As they did at the inaugural hearing, committee members used video testimony from some of Trump’s closest friends and advisers – including crude comments from former Attorney General William P. Barr – to show that the president should have known that his allegations were unfounded. Here are some other facts from the second day of the hearings.
Trump has been described as “cut off from reality” after the election.
Mr Barr’s video testimony was one of the most exciting of the morning, with the former attorney general describing Mr Trump as increasingly “disconnected from reality” in the days following the election. In his testimony, Mr Barr said he had repeatedly told the president that his allegations of fraud were unfounded, but that “there was never any indication of interest in the facts”. The unpainted portrait of Mr. Trump is the basis of the argument that the commission is trying to put forward: that Mr. Trump knew that his allegations of election fraud were not true and he made them anyway. Mr Barr said in the weeks leading up to the election, he had repeatedly told Trump “how crazy some of these allegations were”. The commission claims that Mr. Trump was a deliberate liar. But Mr Barr’s testimony offered another possible explanation: that the president did believe the lies he was telling. “I thought, my boy, if he really believes these things, you know, he’s lost touch with it – he’s detached from reality, if he really believes these things,” Barr told the committee.
Two groups surrounded Trump: “Normal Team” vs. “Rudy Team”.
One thing that was clear on Monday was that there were two different groups of people around Mr. Trump in the days and weeks after the election. Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, described his team as a “Regular Team,” as opposed to the team led by Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. A veteran Republican agent, Mr. Stepien was among campaign aides, lawyers, White House advisers and others who urged Mr. Trump to drop his baseless allegations of fraud. Mr. Giuliani’s team fueled the president’s paranoia and pressured him to support baseless and fictitious allegations of ballot collecting, ballot violation, and more. “We call them my team and Rudy’s team,” Stephen told the commission’s investigators in interviews. “I did not mind being a member of Team Normal.” The committee members hope that the description of the two rival teams in Mr. Trump’s trajectory is proof that Mr. Trump made a choice – to listen to the team led by Mr. Giuliani instead of those who led his campaign and worked in his government. Mr. Trump chose, in the words of “Team Normal”, to listen to those who make “crazy” arguments.
A picture from the night of the elections in the White House.
Monday’s audition began with a live-action portrait of the White House election night, describing the reaction of the president and those around him when Fox News called Arizona about Joseph R. Biden Jr. family, the commission showed how Mr. Trump turned down the warning advice he received. Mr Stepien said in the video that he had urged the president not to declare victory prematurely, having already explained that Democratic votes were very likely to be counted later in the night. Mr. Trump ignored him, Mr. Stepien and others said. Instead, he listened to Rudy Giuliani, who was told by his aides that he was drunk that night, and urged the president to claim victory and say the election was being rigged. Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News who was fired after making the on-air call for Arizona, told the committee that the change in odds that night that led to the president’s allegations of voter manipulation was nothing more than expected. results of the Democratic vote. calculated after the Republicans. He expressed pride that his team was the first to accurately call the Arizona results and said there was a “zero” chance that Mr. Trump would have won this state.
Millions of dollars were sent to a non-existent “election defense fund,” the commission said.
It was not just the “big lie”, according to the January 6 commission. It was also “the big upset”. In a video presentation that concluded its second hearing, the committee described how Mr. Trump and his campaign aides used baseless allegations of electoral fraud to persuade the president’s supporters to send millions of dollars to something called the “Election Fund.” Defense “. According to the commission, Mr. Trump’s supporters offered $ 100 million in the first week after the election, apparently in the hope that their money would help the president fight to overturn the results. However, one of the commission’s investigators said there was no evidence that such a fund ever existed. Instead, millions of dollars flowed into a super PAC set up by the president on November 9, a few days after the election. According to the committee, this PAC sent $ 1 million to a charity run by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, and another $ 1 million to a political group run by many former staff members. including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. Zoe Lofgren, a Republican from California, summed up the findings as follows: be used “. He added, “Therefore, not only was there this big lie, there was also the big upset. Sponsors deserve to know where their funds are really going. “They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.”
