“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
During the seventh hearing, the committee presented new information about the “unhinged” Oval Office meeting that took place Dec. 18, 2020, after which then-President Donald Trump tweeted what Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) called an “explosive invitation,” calling supporters to come to DC on January 6. During his speech that day, Trump told the crowd to “march” to the Capitol and that they needed to “fight like hell.” The calls to action followed weeks of Trump making false claims about the results of the election.
“Well, basically, you know, the President got everybody riled up and told everybody to head on down,” said Ayres, who has lost his home and his job. “So we basically was just following what he said.”
“While the violence was underway, President Trump failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.”
Witnesses testified to Trump’s over three-hour-long disregard for the safety of his own vice president, responding officers and the joint session of Congress, despite watching the violence unfold on Fox and receiving numerous pleas from aides and Republican allies to call off the mob.
And according to previously unseen video testimony played during Thursday’s hearing, Trump did not place a single call to any of his law enforcement or national security officials as the riot was unfolding.
“You will see that Donald Trump and his advisers knew that he had, in fact, lost the election…President Trump corruptly pressured state legislators and election officials to change election results.”
Multiple former Trump advisers testified to the committee that they tried to tell the then-President that there was no credible evidence of significant voter fraud and refused to go along with his plan to overturn the election.
“President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information … and invested millions of dollars of campaign funds purposely spreading false information…”
Some theories included accusing Dominion Voting Systems of changing Trump votes to Biden votes in large numbers, a truckload of ballots being shipped from New York to Pennsylvania, and Georgia election workers scanning tens of thousands of ballots for Biden that came from a suitcase. (All of these claims have been debunked.)
“You will see that President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Attorney General of the United States so the U.S. Justice Department would spread his false stolen election claims.”
Richard Donoghue, Rosen’s deputy, testified that while undergoing the presidential transition, he and another top Justice Department official were told by the then-President that they should “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to [him] and the Republican congressmen.”
“…we will focus on President Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes on January 6th…in private and in public.”
Trump was told repeatedly by advisers that his plan for Pence to overturn the election on January 6 was illegal, but he tried to do it anyway, and the committee showed video of Capitol rioters expressing anger at Pence for not fulfilling Trump’s wish.
The committee also learned through testimony from former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that she heard her boss, Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, say that Trump seemed to agree with the suggestion from some rioters, caught on tape that day, that Pence should be hanged.
On Thursday, the committee showed just how dire the security situation during the riot became for Pence, and one White House security official testified that members of Pence’s security detail started saying their goodbye to their loved ones.
