There would be no uprising without Trump’s lies about election fraud. Dismantling the Big Lie, the January 6 Commission found that the whole case of Trump’s coup attempt was unfounded and that Trump knew these allegations were unfounded. This further establishes the intention. Today’s hearing took us to the White House where Trump made the decision to falsely declare victory. He methodologically falsified very specific frauds in the voters of Trump’s aides. Most importantly, he tried to prove that Trump knew his allegations of electoral fraud were unfounded – but he went on to destabilize American democracy anyway. The hearing was divided into two parts. The first part was dedicated to testimonies from former Trump officials, such as Attorney General William Barr, former Trump campaign director Bill Stepien, former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donborg, and former Secretary of State Richard Donnogord. The second part presented lawyers who refuted specific allegations of voter fraud and highlighted Trump’s losses in court. While Bill Stepien left the audition shortly before it began due to the birth of his wife, he was definitely present through his video testimony. Stepien testified that while the ballots were still being counted on election night, he recommended that it was too early to announce the race. Instead, Trump listened to a “seemingly drunk” Rudy Guiliani and falsely declared victory anyway. This started a full of lies, many months of trying to overthrow the elections. Former Fox News columnist Christopher Stirewalt told the Jan. 6 commission that Trump had no reason to call the fight for himself and explained the “red reflection” that occurred on election night as mail-order ballots did not were still counted. Trump’s campaign team informed him that this would happen and even tried to stop him from attacking the ballots by mail in the months before the election. Trump was well aware that the votes were not “made”, but simply counted. And yet, he pushed to “stop counting” anyway. William Barr’s testimony was utterly disastrous for Trump. Indeed, it was one of the most convincing testimonies to Trump I have ever heard at any of the many Trump corruption hearings I have covered in the last five years, and that says something – especially considering it came from one of his former elders. Trump slanderers. Barr testified that he told Trump that his campaign allegations were false. He described how the Ministry of Justice examined his false allegations of electoral fraud and found that they were “unworthy” and “based on complete misinformation”. Barr described how he told Trump that allegations of electoral fraud were “bulls **” and that Dominion’s “stupid” allegations were “crazy stuff” with “zero base” that did “serious injustice to the country.” How did Trump respond to that? The very next day, on December 2, 2020, Trump posted a video of the White House where he went on to describe the same lies. “If he really believes these things, he is detached from reality,” Barr told the commission. In criminal cases, there is a concept that prosecutors try and argue called “deliberate blindness.” It is when a suspect deliberately tries to avoid the facts to avoid criminal liability. Barr’s claim that “there was never any indication of interest in the facts” on Trump’s part underscores this, as does the testimony of other former Trump aides. As Trump’s deputy attorney general, Richard Donoghue testified that they looked at Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada and found the allegations of fraud to be false. And that since Trump was told each of these allegations of fraud were false, Trump will move on to another allegation. It was like playing Big Lie wack-a-mole. Former White House attorney Eric Hersman has called Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell “crazy” about the 2020 election. Trump went on to tell these lies and followed Rudy’s advice anyway. In the second half of the hearing, we saw many of these high-profile fraud claims being accurately dismissed. Former United States Attorney General for Northern Georgia BJay Pak has revealed that Barr asked him to investigate the alleged “ballot box” video at the State Farm Arena pushed by Rudy Giuliani. Pack said he discovered it was actually a lock for storing official ballots. Rudy was lying. Former Philadelphia GOP city commissioner Al Schmidt says not only was there no record of the 8,000 dead who voted in Philadelphia, but there was no record of eight. Barr also testified that the allegations of fraud in Philadelphia were “rubbish.” Attorney Benjamin Ginsberg told the commission he looked at more than 61 cases in which Trump ran in elections across the country and found that there were none where the case took place. Jan. 6 commission member Zoe Lofgren also cited Trump’s 61 judicial losses in resorting to electoral lies. He cracked down on judges who dismissed Trump’s allegations as “gossipy and implied”, “unsubstantiated”, “a fundamental and obvious misunderstanding of the constitution” and a “coup d’etat in search of a legal theory”. This was exactly Trump’s months-long effort to overthrow the 2020 election. A coup attempt. A coup in search of an excuse that Trump knew did not exist, but was lying anyway. As Ari Melber put it on MSNBC, the first hearing was about Trump’s criminal acts while this hearing was about criminal mentality. I think this hearing did a very good job of establishing that.
