WASHINGTON (AP) — Through seven hearings this summer, the House Jan. 6 panel has maintained two consistent themes: Donald Trump’s stubborn resistance to advisers who told him that Joe Biden won the election, and the former president’s role in inciting the Capitol insurrection.
Each hearing has had a separate focus — this week’s was domestic extremism — but the nine-member panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack has not strayed from its central findings: that Trump made historically unprecedented moves to overturn his 2020 election defeat and then turned a blind eye as his supporters beat police and broke into the Capitol to defend him.
A rundown of what we’ve learned so far from the public hearings of the select Jan. 6 committee — and what’s next:
TRUMP IGNORED HIS ADVISERS
At every hearing, the panel has played video testimony from White House aides and Trump associates who said they told Trump that Biden won the election and advised him to drop his false claims of widespread voter fraud. Many were emboldened by former Attorney General Bill Barr’s declaration in early December 2020 that there was no evidence of mass fraud that could change the election outcome.
Among those aides was Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, who told the panel that she accepted Barr’s conclusions. Eugene Scalia, Trump’s labor secretary, said he told Trump it was time for him to say Biden had won after states certified the electors on Dec. 14. Barr, who told Trump to his face that the fraud claims were “b——-t,” said he feared the president was becoming “detached from reality.”
But Trump ignored those advisers. Instead he listened to a small group of allies outside the White House who were pushing the fraud claims, sometimes in fantastical ways.
At Tuesday’s hearing, video testimony from White House lawyers described theories pushed by lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell that they thought were “nuts,” including compromised voting machines and thermostats. A Dec. 18 meeting in the White House lasted for six hours and devolved into “screaming” and profanity, several participants said, as the two sides clashed over Trump’s next steps.
Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone told the committee in a videotaped interview that the lawyers kept asking Powell and Giuliani for evidence, but never received any good answers.
THE PRESIDENT’S CALLS TO ACTION
Rebuffed by many of those closest to him, Trump turned toward a much wider audience on social media. Hours after the Dec. 18 meeting, he tweeted that his supporters should come to a “big protest” on Jan. 6, when Congress would certify Biden’s win.
Trump tweeted: “Be there, will be wild!”
The committee showed a montage of videos and social media posts after the tweet as supporters reacted and planned trips to Washington, some of them using violent rhetoric and talking about killing police officers. Far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers mobilized their members to come to Washington and protest, and members of those groups descended on the Capitol before Trump had even finished his fiery speech outside the White House that morning.
At a hearing last month, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump knew that some of his supporters gathered for the event were armed because they had been turned away at security checkpoints. But she quoted Trump as directing his staff, in profane terms, to take away the metal-detecting magnetometers if their presence meant fewer people would be at the rally. He then took the stage and urged the entire crowd to march to the Capitol.
Stephen Ayres, who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and pleaded guilty last month to a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, testified in person at Tuesday’s hearing. He talked about how he believed Trump’s lies as they were amplified on social media, and said he came to Washington at the behest of his president.
