FBI agents were dispatched to run down and eventually disprove bizarre fraud claims — including a suitcase and a truck laden with ballots — in the wake of the 2020 election, but Donald Trump didn’t want to hear it, some of the former president’s top advisers told a U.S. House committee.
Everyone from then-Attorney General William Barr to presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner said in videotaped testimony to the panel that they advised Trump against pursuing claims the election was stolen. Yet he pressed on, raising about $250 million from supporters in fundraising appeals that Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a committee member, said were then diverted to other purposes in a “big ripoff.”
Showing Trump never had credible evidence the 2020 election outcome was tainted is crucial to the committee’s case that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a consequence of an illegitimate attempt by the former president to hold onto power. It also rebuts a grievance that many Republican political figures continue to embrace.
Live testimony and video excerpts from Trump’s top legal and campaign advisers offered a portrait of a president in the final days of his administration turning to a narrow coterie including trade adviser Peter Navarro and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom Trump adviser Jason Miller described as “definitely intoxicated” on election night as he persuaded the president to declare victory.
“I told him it was going to be a process, it was going to be a wait and see atmosphere now,” Bill Stepien, who was Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, testified to the committee. Stepien recounted, in a snippet of video testimony aired during the hearing, that he advised Trump on election night to wait for outstanding votes to be counted.
Stepien was to be a star live witness in the hearing but he was excused because his wife went into labor. Instead the committee showed video excerpts from his sworn deposition.
Kushner, a senior White House adviser, testified that he told Trump not to follow Giuliani’s advice. “Basically not the approach I would take,” Kushner said in a video excerpt of his testimony.
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