The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the Capitol accused former president Donald Trump of lying purposely to the public in order to stay in power and raise money from sympathetic supporters.
The committee said these actions were done in an orchestrated effort by Trump that led directly to the attack on the Capitol.
In the second of a series of public hearings into the investigation, the committee heard the testimony of some of the leading figures in Trump’s close orbit. The testimony hammered home that not only were Trump’s claims of voter fraud completely false but that he was well aware of the fact that they were false.
Former Attorney General William Barr delivered a damning portrait of Trump as someone increasingly “detached from reality” after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
The testimony presented in yesterday’s hearing showed a clear fracture behind the scenes behind Trump and some of his inner circle.
Barr was interviewed earlier by the committee, and the interview was aired during Monday’s hearing. Barr said his Justice Department was forced to play “whack-a-mole” with tons of fraud allegations that kept pouring in from Trump supporters around the U.S.
The department had to investigate the claims one by one. They found zero wrongdoing.
The accusation that Dominion Voting Systems, which is a voting machine company, had somehow installed software to flip votes from Trump to Biden was “idiotic,” Barr said.
Another claim was that more people voted in Philadelphia than there were voters in the city. Barr said this was “absolute rubbish.” Barr said that he told Trump:” The stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bullshit.”
“The claims of fraud were bullshit,” Barr said. Trump, he continued was “indignant about that.”
Trump’s top aides told the committee they confronted Trump directly about his claims of fraud only to be ignored.
Former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue testified that he personally explained to Trump that officials from the Department of Justice investigated claims of fraud in Georgia, Nevada, and other places and that the information he was receiving was inaccurate. When he did this, Trump would shift focus to other fraud claims.
Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien was supposed to testify in person but did not attend after his wife went into labor. Instead, the committee showed clips of his private deposition, where he discussed his efforts to convince Trump of the benefits of mail-in voting because it would take time to count ballots and declare a winner. He also tried to explain that it was too soon to call the race as votes were still being counted.
Trump then turned to Rudy Giuliani, who was a key promoter of conspiracy theories and emerged as one of the biggest public champions of Trump’s lies about the election being stolen. Stepien said there were two groups, his own team, and Rudy’s team. “I didn’t mind being part of ‘Team Normal,” Stepien said.
Former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” on the night of the election.
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