WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump has said the same thing over and over again, from his campaign team, data suppression mechanisms and a steady stream of lawyers, investigators and insiders: There was no electoral fraud that could have as a result of the 2020 presidential election.
But in the eight weeks since the defeat by Joe Biden, the defeated Trump publicly, privately and relentlessly promoted his false claims of rigged 2020 elections and intensified a grand plan to overturn Biden’s victory. When all else fails, Trump summoned thousands of supporters to Washington on January 6, 2021, where extremist groups led the deadly siege of the Capitol.
The scale and aggression of this system began to take shape in the inaugural hearing of the House that investigated 1/6. When the commission resumes Monday, it will delve deeper into its findings that Trump and his advisers knew early on that he had actually lost the election, but made a “huge effort” to spread false information to convince the public otherwise.
Biden spoke about the importance of the commission’s investigation into Friday’s statements in Los Angeles. “The uprising on January 6 was one of the darkest chapters in the history of our nation,” the president said, “a brutal attack on our democracy.”
The Americans, he said, must “understand what really happened and understand that the same forces that led to January 6 remain at work today.”
The House panel investigating the 1/6 attack on the Capitol is set to reveal next week more details and testimony about his assessment that Trump was well aware of his election defeat. With 1,000 interviews and 140,000 documents during the year-long investigation, he will describe how Trump was repeatedly told that there were no secret ballots, ballot machines or support for his claims. However, Trump refused to accept defeat and his desperate attempt to cling to the presidency resulted in the most violent internal attack on the Capitol in history.
“Over the months, Donald Trump has overseen and coordinated a complex seven-party plan to overthrow the presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,” said Liz Cheney, a Romanian lawmaker, at Thursday night’s hearing. “Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States,” he said.
On Wednesday, the panel will hear testimony from top officials in the Trump-era Justice Department – incumbent Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donongh’s deputy chief executive, and Stephen Engel, a former deputy secretary of state. who is familiar with the situation and was given anonymity to discuss their appearances.
The testimony of the three former Justice Department officials is expected to focus on chaos in the last weeks of the administration, when Trump openly weighed the idea of replacing Rosen with a junior official, Jeffrey Clark, who was tried in court. the president’s false allegations of voter fraud.
The situation came to a head during a long meeting at the White House on January 3, 2021, attended by Rosen, Donoghue, Engel and Clark, when senior Justice Department and White House lawyers told Trump they would resign if he went ahead with his plan to replace Rosen. The president eventually left Rosen to complete his administration as deputy attorney general.
Thursday will focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count the January 6 ballot, a plan proposed to the White House by an outside lawyer, John Eastman. During the uprising, rioters roamed the Capitol Hall shouting “Hang Mike Pence” when the vice president rejected Trump’s plan to overthrow the 2020 election.
“I would like to see the truth come to light,” said Ken Sicknik, whose brother, Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick, died after a stroke while defending the Capitol, he told CNN on Friday.
He said, while the family received countless condolences after the death of his brother, including from the vice president, “not a tweet, not a note, not a card, nothing” from Trump. “Because he knows it is the cause of everything.”
The hearings are intended to be the public record of the attack and the circumstances surrounding it and could lead to referrals for prosecution. With Trump considering another White House nomination, the commission’s final report aims to explain the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814.
Trump responded to his social media site on Friday by denouncing “WITCH HUNT!” although he fully admitted it he refused to accept defeat.
“Many people have spoken to me about the election results, both for and against, but I have never wavered,” he said, promoting his false claim of a stolen election.
Trump said that January 6 “represents the largest movement in the history of our country.”
In the first hour, the panel initially blamed Trump for the uprising, saying the attack was not spontaneous but a “coup attempt” led by Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.
With a new 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and stunning testimony from Trump’s inner circle, the commission provided new details about a threatened democracy.
«Jan. “6 was the culmination of a coup attempt,” said Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. “The violence was not accidental.”
In an unprecedented video clip, the commission played a remark by former Attorney General Bill Barr, who testified that he told Trump that the allegations of rigged elections were “bull -“.
In another clip, the former president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified to the committee that she respected Barr’s view that there was no electoral fraud. “I accepted what he said.”
Others showed extremist leaders Oath Keepers and Proud Boys preparing to invade the Capitol to defend Trump. One by one, the committee was told that they had come to the Capitol because Trump had asked them to.
In a discouraging testimony, U.S. Capitol Officer Caroline Edwards told the panel that she slipped into the blood of others as rioters pushed her into the Capitol. He suffered brain injuries in hand-to-hand combat.
“It was a massacre. “It was chaos,” he said.
The riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as crowds of Trump supporters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, stormed the Capitol. At least nine people were killed during or after the uprising, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.
Court documents show that members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been discussing since November the need to fight to keep Trump in power. Leaders of both groups and some members have since been charged with rare charges of insurgency.
The Ministry of Justice has arrested and charged more than 800 people with violence that day, the largest net in its history.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in Los Angeles on Friday that the commission’s purpose is to “seek the truth” to ensure that “no one will ever think again that it is okay to stage a coup, to attack the United States Capitol. , an attack on the democracy of our country “.
Associated Press authors Mary Clare Jalonick, Farnoush Amir, Kevin Freking, Michael Balsamo, Jill Colvin, Darlene Superville and Zeke Miller in Washington and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.
