When William P. Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020, he praised President Donald J. Trump for his “unprecedented achievements” and promised that the Justice Department would continue to pursue the president’s allegations of voter fraud. “To ensure the integrity of the elections”. A year and a half later, Mr. Bar sounds different. In a videotaped testimony played at the first two public hearings by the House committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Americans now learned what Mr. Barr avoided saying publicly about Mr. Trump at the time. “I was somewhat heartbroken,” Mr Barr said in a statement played Monday, describing his reaction to a Trump monologue in December 2020 that the voting machines were set up. Mr Barr’s thinking, he said, was that the president had ‘moved away from reality if he really believed these things. “On the other hand, when I went into it and told him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never any indication of interest in what the facts were.” The testimony of Mr Barr and many of the assistants who played in the hearing was an honest, more brutal version of what he said in public shortly after the election. Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and Jason Miller, top adviser, testified before the committee that they could not keep Rudolf Wu away. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, on election night. Mr Giuliani, whom Mr Miller described as “definitely drunk”, told Trump he had to declare victory. “It was too early to make such calls,” Stephen said. Mr. Stepien also testified that it became clear after the election that Mr. Trump had no realistic way of overthrowing the election. But in the days immediately following the vote, he did not publicly challenge Trump or Giuliani. And two days after election day, Miller voiced the idea in a press conference that mysterious ballot papers were being displayed in the states that Mr. Trump was still claiming.
Examine the issues of the hearings of the Parliamentary Committee of January 6
They both seemed to believe that there was an opportunity for challenges that passed in mid-November. Both continued to work with the campaign, but fell out of favor as Trump put Giuliani in charge of efforts to overturn the results. The change for some of the aides reflects the legal consequences of lying to a congressional committee and how loose Mr. Trump’s grip on his former aides has been in the 17 months he has been out of office. The testimony so far reflects only what has been made public and it is not clear what else the committee may have. In books written about the election last year, Trump’s aides appear to believe the data showed a possible victory until the afternoon of November 5, when it changed. Mr Barr, who testified voluntarily on the committee, spoke to ABC News’ Jonathan Carl in 2021 about his outrage over Mr Trump’s allegations of fraud. Mr. Barr also narrated tense private conversations with Mr. Trump in his memoirs this year. In other cases, individuals such as Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kouchner, and daughter Ivanka have begun to look for a life after the White House in Florida while remaining in office. They tried to consolidate the policy issues they had worked for and, according to their colleagues, said little to try to deter Mr. Trump from trying to stay in power. Yet they remained silent in public as the president, his advisers and his political allies promoted the Americans’ claims and used them to raise funds for Mr. Trump. “After the election, his own people are advising him not to go out and declare victory, that it took time for the vote to come,” said Zoe Lofgren, a Republican from California, who led the inquiry into the committee’s second hearing. for Monday. He added: “They told the president directly again and again that they were lying. These were his people. This is Trump World, telling the president that what he was saying was false. And he kept saying the same thing. “ Mr. Barr’s testimony was tantamount to a besieged former Cabinet official facing unfounded accusations that Trump’s government wanted to overthrow him. “It was like playing Whac-a-Mole because one thing would come out one day and another the next,” said Mr Barr. In his statement, he also explained how he told an Associated Press reporter on December 1 that the department did not find evidence of widespread fraud that would change the outcome of the election. However, his resignation letter underscored the extent to which officials seemed to believe that they should wander into Trump. However, the testimony of Mr. Stepien and Mr. Miller made it clear that they were at least trying to warn Mr. Trump how election night was likely to turn out, with early returns in his favor, but a possible wave of Democratic votes coming later. when mail-on ballots were counted. “I said back in that conversation with him, in which I said – as I did in 2016 – that it would be a big night,” recalls Mr Stepien, who spoke with the president. “I told him in 2020 that, you know, there were – it would be a process again. As you know, early returns will be, you know, positive. Then we will watch, you know, the returns of the ballots as, you know, they were released afterwards “. Mr Miller said that when the campaign learned on election night that Fox News had telephoned Arizona about Joseph R. Biden Jr., he and other campaign aides were angry and frustrated, but also worried about “the facts.” us or our numbers were not accurate. “ But on the phone call with reporters two days after election day, Mr Stepien sounded reluctant. “The media and experts in this city have been trying to figure out Donald Trump for years,” he said. “Donald Trump is alive and well.” Elsewhere, he said: “It’s exactly what the president said was going to happen.”
