The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the Capitol has unloaded a vast database of its underlying evidence, POLITICO reports.
All of the evidence is coming to grips with Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election and its disastrous consequences.
It provides the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win.
The panel posted thousands of pages of evidence late Sunday night in a public database.
Evidence includes emails between Trump attorneys, text messages among horrified White House aides and outside advisers, internal communications among security and intelligence officials, and more.
Much of the evidence has never been seen before.
And in some cases, the new evidence adds extraordinarily new elements to the case that the committee presented in public.
The evidence paints a vivid picture.
Trump lawyers strategized which federal courts would be likeliest to uphold their fringe constitutional theories; Trump White House aides battled to keep unhinged theories from reaching the president’s ears; as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded, West Wing aides sent horrified messages about Trump’s incendiary tweets and inaction; and after the attack, some Trump allies discussed continued efforts to derail the incoming Biden administration.
There are a few big extraordinary and important pieces of evidence in the files, including over Trump’s tweeting, telling people to surround the Capitol, new call logs, texts before and after the Capitol riot, and Trump wanting to walk to the Capitol himself.
Whether Trump sends his own tweets and whether he was told what to say in some of them was a big issue. Jan. 6 committee members pored over the circumstances of Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020 tweet telling his followers to come to Washington to protest the counting of electoral votes by Congress. “Will be wild,” Trump wrote, a message that experts and security officials viewed as rocket fuel for extremists.
The committee’s evidence includes a Jan. 22, 2021 text exchange between Trump adviser Katrina Pierson and his longtime social media guru Dan Scavino in which Scavino makes clear: No one told Trump to author the tweet.
Trump adviser Steve Bannon was a big center of the investigations as well. Two days after the Jan. 6 attack, Trump adviser Steve Bannon told his spokeswoman that he didn’t necessarily think the fight to prevent a Biden administration had ended.
“We must turn up the heat,” Bannon wrote to his spokesperson Alexandra Preate on Jan. 8, 2021.
When Preate asked when Trump was leaving town ahead of Biden’s inauguration, Bannon replied, “He’s not staying in the White House after the 20th. But who says we don’t have one million people the next day?”
“I’d surround the Capitol in total silence,” Bannon added.
The select committee posted Trump’s complete White House call logs from Jan. 2, Jan. 3 and Jan. 5, 2021. Each day of call logs shows Trump’s intense focus on remaining in power.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) strategized with Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell about her effort to help the campaign promote the notion that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud and irregularities. But Lee repeatedly pressed Mitchell on the “slippery slope” he said her arguments entailed.
“Jan. 6 is a dangerous idea. Not just for the republic itself, but also for the president,” Lee said.
Trump aide Hope Hicks texted Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff Julie Radford on the afternoon of Jan. 6 denouncing Trump’s actions and worrying that their careers were likely doomed.
“All of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset,” Hicks wrote. “We all look like domestic terrorists now.”
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