More than 500 days after the attack at the U.S. Capitol and almost a year after it was formed, the House Jan. 6 committee on Thursday presented new evidence and a full backstory on the assault on the first day of its prime-time public hearings.
“Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy and ultimately Donald Trump, the president of the United States, spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy,” Thompson, D-Miss., said in his opening statement.
In March, the committee for the first time indicated that Trump was part of a conspiracy to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
It noted that in the weeks after the election, Trump interfered with the certification process, disseminated false information about voter fraud and “pressured state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”
The bipartisan committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, began to bring before the American people the result of more than 1,000 interviews and its investigation over the past 11 months during the inaugural public hearing.
During his opening remarks, Thompson played a video of private testimony from William Barr, who served as U.S. attorney general under Trump from 2019 until he resigned on Dec. 23, 2020, just weeks before the insurrection.
Barr said he had three discussions with Trump in the months following the election and leading up to the riots in which he disagreed with Trump’s claims that there was evidence of fraud that would have altered the result of the election.
“I made it clear that I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff … I didn’t want to be a part of it and that’s one of the reasons that went into me deciding to leave when I did,” Barr said.
In another video clip, Barr said he “repeatedly told the president, in no uncertain terms, that I did not see evidence of fraud and — you know, that would have affected the outcome of the election.”
The committee then shared a video of investigators interview with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who said that Barr’s assertions had an impact on her decision making.
“It affected my decision,” she said. “I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was saying.”
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the committee’s two Republican members, said that former Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani held a meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, to discuss their plans to overturn the election.
“We know the group discussed a number of dramatic steps, including that President Trump impose martial law, seize voting machines, and potentially rerun elections,” Cheney said.
After the meeting, Cheney noted, Trump sent a tweet that urged people to come to the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying it would “be wild.”
“As you will see, this was a pivotal moment,” said Cheney. “This tweet initiated a chain of events. The tweet led to the planning for what occurred on Jan. 6, including by the Proud Boys who ultimately led the invasion of the Capitol and the violence on that day.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence is not expected to appear during the hearings but is likely to be a central figure due to his official procedural role in certifying the Electoral College results for Biden in the midst of the riots. Some of the rioters sought out Pence for his refusal to attempt to invalidate the election results, which Trump repeatedly and wrongly claimed that Pence had the power to do. Some of the rioters shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!”
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has previously said that Pence’s refusal to leave the Capitol during the assault helped to prevent Trump’s allies from gaining a possible opening to overturn Biden’s election.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said in recorded testimony that Pence was “very animated” during the riots and “issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders” to get the situation under control.
“He was very animated, very direct, very firm to [Defense Secretary Christopher Miller]. Get the military down here, get the guard down here. Put down this situation, et cetera,” he said.
Conversely, he said that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, stressed that the administration must make clear that Pence had not taken control of the situation over Trump.
“He said: ‘We have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative, you know, that the president is still in charge and that things are steady or stable,’ words to that effect,” Milley said. “I immediately interpreted that as politics. Politics. Politics. Red flag for me, personally. No action. But I remember it distinctly.”
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