Jan. 6 hearings

The session had been scheduled to focus on President Donald J. Trump's effort to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election.

The session had been scheduled to focus on President Donald J. Trump’s effort to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election. The panel is still scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday focusing on Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence to try to persuade him to throw out Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has postponed a hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday to lay out its findings about President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election, the panel said on Tuesday.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has postponed its Wednesday hearing slated to review former President Trump's ...

See All See all Video See All We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. See all Hill.TV So we’re trying to — we were going to have 1-2-3 in one week and it’s just it’s too much to put it all together.

The committee wants to get Americans off the sidelines and into the fight to hold Trump accountable for the unprecedented attack on the Capitol.

That was true in part because both GOP committee members had long ago broken with Trump, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had rejected the Trump loyalists and “big lie” believers whom House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tried to appoint instead. Schattschneider suggested that the weaker team is typically the one that wants to get the audience off the sidelines. Pelosi in turn exploited her discretion under House rules not to seat two of the House GOP leader’s five picks for the special committee on the grounds that both had threatened to sabotage the investigation. Also, Democrats showed remarkable discipline for lawmakers seeking reelection: Only the chair and vice chair spoke during the two-hour hearing. Still, Vice Chairwoman Cheney kept GOP colleagues in her sights, suggesting there is evidence that several Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Scott Perry (Pa.), had sought a presidential pardon for their involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. Expect the next hearings to be similarly choreographed: On-air time is too short for the committee to discover new evidence during the public hearings. In the words of political scientist E.E. Schattschneider in his 1960 book “The Semi-Sovereign People,” the prime-time launch of the hearings is all about “expanding the scope of conflict”: Drawing the audience off the sidelines and into the fight. If the investigation unearths evidence of criminal behavior, whether by the former president or his aides, the committee would probably share that with federal prosecutors. Most important, they suggested the committee will use the hearings to connect the dots between President Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power and the ensuing violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Who should be held accountable? The hearing showcased what the committee has already learned, rather than hosting the kinds of live, dramatic revelations about President Richard M. Nixon’s actions that came during the 51 days of the Watergate hearings. The committee showed a video montage of Jan. 6 events that was extremely raw — but carefully curated nevertheless. Such investigations typically seek to determine the facts of what happened, create an authoritative narrative about the scandal and assign political — even moral — accountability.

If it does not, the hearings will have been “a cruel tease,” one reader opines. Also: Gender terms; postpartum care; gun maker liability; moral injury.

This means greater funding and collaborative efforts across disciplines to get the essential help for many who continue to suffer from it. What we need is in-home postpartum care for all mothers and babies to get off to a good start and the time, with extended, paid maternity leave, to do it. There is no “village” to help American women care for their newborns. The subheadline, “It takes a village to care for a newborn,” is ironic. We give no recognition to moms for the accomplishment of giving birth, becoming mothers and caring for their helpless newborns. Erasing that identity in the name of equality or fairness does just the opposite. That said, most of the world population, including me, identifies as male or female, woman or man. Why are so many people unable or unwilling to see the monster for what he is? I am a liberal, but I find the use of phrases such as “pregnant people” a stretch too far. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Donald Trump was completely serious when he uttered these words. It would end the political distractions and severely embarrass Mr. Trump. And a conviction at trial is not a slam dunk. But nah, we’re not going to prosecute him.

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Monday's hearing would show how former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, knew he ...

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards was the “first law enforcement officer injured by rioters storming the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021,” according to the committee. The committee sought Stepien’s testimony about converting the election campaign to focus on “Stop the Steal” messaging and related fundraising, according to other witnesses. Audience members' moods abruptly shifted when a video chronicling the events of Jan. 6, 2021, played, many shifting in their seats and visibly on edge. But not all Trump loyalists – or family – went along with Trump's plans, the committee said. The first panel of witnesses Monday features Bill Stepien, Trump's former campaign manager, and Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor. Former President Donald Trump criticized Schmidt days after the election for his stance, calling him a RINO — Republican in name only — who was “being used big time by the Fake News Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the Election in Philadelphia.” Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a Jan. 2 call to “find” 11,780 votes he needed to beat Joe Biden in the state. "Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning. “He lied to his supporters and the country.” Stirewalt was let go after the controversial election call and Bill Sammon, managing editor of Fox’s Washington bureau, retired. White House counsel Pat Cipollone called the proposal “ridiculous” because Pak was already leaving, according to Donoghue. - 🎤Who is expected to testify?: Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor who helped call President Joe Biden’s win in Arizona,said Friday he will be testifying.

Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, citing a family emergency, canceled planned in-person testimony Monday before the House select committee ...

Why would members do that if they felt that their involvement in this plot to overturn the election was somehow appropriate?” Stepien is appearing under subpoena, so it’s an open question as to how forthcoming he will be as a witness. “We have direct testimony, some of which we’ll hear today, that people had conversations directly with the former president to tell him that he did not win,” Luria, a committee member, said in a CNN interview. This hearing will focus on the origins and evolution of President Donald Trump’s “big lie” and the way he knowingly spread that message to activate and galvanize his supporters to help him stay in power. “As he confronts losing, Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud. The party had sued the committee over a subpoena issued to Salesforce, the San Francisco-based vendor that holds sensitive financial and other data of the RNC. Trump lost the state to Joe Biden and criticized Schmidt publicly for not supporting him. Stepien was expected to appear under subpoena, so it was an open question as to how forthcoming he would be as a witness. Al Schmidt is a former city commissioner of Philadelphia who will testify Monday during the Jan. 6 committee hearings. He just huddled with committee lawyers in the hallway outside the hearing room as we all wait for the now-delayed hearing to start. Committee members view the hearings as an opportunity to offer a reality check to Americans about how completely norm-breaking Trump’s actions were. In the second in a series of June hearings, panel members said they will also explore how Trump’s “big lie” drove Republican fundraising appeals after Joe Biden won the election.

Two panels of witnesses will testify Monday, although the headliner witness, former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, will no longer appear "due to a ...

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Trump's campaign chief, Bill Stepien, canceled his testimony at the last minute and sent his lawyer instead.

And it was she who pressed to assemble a bipartisan team of former intelligence analysts and law enforcement specialists on the committee’s staff. She has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack, and her Republican colleagues for following his lead by spreading the lie of a stolen presidential election. “Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful president,” Ms. Cheney said. “We want to show how that positioning occurred, so that the public understands that some of those things in a democracy should never happen.” In an email, Jay Ostrich, a spokesman for Mr. Perry, who has declined to testify before the committee, called the assertion “a ludicrous and soulless lie.” It showed how Mr. Trump and his loyalists had used a calculated campaign of lies to bind his followers and build support for his attempt to stay in power, through extralegal means and violence. Officer Goodman is expected to testify about how some members of the mob that the Seefrieds had joined yelled at him after breaching the building and aggressively asked, “Where are the senators?” and “Where are the votes being counted?” With a handful of production staff, it is his job to sift through and edit down a voluminous amount of images from police body cams, hallway surveillance video and raw footage from a documentarian — hours and hours of recordings that captured the insurrection as it unfolded. One of the witnesses slated to testify on Monday is a former Fox News politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, who was fired by the network a year and a half ago. Since his ouster, Mr. Stirewalt has become an outspoken critic of his former employer and what he has described as an information bubble that is doing a disservice to Trump supporters. Mr. Stepien was present for key conversations about what the data showed about Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding in an effort to win swing states, beginning on election night. The House committee played a video of Mr. Stepien saying he didn’t think the campaign could declare victory on election night because “it was far too early to be making any calls like that.”

The anticipated testimony of former President Donald Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien before the House January 6 committee was unexpectedly upended ...

But Stepien's appearance shows that the January 6 committee isn't going to be relying solely on video presentations during the hearings this month. in early January, around the same time that Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to "find" enough votes for Trump to win. He is not testifying under a subpoena, his attorney, Edward Kang, told CNN. The hearing is the second of seven that the January 6 committee has planned for this month as it lays out a case putting Trump at the center of the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on January 6. Aides said that the hearing would show how Trump's team pursued legal challenges in court and lost those cases, and that Trump then chose to ignore the will of the courts and continued to try to overturn the election. House select committee aides said the hearing would scrutinize how Trump embraced false claims of fraud in the 2020 election and how he decided to declare victory in the hours after the election, even though he was told that the numbers didn't bear it out.

Donald Trump's former campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer appear at today's Jan. 6 committee hearing. Follow live coverage here.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot opened its hearing Monday counting Stepien as a key witness. Stepien abruptly backed out of appearing live Monday at the hearing, because his wife went into labor. WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien and other top aides testified Monday at the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack that they believed the 2020 presidential race was too close to call on Election Night, but Trump nevertheless declared himself the winner.

Live and recorded testimony in the second public hearing before the Jan. 6 panel focused on former President Donald Trump's role in perpetuating the lie ...

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People gather in a park outside of the U.S. Capitol to watch the Jan. 6 House committee investigation hearing on Thursday night. The panel will next meet on ...

And that’s the end of the line,” he said. “He tried to remain in office after the people had voted him out.” “I felt that after the election he didn’t seem to be listening.” None, he said, adding that winning the Powerball was more likely. Of all Trump’s allegations, Barr found those related to Dominion the most disturbing. The group said it used that data to track the movements of people in key swing states around the time of the 2020 election, alleging that the data shows thousands of people making stops at mail-in vote drop boxes. Dominion later sued Fox in a $1.6 billion defamation suit that is still pending. Much of the info you’re getting is false.” There’s lots of fraud going on here.” Donoghue said he repeatedly rejected those false claims. For the film, D’Souza worked with True The Vote, which claimed to have purchased geolocation data from various electronic devices. Former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt said he and his staff received general threats before Trump named him on Twitter as a RINO, or Republican in name only. Earlier, President Trump’s former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, talked about the hours and days around the 2020 election.

The panel has announced that former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer appear this morning because his wife went into labor.

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Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer appear before the House Jan. 6 committee Monday, removing a key witness as the panel seeks to show ...

House House House We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. It was also unclear how cooperative of a witness he would be. “Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning.

The second Jan. 6 hearing got underway Monday without Bill Stepien, former President Donald Trump's campaign manager, who could not attend due to a family ...

Monday’s hearing was delayed after Stepien pulled out of his scheduled testimony at the hearing due to his wife going into labor. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the hearing would show the 2020 election was not stolen. January 6 Committee Vice-Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said during the hearing Trump followed the advice of an “apparently inebriated” Giuliani to claim victory on Election Night. Bill Stepien, Trump’s former campaign manager, said in a recorded deposition he believed Giuliani had too much to drink, and Jason Miller, Trump’s campaign adviser, said Giuliani appeared “intoxicated.” Stepien and Miller testified they told Trump not to claim a presumptive victory and to wait until more votes were being counted, but in an address on election night played during the hearing, Trump said “Frankly, we did win this election.” Al Schmidt, a Republican former Philadelphia city commissioner who worked on the county’s board of elections and investigated claims of voter fraud, also testified there was no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania—despite Trump’s allegations that 8,000 “dead people” voted in the state. The House Select Committee investigating the riot at the Capitol used its second hearing on Monday to show how former President Donald Trump ignored advice from top aides and officials that his claims of a stolen election were false—with former Attorney General Bill Barr saying it was like playing “whack-a-mole” trying to investigate “silly” and “bogus” claims—and how the Trump campaign cashed in on spreading misinformation about the election results. Barr said he asked Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, “How long is he going to carry on with this stolen election stuff?” to which Barr said Meadows told him Trump was becoming more “reasonable” on the matter, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner added, “We’re working on it.”

The big theme on the second day was that former President Trump was told repeatedly — including by his own attorney general — that his “Big Lie” about a ...

According to the committee, that PAC sent $1 million to a charitable foundation run by Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, and another $1 million to a political group that is run by several of his former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. He expressed pride that his team was first to accurately call the Arizona results and said there was “zero” chance that Mr. Trump would have won that state. Mr. Trump chose, in the words of “Team Normal,” to listen to those spouting “crazy” arguments instead. Instead, he listened to Rudy Giuliani, who aides said was drunk that night, and was urging the president to claim victory and say the election was being stolen. It was also “the big rip-off.” Mr. Barr said that in the weeks after the election, he repeatedly told Mr. Trump “how crazy some of these allegations were.” In his testimony, Mr. Barr said he told the president repeatedly that his claims of fraud were unfounded, but that there was “never an indication of interest in what the actual facts are.” A veteran Republican operative, Mr. Stepien was among the campaign aides, lawyers, White House advisers and others who urged Mr. Trump to abandon his unfounded claims of fraud. But Mr. Barr’s testimony offered another possible explanation: that the president actually came to believe the lies he was telling. Mr. Stepien said in the video that he had urged the president not to declare victory prematurely, having already explained that Democratic votes were likely to be counted later in the night. Mr. Giuliani’s team was feeding the president’s paranoia and pushing him to back unsubstantiated and fanciful claims of ballot harvesting, voting machine tampering and more. But he made the fake claim on election night anyway, and hasn’t stopped since.

The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol detailed Monday how those around then-President Donald Trump told him he ...

Monday's hearing was the first indication of how the panel plans to use those records in its hearings. "But I did not know his level of toxic intoxication when he spoke with the President, for example." "And that he was going to go in a different direction." They showed video from depositions Giuliani and Powell juxtaposed with officials like Barr and Stepien saying the claims were simply nonsense. "We called them kind of my team and Rudy's team," Stepien said in deposition video played by the committee. The brief sent to Rosen and other top DOJ officials by Trump's personal assistant at the White House cited the same report on Michigan voting machine irregularities Barr had told Trump was "amateurish" and failed to include any supporting information. Clark drafted a "Proof of Concept memo" for overturning the 2020 election and sent it to top Justice Department officials on December 28, 2020, two weeks after Barr's resignation. During their December 2020 Oval Office confrontation, Barr said that Trump gave him a report that claimed "absolute proof" the Dominion voting machines had been rigged. who claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The Democratic-run committee has featured clips from Barr's deposition more than any other witness so far, and they interviewed more than 1,000 people as part of their yearlong investigation. Instead, the panel could pick and choose which deposition clips it played, and they focused like a laser on the most damaging material for Trump. And by just showing video depositions, the committee controls which soundbites are aired.

The audience watching the first prime-time hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was larger than ...

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Numerous witnesses indicated not only that Trump aides knew Trump had lost, but that some debunked his fraud claims in detail.

The committee also played clips of Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and campaign aide Jason Miller saying they advised against Trump declaring victory that night — as Trump ultimately did — because votes were still coming in and the outcome was indeed in doubt. She said he raised $250 million after the election, while pushing for donors to support something called his “Official Election Defense Fund.” We might never find that Trump knew the truth — Barr suggested that it’s possible the former president actually believed these far-fetched and widely debunked notions — but the fact that he was told in such detail is important. As the hearing progressed, the witnesses painted a picture of this man — one who was intoxicated on such an important night — essentially hijacking Trump’s campaign apparatus. “I mean, there’s no indication of fraud in Detroit. And I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bullshit.” He said he examined the allegations of vote “dumps” in Detroit on election night in such detail that he knew how many precincts there were in the city. Miller said Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated.” Former deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue also ran through a litany of allegations in significant detail, saying he informed Trump that there was nothing to them. And Monday’s added more to that record. “I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has … become detached from reality,’ ” Barr said. “I tried to, again, put this in perspective and to try to put it in very clear terms to the president,” Donoghue said. Barr says he thought he had brought this up with Trump as well.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol announced in a statement Tuesday that it was postponing its public hearing that was.

Lofgren on Tuesday reiterated comments made a day earlier by Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., that the committee would not make any criminal referrals. "Our investigation is ongoing and we will continue to gather all relevant information as we present facts, offer recommendations and, if warranted, make criminal referrals." Wednesday's hearing had been expected to focus on then-President Donald Trump's unsuccessful plan to replace Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was more supportive of Trump’s fraud claims. The next hearing will take place on Thursday instead. The three other hearings set for June have not been scheduled yet. WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol announced in a statement Tuesday that it was postponing its public hearing that was scheduled for 10 a.m. ET Wednesday.

"We're trying to give them a little room to do their technical work," Rep. Zoe Lofgren said.

The House Jan. 6 committee made its clearest attempt yet at Monday's hearing to establish potential criminal liability by people in former President Trump's inner circle. Who's testifying at the second Jan. 6 committee hearing - With Wednesday's hearing postponed, the next public hearing is scheduled for Thursday, the Jan. 6 committee said. State of play: Wednesday's hearing was intended to focus on the Department of Justice and former President Trump's efforts to use the department to challenge the results of the 2020 election. The Jan. 6 committee public hearing originally scheduled for Wednesday has been postponed to give the panel's video team more time to compile exhibits, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told MSNBC on Tuesday. Jan. 6 panel postpones Wednesday's hearing to give more time for "technical work"

And Americans think DOJ should bring legal action against officials who try to overturn an election.

Much would depend on the nature and scale of the weapons’ use. Villa most recently was a national politics reporter at BuzzFeed and is a Time alum. Should the government try to get prices down? States are submitting plans this summer to get money for the buildout from the bipartisan infrastructure law, but state officials warn that some of its requirements (especially having a station every 50 miles and not using rest stops) might not work for them. “If Roe is overturned, the emotional intensity of trips like this one will only increase, should anti-abortion legislatures experiment, as is expected, with laws that impose penalties on those who cross state lines to get procedures that their home states have declared illegal.” PULLOUT FALLOUT — As the U.S. starves the Taliban financially, Afghans are increasingly struggling under the strain of literal hunger, with each government pointing the finger at the other, WaPo’s Susannah George reports from Dezwari. The humanitarian calamity is putting millions of lives at risk. Gonzales will have “major repercussions for how other immigration policies can be challenged in federal court in the future,” CNN’s Tierney Sneed reports. “[W]hen I would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.” 2022 WATCH — HERSCHEL WALKER said at least thrice in recent years that he’d worked in law enforcement — as a police officer or an FBI agent — when he hadn’t actually, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Shannon McCaffrey reports. But it didn’t end up getting any candidates on the ballot, Axios’ Torey Van Oot reports. BILL STEPIEN, Trump’s final campaign manager, recalled RUDY GIULIANI telling the president on election night that he needed to declare victory before all the votes were counted because “they’re stealing it from us. What followed was an attempt to prove election fraud that did not exist.

During the second day of the January 6 hearings, former colleagues including Jason Miller and Jared Kushner said Rudy Giuliani was “definitely” inebriated ...

Pak said then–U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr asked him to look into Giuliani’s voter-fraud claims and he was “unable to find any evidence of fraud which affected the outcome of the election.” Despite claims that they knew Giuliani & Co. were pushing dangerous lies, or “bullshit,” as Barr memorably put it, none of them publicly sounded any alarms at the time. The video showed that while many members of Team Trump always knew Giuliani’s election claims were “nuts,” he stands by them to this day. “If you gave me the paper ballots, I could probably turn around each one of these states,” Giuliani said in a clip from his recent testimony. We need to go say that we won.’ And essentially that anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.” Senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien both recalled a meeting on Election Night in which Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, argued that it was time to declare victory though votes had yet to be tallied.

This hearing pulled back the curtain on what life was like on the Trump campaign and in the White House in the days following election night 2020. With taped ...

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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will try to prove that Donald Trump knew he lost the election, but continued to ...

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Trump's inner circle pushed back as he claimed the election was stolen. Here are the latest developments. WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump's ...

Officer Goodman is expected to testify about how some members of the mob that the Seefrieds had joined yelled at him after breaching the building and aggressively asked, “Where are the senators?” and “Where are the votes being counted?” Mr. Stirewalt was part of the team that made the call that President Biden had won Arizona, a decision that infuriated former President Donald J. Trump. Since his ouster, Mr. Stirewalt has become an outspoken critic of his former employer and what he has described as an information bubble that is doing a disservice to Trump supporters. He never let the public know that he felt Trump was “detached from reality” or doing a “disservice” to the country. The committee is doing a good job of showing that several of Trump’s advisers told him that he lost the election. He expressed pride that his team was first to accurately call the Arizona results and said there was “zero” chance that Mr. Trump would have won that state. According to the committee, that PAC sent $1 million to a charitable foundation run by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, and another $1 million to a political group run by several of his former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. Mr. Trump chose, in the words of “Team Normal,” to listen to those spouting “crazy” arguments instead. Instead, he listened to Rudy Giuliani, who aides said was drunk that night, and was urging the president to claim victory and say the election was being stolen. In his testimony, Mr. Barr said he told the president repeatedly that his claims of fraud were unfounded, but that there was “never an indication of interest in what the actual facts are.” Mr. Barr said that in the weeks after the election, he repeatedly told Mr. Trump “how crazy some of these allegations were.” A veteran Republican operative, Mr. Stepien was among the campaign aides, lawyers, White House advisers and others who urged Mr. Trump to abandon his unfounded claims of fraud.

WASHINGTON — Listening to Donald Trump spout outlandish claims of election fraud, Attorney General William Barr began to wonder if the 45th president of the ...

The committee is offering a richer account of what happened that day. After a brief delay, the committee regrouped and moved forward with the hearing using video-taped testimony from Stepien during his earlier deposition. Supporters were urged to donate to Trump’s “election defense fund” but the committee said it found no such committee or fund existed. The Jan. 6 panel said Save America funneled millions of dollars of contributions to Trump-friendly organizations and entities. The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans who are both vocal Trump critics. Basic questions about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 went unanswered during the trial. We need to go say that we won.’ And, essentially, that anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.” Miller, whose testimony was played in video by the committee, said that Giuliani was intoxicated. One big reason why Trump and his allies continued to push false election fraud claims long after the courts had ruled against Trump was to continue raising millions from fervent Trump supporters, committee members argued. Jason Miller, a Trump campaign official, told the committee that Giuliani said, “‘We won. Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, suggested to the president that he give a more guarded statement until it was clear who had won. Trump instead took an approach favored by his longtime confidant, Rudy Giuliani. The former New York City mayor was at the White House that night. The two were meeting privately on December 14, 2020, and Trump purported to have new evidence that Dominion voting machines were rigged, Barr testified.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is watching the House hearings on the lead-up to and day of Jan. 6, 2021 — as are the Justice Department lawyers ...

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Insurrection is no joke. But by highlighting the buffoonery of Giuliani, Trump and others, the committee underscored the absurdity of their claims.

And Ginsberg pointed to the almost laughable chasm between the Trump camp’s claims and the truth: Not only was the 2020 election not nearly as close as they claimed, of more than 60 cases that included more than 180 fraud claims, not one was found credible in a court of law. (In a deposition clip, he positioned himself and his allies as “Team Normal” in the effort to stop the “rigged election” nonsense spouted by Giuliani and company. They also showed that Trump and his cronies did so with the subtlety of the Keystone Kops. Testifying to the flimsiness of the “Stop the Steal” campaign, former lawyer for the Trump White House Eric Herschmann told the committee he confronted John Eastman, the attorney behind the election fraud strategy, the day after the Capitol riot. Instead, the committee highlighted the ludicrous culture inside the Oval Office and underscored the absurdity of the Big Lie. The televised hearing, helmed by Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), signaled a tonal shift from the violence and horror of the attack on the Capitol documented in Thursday’s emotional, prime-time premiere.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr was having a rollicking good time in his taped deposition that was played before the Jan. 6 committee.

Buried under Barr’s claims that everything that happened in the days after the November election was “crazy” is the fact that had these claims about election fraud been soberly implemented by “serious people” they would have been successful, and that if these “serious people” keep making it harder to vote because of imaginary election fraud, they will succeed next time. Words like “bullshit” and “crazy” are the tell: They are code for both “I had no responsibility to do anything at all” and “I’m here next time for the serious version of the same thing.” But just as Ginni Thomas’ alleged goofiness and artlessness doesn’t exculpate her for her efforts to subvert the presidential election, claims from people like Barr that this was all the result of some madcappery and hijinks distracts from the fact that it was also the result of Bill Barr, and others like him, who were deadly serious about implementing Trump’s worst ideas up until the minute they were not. We win!” Schmidt answered by explaining that, “on some level it feels almost silly to talk about a tweet.” But of course it isn’t silly to talk about tweets because Trump benefited from the presumption of silliness for four years and continues to do so. Barr waited to let us all know in part because this was all a bit of a joke, until after he was subpoenaed to testify before the committee. And recall also that the same Barr who says that he couldn’t get the president to “listen to advice” from any of his Cabinet secretaries resigned with a letter referencing “election integrity” without letting anyone know about what was either an existential threat to democracy or a 25th Amendment–worthy cognitive crisis in a sitting president (“ detached from reality,” said Barr of Trump).

Top advisers to then-President Donald Trump told him that his claims of widespread election fraud were unfounded and would not reverse his election loss, ...

Now it's for someone else to decide whether that's criminal or not," she told reporters following the Monday's hearing. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Richard Donoghue, the former No. 2 Justice Department official, said there were so many spurious claims that it was difficult to discredit them all. Instead, they said, Trump would acknowledge their findings and then just move onto the next unsubstantiated claim. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

At Fox News, there was little drama over the decision to project Joseph R. Biden the winner of Arizona. But the relationship between Trump and the network ...

Though Fox News coverage is typically favorable to conservative, pro-Trump points of view, that deference has never been adopted by the decision desk, which is a separate part of the news-gathering operation overseen by Mr. Mishkin, a polling expert who is also a registered Democrat. In the days after the election, Mr. Mishkin was unwavering in his defense of the call as Fox anchors pressed him. On the night of the election, the Fox News decision desk compared those surveys with another layer of data: actual precinct-level vote tallies that the A.P. was tracking. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, went straight to the top, calling Mr. Murdoch. The scene played out in part on the air as Fox talent commented about the complaints raining down on them from the Trump campaign. Some of Mr. Trump’s former aides testified that the Fox call shocked them but also undermined their confidence in his chances of victory. On the outside, it immediately provoked a fury with President Trump and his supporters, who maligned Fox News, the country’s most watched cable news channel and his longtime stalwart defender, as dishonest and disloyal. Mr. Stirewalt described the cautious, analytical approach they took to determining that Mr. Trump could not come from behind and overtake Mr. Biden in Arizona. And network executives have said the Murdochs were not involved. “And it was doing just what we wanted it to do.” Shortly before 11:20 p.m. on Nov. 3, 2020, Bill Sammon, the managing editor for Fox News in Washington, picked up the phone in the room where he and others had been reviewing election returns. To the people in the room with Mr. Sammon, the result was clear. Fox’s Arizona call blew a hole in that strategy. He clicked a box on his computer screen, and Arizona turned blue on the map that viewers saw at home.

The House committee investigating Jan. 6 used its second public hearing to establish that President Donald Trump knew his claims of election fraud were ...

That describes the majority of Republicans, to be sure, but not even an overwhelming one, if polling is to be believed, and it applies to no other American partisan affiliation. We did not know that Trump said, according to Cheney’s direct quotes, that Trump reacted to the chants of “hang Mike Pence” by saying, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea” and that Pence “deserves it.” We did not know the number of occasions in which White House Counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to resign along with his team, which Jared Kushner described as “ whining.” Republicans who continue to oppose an inquiry into that horrible day are reduced to shouting down the inquirers. Ah, the GOP will say, but what about the efforts by the Republican minority in the House to appoint pro-Trump Republicans to the committee? Unless Jordan was secretly deposing Trump administration officials, whose sworn testimony was presented for the first time to the public on June 9, he likely did not know the extent to which Trump was being regularly disabused of the notion that there was significant election fraud or that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was told to cover up the extent to which then-Vice President Mike Pence had simply assumed the powers of the presidency that the president himself had abdicated. The second Republican objection to these proceedings centered on the notion that this was a one-sided affair. As the trauma of the day’s events faded and Republican voters regrouped around the partisan imperative to absolve Trump of blame for any of it, a 2021 Morning Consult survey published about six months after the insurrection found that the rank-and-file GOP had begun convincing themselves of a series of fictions. It is, therefore, no surprise that this committee came under attack for its partisan makeup; that was the GOP’s preference. At that point, Republicans predisposed to attacking the committee shifted to insisting that this sober, unadorned inquest was too languid for prime time. The committee’s leaders alleged on Thursday night (and subsequently emphasized on Monday) that Trump acted with malice to incite a mob around claims of election fraud he had no reason to believe were true and, indeed, likely knew to be false. For the most part, Republicans who seek to undermine the salience of the committee’s proceedings or delegitimize the committee altogether have settled on three avenues of attack. One by one, administration officials and Republican election lawyers testified that the supposed irregularities Trump and his allies fixated on weren’t irregularities at all.

Monday's proceedings heard live and recorded testimony from those who were close to the former president around November 2020 revealing how they told him that ...

The Big Lie was also a big-rip off," Lofgren said. "It is now clear that Trump's advisers were telling him he lost and should stop saying the election was stolen. Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020 over Trump's false insistence the election was rigged, and he called the voter fraud claims "b******t" in his recently released memoirs. Barr also described some of the election conspiracy theories pushed by Trump as "b******t." Barr said he was most concerned about the "disturbing" claims the Dominion Voting Systems machines were rigged to swap votes from Trump to Biden as there was "zero basis" for the allegations. Elsewhere, former Attorney General William Barr said in recorded testimony that Trump "didn't seem to be listening" to anyone who tried to tell him that his claims of widespread voter fraud were wrong after the election. However, Trump refused to listen to what his former campaign manager Bill Stepien described as "Team Normal"—the group who were telling him not to declare himself the winner on Election Night—instead siding with "Team Crazy," which consisted of an "apparently inebriated" Rudy Giuliani, who insisted Trump push on with his false claims.

Other developments from Monday's Jan. 6 hearing: The committee said Trump knew mail ballots favored Biden but claimed victory against advice.

"The Trump campaign had a couple of basic problems. "I don't believe there is actually a fund called the Election Defense Fund," Hanna Allred, a former Trump campaign staff member, told the committee. The fact that his litigation continued anyway, she said, "makes more sense" when considering it was a way to raise money. "So not only was there the big lie, there was the big rip-off," Logren said. Giuliani told the committee he spoke to Trump "several times" that night. Advisers were also clear to Trump that he, in fact, lost the election. The committee played videos of some of Giuliani and Powell's wildest theories that have been disproven. “That seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud," Barr said. Instead, the committee said, Trump leaned on the advice of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to claim he won. Biden dominated votes cast by mail after Trump spent months attacking the practice. The committee argued he defrauded the public by raising millions of dollars off lies. He ignored the will of the voters.

The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is holding its second hearing of the month on Monday.

- Finally, the last two June hearings will show how “Trump summoned a violent mob and directed them, illegally, to march on the US Capitol” and “failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.” - The fifth hearing will provide “evidence that President Trump corruptly pressured state legislators and election officials to change election results,” including “details” about Trump’s call to Georgia officials urging them to “find” votes. - The third hearing on Wednesday will show how “Trump corruptly planned to replace the Attorney General of the United States so the US Justice Department would spread his false stolen election claims," Cheney said.

Both Cheney and committee chair Bennie Thompson peppered their statements with extensive primary evidence, including video testimony from top Trump ...

The Jan. 6 House panel held the second of seven hearings. The FDA considers whether to authorize the first COVID vaccines for children younger than 5.

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The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol has postponed its hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

"We're focused on the hearings in front of us, telling the full, complete story, as the vice chair laid out in her opening statement last week," Aguilar said. "We're going to move forward and have a Thursday hearing and then get ready for hearings next week as well," Aguilar said. Monday's hearing, the second of a series, prominently featured lengthy portions of former Attorney General William Barr's deposition with the committee

The hearing was set to detail how Trump allegedly pushed the DOJ to spread his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him.

"There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were." She has already named Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who allegedly tried to get Clark promoted. Perry has refused to testify before the committee. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is postponing its third hearing, which was scheduled on Wednesday and was expected to detail how former President Donald Trump allegedly pushed the Department of Justice to spread his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. On Monday, the committee released details that focused heavily on the wide array of election-fraud conspiracies that Trump and some of his allies seized on and spread widely to try to convince the public that the election was stolen. - The hearing was expected to detail how former President Donald Trump allegedly pressured the Department of Justice to spread his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him.