtroom on Monday, the committee showed in striking detail how Mr. Trump’s advisers tried and failed to persuade him to abandon his lies and accept defeat. In his testimony, Mr. Barr recalled several scenes in the White House, including one in which he said he asked Mr. Meadows and Jared Kouchner, the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, how long Mr. Trump had intended to ” go with these stolen electoral things “. Mr Barr recalled that Meadows had assured him that Mr Trump was “becoming more realistic” and knew “how far this could go”. As for Mr Kushner, Mr Barr said he had answered the question: “We are working on it.” After informing Mr. Trump that his allegations of fraud were false, Mr. Barr had another meeting with his president and White House adviser, Pat Chipolone. Mr Barr described in his testimony how Mr Trump was outraged that his attorney general had refused to back up his allegations of fraud. “This is killing me,” Barr said, referring to Trump. “You must have said that because you hate Trump.” In all, Mr. Trump and his allies have filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results. However, among the many allegations of fraud, Mr Barr told the commission, the worst – and most striking – was a alleged conspiracy by Chinese software companies, Venezuelan officials and liberal financier George Soros to breach machines made by Dominion Voting Systems and overturn votes away from Mr. Trump. These allegations were made primarily by a former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell, who gathered several unverified affidavits from witnesses who allegedly had information about Dominion. In the weeks following the election, Ms. Powell, working with a team of other lawyers, filed four federal lawsuits against her Democrat strongholds in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Phoenix, although her campaign had already determined that some of her allegations were false. All the costumes – known as “Krakens”, a reference to a mythical sea beast that wreaks havoc – were eventually rejected and considered so trivial that a federal judge sanctioned Ms. Powell and her colleagues. Dominion sued her and others for defamation. Mr Barr, in his testimony, described the allegations against Dominion as “crazy things” – a sentiment echoed by other Trump aides whose testimony was presented by the commission. Following Mr Barr’s departure as attorney general, his successor, Jeffrey A. Rosen, also told Trump that his allegations of widespread fraud had been “refuted.” Another witness who testified Monday and denied Mr. Trump’s allegations of fraud was Byung J. Pack, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who abruptly resigned on January 4, 2021. After speaking with Mr. Barr, Mr. Pack examined allegations of electoral fraud in Atlanta, including a claim made by Mr. Giuliani that a A suitcase with ballot papers was pulled under a table at a local polling station on election night. Mr. Trump and his allies also claimed that there was uncontrolled fraud in Philadelphia, with the former president recently claiming that more people voted in the city than were registered voters. In his statement, Mr Barr called the allegations “rubbish”. To support this argument, the committee called Al Schmidt, a Republican who served as one of the city’s three commissioners on the Philadelphia County Electoral Council. Mr Schmidt has denied allegations of fraud by Mr Trump and his allies, saying there was no evidence that more people voted in Philadelphia than were registered there or that thousands more died in the city. Mr. Schmidt also testified that after Mr. Trump posted a tweet accusing him of electoral fraud, he received threats on the Internet from people who posted the names of his family members, address and photos of his home. Zach Montague and Charlie Savage contributed to the report.
