The House committee investigating the January 6 attack accused Donald Trump of inciting the “American carnage” he once warned against when he summoned a mob to Washington in a last-gasp attempt to stay in power.
The session, the seventh in a series of public hearings to present the findings of the committee’s yearlong investigation, concluded with a shocking disclosure from the Republican committee vice-chair, Liz Cheney.
Trump had attempted to contact a witness cooperating with the investigation, Cheney said, adding that the witness did not answer and the committee had alerted the justice department.
“We will take any efforts to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Cheney warned.
Over the course of three hours on Tuesday, the committee presented evidence that Trump, increasingly desperate after the states confirmed Joe Biden’s victory on 14 December 2020, sought to seize a second term. Ignoring advice to concede, he began fixating on 6 January, when Congress would meet to certify the election results.
A presentation led by two Democrats, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Stephanie Murphy of Florida, argued that Trump’s tweet inviting his supporters to attend a Save America rally in Washington on 6 January 2021 was a “call to action” that violent extremist groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers readily answered. Members of both groups are facing rare charges of seditious conspiracy over the Capitol attack.
The message set off an “explosive chain reaction among [Trump’s] followers”, Raskin said.
The Democratic committee chair, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said: “Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington DC and ultimately spurred that mob to wage a violent attack on our democracy.”
In its presentation, the committee disclosed a draft tweet in which Trump planned to direct supporters to “March to the Capitol after Stop the Steal!!”
The message, obtained from the National Archives, was undated but stamped with the words “president has seen”.
Murphy also presented evidence that Trump “edited and ad-libbed” in his speech at the Save America rally at the Ellipse on 6 January, further inflaming his supporters and directing them to march to the Capitol.
“The evidence confirms this was not a spontaneous call to action but rather was a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the president,” Murphy said.
The presentation pulled heavily from a taped deposition by Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel who agreed to sit for an interview after last month’s explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
The committee delved into an “unhinged” six-hour meeting on the evening of 18 December that began in the Oval Office and ended in the president’s private residence, during which Trump allies discussed increasingly radical ways to keep him in power, including a proposal to seize voting machines.
The meeting was characterized as a “heated and profane clash” between those who believed Trump should concede the election and a group of outsiders who some advisers referred to as “Team Crazy”. They included Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for his campaign team, Sidney Powell, and retired general Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser.
Using testimony from participants and witnesses, the committee reconstructed the late-night confrontation in vivid, at times almost-comical detail, describing how argument erupted over a plan to appoint Powell as a special counsel with the power to seize machines.
“You’re a bunch of pussies,” Giuliani described telling White House officials. A bewildered Cipollone said he “vehemently opposed” the Trump allies’ plan.
Cipollone told investigators Powell, who embraced conspiracy theories involving a deceased Venezuelan leader and the Chinese government, to be wholly unqualified.
“I didn’t think she should be appointed to anything,” he said.
Hours after the meeting, Trump sent a tweet that Murphy said was a “call to action and, in some cases, as a call to arms”. Trump’s supporters saw the tweet as an invitation to come to Washington and disrupt the electoral count, the committee argued, showing clips of far-right groups using the message to mobilize members.
One Trump supporter threatened a “red wedding” on 6 January, a reference to a massacre in the TV hit Game of Thrones. Another message said: “Is the 6th D-Day? Is that why Trump wants everyone there.”
Wielding Trump’s inaugural speech against him, Raskin said: “American carnage: that’s Donald Trump’s true legacy. His desire to overthrow the people’s election and seize the presidency … nearly toppled the constitutional order.”
The next hearing will detail Trump’s “supreme dereliction” during the assault on the Capitol, Cheney said.
She noted Trump was told repeatedly that he lost the election but refused to accept the results and said: “No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.”
In live testimony, Jason Van Tatenhove, a former Oath Keepers spokesperson, said the insurrectionists planned “an armed revolution” and could have sparked “a new civil war”.
The committee also heard from Stephen Ayres, a former Trump supporter who recently pleaded guilty to a federal charge over the riot.
Trump’s lie of a stolen election drew him to Washington, he testified, saying it “felt like I had horse-blinders on”. If he had known Trump had no evidence the election was stolen, he said, he may never have come to the Capitol.
Ayres offered his own experience as a cautionary tale: “It changed my life – not for the good, definitely not for the better.”
After the hearing, he approached police officers who defended the Capitol. It was an emotional exchange.
The committee also disclosed a striking text exchange between Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Katrina Pierson, an adviser who sought to raise the alarm about dangerous individuals involved in January 6 planning.
In texts sent in the aftermath of the riot, Parscale expressed remorse for working to elect Trump and blamed the former president for inciting violence.
“It wasn’t the rhetoric,” Pierson wrote.
Parscale said: “Yes it was.”
