The January 6 riot: When Donald Trump and his Allies fought to overturn the 2020 election, and how he and his allies did it
Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at the Ivy League school. He is the author and editor of 24 books. Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. His views are not reflected in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
The committee also revealed evidence of the extensive contact between Trump’s allies, particularly Roger Stone, and militant right-wing extremist groups, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. There had been extensive intelligence and Secret Service warnings about the serious threat of violence against the Capitol.
The committee is bound to ask answers from the man who started it all. We can protect the republic now because every American is entitled to the answers.
When they saw little sign of help on the way, they all exploded. Schumer demanded that the Attorney General tell the President to tell them to leave the Capitol. The legislative leaders’ frantic efforts to restore peace were in marked contrast to Trump’s failure to take action as he watched the riot unfold from the confines of the West Wing of the White House.
In public hearings during the past four months, the bipartisan panel tried to reveal who was responsible for the events of that day.
Compared to the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974, one of the most distinctive parts of Trumps campaign to overturn the 2020 election is that so much of it happened in broad daylight.
The committee provided a flurry of testimony from figures such as Alyssa Farah Griffin, who headed White House strategic communications, confirming that Trump knew he lost. He didn’t care at all. He wanted to hold on to power.
Yet the committee managed to fill out the story in very important ways, providing shocking evidence and details as to how the events of those months were even more dangerous than we understood at the time.
Intentionality: The committee demonstrated that January 6 was not some sort of one-off, unintended day of chaos where events unexpectedly spun out of control. It was done ahead of time.
In the nearly 850-page investigation report, which was based on a year-and-a-half investigation and 1,000-plus interviews, there is allegations that Trump may have over-saw an effort to place fake slates of electors in seven states that he lost.
Steve Bannon told a group of associates that the former president was going to declare victory, but they didn’t know it. “If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit,” Bannon predicted.
When William Barr, the attorney general, told Trump that the fraud claims were “bullshit,” the president and his inner group went ahead with their plans.
On the day of the “Stop the Steal” rally, January 6, 2021, Trump knew that the protesters were armed and dangerous but did nothing to stop them. Indeed, he wanted to go to Capitol Hill but was only stopped because a Secret Service agent wouldn’t allow him to do so. The former president even lunged at a Secret Service agent and tried to steer the wheel of the car when he was told he couldn’t go, according to former aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Trump latched onto Eastman’s theories that incorrectly claimed Pence could overturn the election, and launched a pressure campaign against Pence in the days leading up to January 6. When the electoral vote was certified on January 6th, Trump attempted to persuade Pence to let it go, despite being present at a meeting with him on January 4th.
Continuum: January 6 was just one piece of a much larger story. It would be better to call the committee January 6 because it is supposed to investigate the campaign to overturn the 2020 election. This reframing is essential to understanding the months between November 2020 and January 2021.
The Events of January 6, 2016: When Donald Trump and his Inner Circle Mettened to Congress to Overturn Elections and Overturning Election Results in Key States
In an effort to overturn election results in key states, Trump and his inner circle targeted election officials in “at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation,” between Election Day and the January 6 attack, according to the report.
Throughout these events, we have learned, Trump understood exactly what was happening. He was told many times about how he was making claims that were untrue and warned of the dangers he was taking. Lawyers such as Barr and conservative media figures who supported him were privately lobbying him to stop.
On January 6, Trump ignored many warnings of violence. He wanted to take the troops to the capitol. As the attacks against Congress unfolded and as his allies pleaded for him to call off the troops, Jamie Raskin reminded viewers that he sat and didn’t do anything. It wasn’t that Trump didn’t do anything on January 6; it was that he didn’t want to. “Can you believe this?” Pelosi was saying something to Thompson.
The committee wanted to make clear in Thursday’s hearing that the danger is not over in two years. “There remains a clear and present danger to our electoral system and to democratic institutions,” Raskin said, “So, that is something that will come through in our final hearing. This is not ancient history we’re talking about; this is a continuing threat.” That continued threat exists on many levels. The rhetoric of election denialism has taken hold among many of Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.
Republicans who subscribe to this agenda are also running for several key offices, ranging from gubernatorial positions to secretaries of state in key states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona, all of whom will play a key role in overseeing future elections. And, finally, the former president remains the top contender for the Republican nomination in 2024.
Cheney asked why Americans should assume that those institutions won’t fall if the right people were in the position of power next time. The story of January 6 was a group of officials, many of whom were Republicans, who didn’t agree with the scheme. She reminded the nation that our institutions “only hold when men and women of good faith” make sure that they are strong regardless of the political consequences.
Cheney said the committee is considering making criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but it will be up to prosecutors to decide what, if anything, will result. We will find out if Congress can complete work on reforms, such as the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, that renders some of the mechanisms Trump was counting on incapable of doing damage in the future. We will make sure that voters send a clear signal to Washington that messing with democracy will not be allowed in the election of the president in 2024. January 6 has not been an issue in the campaigns so far.
The committee successfully unpacked the dark days that followed the 2020 election. They have been exposed in clear detail right in front of our eyes. The biggest mystery is if we will close our eyes and just move forward without demanding accountability, justice and reform.
Since everything about Trump’s political career has been unprecedented, it’s hardly surprising that his political reemergence is posing new questions with the potential to further challenge and damage the country’s political institutions.
Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.
Trump has not previously been in this location on the political scene. Presidents fade into history fairly quickly. But it is a testament to the firm hold he maintains over much of the GOP that he’s still a key player nearly two years after losing reelection. And while there is growing talk about whether his thicket of legal and political controversies could convince some GOP primary voters it’s time to move on, Trump still seems to have plenty of juice.
Those controversies also show that given the open legal and political loops involving the ex-President, a potential 2024 presidential campaign rooted in his claims of political persecution could create even more upheaval than his four years in office.
And while fierce differences are emerging between Democrats and Republicans over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime in the 2022 midterms – while concerns about democracy often rank lower for voters – there is every chance the coming political period revolves mostly around the ex-President’s past and future.
Trump is, for instance, now locked in a subpoena showdown with the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. The grand jury is being asked to determine if the ex-President should be charged over the mob riot.
The Trump Organization in New York: The Ex-President’s Tax Fraud, Grand Thefty, and “Fast Particles”
In Arizona, one of the ex-President’s favorite candidates, GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake – a serial spreader of voter fraud falsehoods – is again raising doubts about the election system. “I’m afraid that it probably is not going to be completely fair,” Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday.
There’s a rising prospect next month’s election will install a Republican majority in the House that will effectively mean a return of Trumpism to political power given the hold the ex-President maintains over the House GOP. Some leading “Make America Great Again” Republicans are already speaking of a possible drive to impeach Biden and have already signaled they will use their powers to investigate to rough up Biden for a possible clash with Trump in 2024.
The Republicans are likely to have an expanded presence in Washington after the elections. If more than one of the Trump endorsed candidates loses their races in two weeks it’s a question about whether they’ll accept the results.
On Monday, the Trump Organization’s tax fraud and grand theft trial begins in New York. The ex-President hasn’t been personally charged but the trial could impact his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being persecuted for political reasons that could inject yet another contentious element into election season. A $250 million civil suit has been filed against Donald Trump, three of his children and the Trump Organization by the New York Attorney General, who claims they engaged in tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves for years.
Democrats want to get Trump back in the public eye. Some campaigns tried to scare suburban voters by telling them pro- Trump candidates are a danger to democracy, even though President Biden said that MAGA followers were fascists.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/politics/donald-trump-circus-analysis/index.html
The National Committee on Investigations of a Democratic Democrat Candidate in the November 2016 Seiberg-Witten Relay Campaign
Widespread inflation and higher gasoline prices are the most important issue before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party with power in Washington.
The ex President said at the Texas rally that he will most likely have to make a White House bid again.
“It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves,” Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
This is not going to be his first debate against Joe Biden, and the circus and the food fight that happened after that. This is a very serious set of issues.
The committee has taken depositions behind closed doors and used testimony in its presentations. Its most sympathetic witnesses have shown up in person. While this has helped create a powerful narrative that has painted a picture of shocking derelictions of duty by Trump on January 6, it has also deprived viewers of seeing witnesses under cross examination. It is difficult to judge whether the committee’s case would hold up in a court of law.
The prospect of video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is likely to be unappealing to the former President because it would be harder for him to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony might be used.
This could all become academic anyway. Given the possibility of a Trump legal challenge to the subpoena, the issue could drag on for months and become moot since a possible new Republican House majority would likely sweep the January 6 committee away as one of its first acts.
The national interest in implementing the law to its full extent or the consequences of prosecuting a former commander in chief in a fractious political atmosphere would be at stake if there was evidence that a crime was committed.
It would cause a huge uproar if the ex-president were charged with running for a second White House term. But sparing him from accountability if there’s evidence of a crime would send a damaging signal to future presidents with strongman instincts.
The recommendation is among the conclusions of the panel’s final report, a comprehensive overview of the bipartisan panel’s findings on how Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, released late Thursday evening.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said on Monday that he has “every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a road map to justice, and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law will use the information we’ve provided to aid in their work.”
Special counsel Jack Smith is leading the Justice Department’s investigations related to Trump, including both his post-election actions and classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this year.
There were 68 meetings, attempted or connected phone calls, or text messages, aimed at state or local officials, as well as 125 social media posts by Trump or senior aides targeting state officials.
The report says that Trump tried to get to officials in states he lost but that had GOP-led legislatures. He lost all of those states.
For example, during a January 2, 2021, call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the then-president went through a “litany of false election-fraud claims” and then asked Raffensperger to deliver him a second term by “finding” just enough votes to ensure victory, according to the report.
The original architect of the legally questionable fake electors plan is a little known pro-Trump attorney, Kenneth Chesebro.
Eastman emailed Trump’s assistant, Molly Michael, at 1:32 p.m., according to the committee. Is the President available for a quick call at some point today? Just want to update him on our overall strategic thinking.”
The Joint Session of Congress on a Case Study of the 2016 Trump Using the 14th Amendment as a Preliminary Report
The section of the Constitution that states a person can’t be in office if they have taken an oath to support the US constitution but have engaged in insurrection or been given shelter by the constitution’s enemies is the focus of the panel. The former president and other people have been referred to the Department of Justice for their actions.
It calls on congressional committees of jurisdiction to create a “formal mechanism” for evaluating whether those individuals violate that section of the 14th Amendment should be barred from future federal or state office.
In addition to criminal referrals, the select committee is calling for lawyers involved in the efforts to overturn the election to be held accountable.
The panel writes that there are attorneys in the report who have conflicts of interests and that they should be evaluated by the courts and the bar for their conduct.
The report calls on Congress to amend statutes to deter individuals from trying to obstruct, influence, or impede the Joint Session of Congress that certifies election results. It calls for statutes of federal penalties for certain types of threats against election workers to be strengthened.
The panel was able to get more than 1,000 witnesses to testify, but it was still hard to get everyone to speak to it. The report states that the House should use a cause of action to enforce its subpoenas in federal court.
The panel wants congress to make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election by updating the Electoral Count Act.
There are criminal statutes that the House committee says were violated in the Trump plot and there is evidence that could lead to criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
Over the past two weeks, the committee has issued its final report, more than 800 pages long, and released thousands of pages of witness interview transcripts and other material. Besides the recommendation that the Justice Department charge Trump with felony offenses, the new material adds detail to the story told in the hearings. There are new revelations about pressure brought to bear on Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness, and the fact that Trump tried to trademark the phrase “rigged election”.
The panel states that it has the evidence to refer the obstruction charge against him, as well as naming him as a co-conspirator in other criminal activity.
Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, sent emails in the run up to the 2020 presidential election stating that Trump should declare victory regardless of the outcome.
It notes that Trump’s top allies, including those who testified before the committee, acknowledged they found no proof to back up the former president’s claims.
The fact that even Rudolph Giuliani and his legal team acknowledged they had no proof of election fraud in the election made them admit that they couldn’t change the result.
The investigators describe how the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee were able to raise more than $250 million because of their false claims of a stolen election.
The RNC made changes to fundraising copy that appeared to protect it from legal exposure, despite knowing that President Donald Trump was not a real winner in the election.
The committee describes, based on interview with Trump campaign officials, that much of the material in the fundraising emails was based on messages said by Trump – but were not checked for accuracy before being used to ask for donations.
Trump campaign’s deputy director of communications and research Zach Parkinson told investigators that reviews for accuracy were limited to “questions concerning items such as time and location.”
Interviews done by the committee show that RNC lawyers didn’t like the termrigged to be used. The panel obtained several examples of fundraising appeals that were toned down to be accurate and less inflammatory.
According to the final report, the White House communications director informed the committee that Donald Trump laughed at one of his election lawyer’s claims about foreign powers interfering in the election.
During the press conference, Powell falsely claimed, among other things, that widely used voting machines from the election technology company Dominion Voting Systems featured software created “at the direction” of deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to swing his own election results, and that the company has ties to the Clinton Foundation and George Soros.
The President silenced his phone and laughed at Powell as he heard her speak, telling the others in the room that it sounds crazy. the report says.
The committee lays out Trump’s failure to act as the riot unfolded, noting that as he watched the riot on television, he made no calls for security assistance and resisted efforts from staffers asking him to call off his supporters.
During the day, Donald Trump didn’t have contact with a single top national security official. Not at the Pentagon, nor at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the D.C. Mayor’s office,” the committee writes. President Trump did not attempt to reach out to his own Vice President to make sure that he was safe, as Vice President Pence has confirmed.
Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee he had this reaction to Trump, “You know, you’re the Commander in Chief. There is an assault happening on the Capitol of the United States. And there’s nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?”
The committee believes President Trump ordered the White House photographer not to take pictures of him for the rest of the day.
The House Select Committee on the January 6, 2016 Campaign: When Donald Trump and his White House Adviser, Mark Meadows, met at Congress, and she talked with Pence
The report states that Brad Parscale, the campaign manager for Donald Trump, told the rally organizers that he felt bad helping him win.
Trump’s sentiments during his last known phone call on the night of January 6 was “wow, can you believe this sh*t?” The January 6 committee heard from a former White House aide.
The select committee was told by Trump’s senior White House adviser that her father was not surprised by the attack on the Capitol.
She could not provide a single instance when pressed by investigators of the president discussing if or not he did the right thing on January 6.
The House select committee has dropped a steady stream of transcript releases in recent days, following the report’s release.
The Select Committee was given over 6,600 pages of email records and about 2,000 text messages by MarkMeadows, Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff.
The committee also hoped to ask Meadows about certain passages in his book, specific text message exchanges and his outreach to the Justice Department “encouraging investigations of suspected voter fraud.” The committee wanted to know if the National Guard would be deployed on January 6, according to the January 5th email from Mr. Meadows that he indicated would protect pro- Trump people.
The committee held depositions of former Trump aide Dan Scavino, and other people who worked in the White House. The brief transcripts of those meetings document the failure of the witnesses to appear and communications the committee had with the witnesses or their representatives.
When asked if she and Bannon talked about bringing people back to Washington, DC, even after January 6, Preate said, “I don’t recall that” and it was “not my deal.” Preate thinks Trump lost the election.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told the committee that the former president called her on January 1, 2021, and asked her about her relationship with then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“I do have a recollection of him asking me what my relationship was with the Vice President, and I said I didn’t know him very well,” McDaniel told the select committee, according to a transcript.
During its hearings over the summer, it was revealed that Trump spoke with her directly in December to tell her about a group of states that would submit alternate slates of electors, but the full transcript reveals more about what the RNC told her.
In the lead up to January 6, she testified she did not know that alternate slates of electors were being considered if legal challenges changed the results of the election. She added she was not privy to a lot of those discussions and that she was going through ankle surgery around the time of the Capitol attack.
As for fundraising emails from the RNC about the 2020 election, McDaniel said the RNC worked closely with Clark but that once Giuliani took over Trump’s legal efforts, he “was doing his own thing and didn’t really reach out to the RNC.”
Morgan told the House committee the ask was made via an associate of Giuliani’s, Maria Ryan, and that it was for $20,000 per day. He declined to give more details about the campaign’s response to the request.
Matthew Morgan, who was general counsel for former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, described to the committee how the campaign handled requests by Giuliani and his team – which took over the campaign’s litigation strategy in mid-November 2020 – to bring on outside attorneys and firms.
According to a transcript of an interview that was made public on Sunday, Piers Morgan stated that Rudy Giuliani asked through a surrogate what was seen as a large amount of compensation.
“And when I presented this to (Trump deputy campaign manager) Justin Clark, Justin Clark didn’t think that was a number the campaign was willing to pay and I relied on then Justin to tell me if we could do such an engagement letter and then it never materialized.”
Trump White House aides offered conflicting accounts of how the former president reacted when he learned he would not be taken to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
When Engel returned to the White House after Trump’s January 6 speech, he stopped by the office shared by former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato and William “Beau” Harrison, the special assistant to the president for operations.
We were brought to attention that the President asked where I was going. I have to decide if I am going to the White House. In an August 2022 interview, Harrison told investigators that they were going back to the White House.
“And at that point I have a specific memory of Bobby telling both Tony and myself, as we were in the room, no one else was in the room, that the President almost kind of shrugged it off,” Harrison told the committee. He just moved on.
Harrison told congressional investigators he had never heard of a heated argument in the vehicle until he saw Hutchinson’s testimony on television. If something like that had happened, I would have heard about it and would have known about it.
When Hutchinson testified, Harrison got a call from Ornato. Ornato said, essentially, “Can you believe this?” and “Where is this story even coming from,” according to Harrison’s committee transcript.
The committee took some questions about how the legal questions that shaped the theories he promoted after the 2020 election were learned from him. He wouldn’t say where he was on December 16, 2020 or January 6, 2021, even though an email suggested he was in Washington, DC, on that day.
He would not say if he was the Kenneth Chesebro listed on some emails that the committee wanted to question him about.
Report from Luke Broadwater: A New Perspective on the Capitol Report on the January 6, 2020 U.S. Capitol Attack and Donald Trump’s Attempt to Overturn the Election
“I think I would take the Fifth in terms of authenticating a document that is related to the subject matter as to which I’m taking the Fifth,” he said.
To take stock of the committee’s work and consider what lies ahead, we turn to Luke Broadwater, who covers Congress for The New York Times. He was in the Capitol when the assault took place and was covering the investigation into Trump’s efforts to reverse the result of the election. He wrote the introduction to the edition of the January 6 report, published by Twelve Books, which includes reporting, analysis and visuals from The New York Times. Before Luke Broadwater joined the Times, he spent a decade at The Baltimore Sun, where he was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and a George Polk Award for political reporting.
DAVIES: This is new. Terry Gross is in for Dave Davies. The second anniversary of the assault on the U.S. Capitol is tomorrow and it was the attempt by Donald Trump’s supporters to stop Joe Biden from winning the 2020 presidential election. We’re speaking with New York Times congressional correspondent Luke Broadwater, who was at the Capitol that day and has covered the investigations into the attack and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. The congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack recently wrapped up its work, releasing a lengthy report and thousands of pages of witness interview transcripts and other material.
DAVIES: I’ve ever seen congressional hearings where the committee member said something and then read from a book, but it was pretty much scripted, and it was really done in front of a crowd. Was that James Goldston’s, the ABC News guy’s decision? What did the members think about that idea?
BROADWATER: They posted a lot of stuff on their website, you know, transcripts, text messages, emails. And they’ve sent this all to the Government Printing Office and also to the National Archives. There was a concern on the committee’s part that once Republicans took over, they could just delete all their files and shut down their website. The archives can’t be destroyed by the other party in Congress because they are in the hands of the archives. That said, Republicans have asked already asked for everything to be turned over to them. They want to go through the evidence, see whether there is any wrongdoing on the part of the committee. They’ve pledged to investigate the investigators.
I mean, you know, things like Josh Hawley running from the mob, or the colorful language used by some of the Trump attorneys, is something that people think of when they think of how close the mob came to Mike Pence. These are all things that they were learning through this process and then flagging – they called them hot docs – and then sending them to James Goldston and getting them into the scripts and then eventually out to the viewing public. So it was very much an intense scramble. We talked to some investigators who didn’t sleep for a few days but stayed up all night to pull these hearings off, which they said made a huge impact on the public.
You know, your normal congressional hearing can stretch all day. Hardly anyone watches it. It’s a hot mess. It’s Republicans fighting with Democrat, Democrats fighting with Republicans. Not much is accomplished. And the public gets bored and changes the channel. It was almost a 10-part documentary series, but they were able to keep the public attention and the network buys in to showing them.
They used to call themDAVIES: Right. Within a few days, the committee would release a number of new interview transcripts. Do you think there was new information in all of this?
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147073087/how-the-jan-6-committee-used-tv-tactics-and-dark-humor-in-its-case-against-trump
The year 2020 election: Donald Trump, the Apprentice and the media: how the jan-6 committee used television tactics and dark humor in its case against trump
What medium is Donald Trump most familiar with? It’s television, right? His career was built on television. And they were able to use that very medium against him and damage him considerably in the minds of the electorate and, in fact, damaged many of his supporters and anyone who embraced the so-called big lie about the election. They were tremendously damaged at the ballot box in November. They turned the tide by using their own medium against him because it was a clean narrative and because he was the master of “The Apprentice”.
The only scenario in which that could happen was due to the Republicans boycotting the committee, and pulling their support. Had they been present, they would have disrupted the meetings. They didn’t have clean narratives on television. The hearings were able to be carried out because they didn’t participate.
And I talked with some of the committee about this. I wondered if this was just part of the deal to do this with Hawley. And they thought it wasn’t and – because they thought it actually hit on a bigger point, and that was the hypocrisy of the Republicans who engaged in the spreading of the lies about the 2020 election, that some of the Republicans who promoted this stuff, you know, fired up this crowd. They got people really angry, believing a lot of nonsense. When the angry crowd burst in the Capitol, they were running in fear just as everyone else was, so to speak.
It is funny in the moment, but there’s a bigger point and a more serious point and that shows this hypocrisy. The truth about what happened shows that these lies result in violence. They result in attacks on democracy. That’s what they wanted to show. And so they didn’t feel it was gratuitous, which was my initial reaction to it.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147073087/how-the-jan-6-committee-used-tv-tactics-and-dark-humor-in-its-case-against-trump
What the committee had to do on January 6: Getting involved, getting involved and making the report? DAVIES: Where did the committee go?
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We’re talking with a man. He works for The New York Times. We’ll talk more after the break. This is not a rerun.
But they all saw what was happening with Liz Cheney, that she had drawn this line in the sand against Donald Trump and what he stood for on January 6, and that she was willing to stop at almost nothing to hold him accountable. If they had bipartisan leadership, she would be useful to the committee, which would really vindicate the argument that this was a partisan committee just run by Democrats. And Liz Cheney really took her vice chairman role and ran with it. She quickly became the driving force of the investigation and the most aggressive member of the committee.
They said, “DAVIES:” Right. It’s not abundant in office space in the Capitol so they gave her this little space. Where did they put her to work?
DAVIES: Right. And most of the witnesses, as it turned out, were Republicans talking about all this. And I assume that had something to do with Liz Cheney and her credibility to get them involved.
Some of the reports they felt were useful but not part of the larger narrative they were building were interesting. They were trying to keep the 850-some page report readable without trying to publish a 2,000-page report or something. So a lot of stuff did end up getting cut, didn’t make the final cut. And that did anger a lot of the staff who felt like they had spent, you know, a year of their life interviewing dozens and dozens of witnesses and writing this whole chapter of a report that, you know, didn’t finally make the final cut. The people were very frustrated by that. But, you know, at the end of the day, there were tough decisions that had to be made about what made the final report and what didn’t.
Broadwater: Oh, absolutely. I think most people, prior to the committee’s work, when they thought of January 6, they thought of a single day. They thought of, you know, the officers who were injured and the mob storming the Capitol. I think what the committee did was to say that January 6 was the culmination of a long build-up. You know, I don’t know how many people knew about what we now call the false elector scheme or the intense pressure campaign within the Justice Department to overturn the election, or just exactly what was going on between Donald Trump and Mike Pence as the president tried to convince Pence to go along with overturning the election, or exactly what was endured in all these different states by different election officials.
The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have more information about how the attack was coordinated. You know, I think that was actually more of the Justice Department’s doing than the committee, actually. But the – you know, so we’ve learned a lot more, both with the committee’s investigation and the Justice Department’s investigation.
DAVIES: I have to say that’s an interesting part of the report to read because you see how many legislators try to get back into the legislature in certain key states to get a new slate of electors. And what was striking to me when I looked at that was how many times these state senators and representatives and others refused to return Rudy Giuliani’s calls and then, in some cases, refused to return the president’s calls and, in so many cases, told Giuliani and the president, sorry, I can’t do that. We have our own rules. We got our own little state constitutions.
BROADWATER: Yeah. In retrospect, there are two ways to look at January 6. What a bad day for the country when the Trump campaign attempted to stop the election and the president himself did not care about the outcome. The other thing that’s, I think, a bit more positive is looking at the actions of those state and local officials, just what you said. And many of them are Republicans – right? – because they were going to Republicans ’cause they thought they would be sympathetic to them. And Republican after Republican, state and local officials, is rejecting these attempts and saying, no, this is anti-democratic. I am not going to do it. Like, I’m not going to put my state through this.
As a journalist, you look at this from the outside. You’re saying, well, wow. A lot of these people showed a lot of courage and gumption and they had to put up with a lot of dark things to stand up to Donald Trump. They’d get death threats afterwards. They would be inundated with angry calls and people showing up at their doors. They voted to uphold the election despite the fact that they stood the line. I think that people should be given credit because it could have gone the other way. Had more people been convinced to go along with this plan, we could have seen, you know, an American election overturned through a pressure campaign. I think it took a little bit of strength and spine to stand up to this.
I believe there’s a mix of people. As with any large event, there’s a mix of things that happened. There are some people who planned to commit violence, who came to the Capitol with weapons and a plan to attack. There are others who maybe got caught up in the moment. You need to look at everyone’s case to determine their individual circumstances.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147073087/how-the-jan-6-committee-used-tv-tactics-and-dark-humor-in-its-case-against-trump
How the Jan-6 committee used tv tactics and dark humor in its case against Trump: a rebuttal to a CNN interview
DAVIES: You know, when the investigation got underway, I always thought one of the most useful things for all of us would be if the committee found evidence that Trump knew that the Stop the Steal claim was bogus – I mean, that is to say, not just that people in his own camp told him he lost the election, but if the committee found evidence that he knew and said it to somebody or wrote it somewhere. Did they get that kind of material?
Broadwater: Well, intent’s an important part of any investigation. Intent isn’t the only thing that matters when investigating a situation. There are certain offenses where you don’t need intent to prove them, but it definitely helps to have – for an investigator to prove someone’s mindset that they meant to do what they were doing, that it wasn’t an accident, or there isn’t some other reasonable explanation for it.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147073087/how-the-jan-6-committee-used-tv-tactics-and-dark-humor-in-its-case-against-trump
The Jan-6 Committee used TV Tactics and Dark Humor in Its Case Against Donald Trump: Is that the Big Rip-Off?
BROADWATER: (Laughter) Yes. I believe they put it out at 9 pm on a Thursday. It has been very tiring to cover this committee. More and more transcripts came out, so we worked pretty much every day through the holidays. Over the last couple of weeks they’ve put out 30,000 pages of transcripts. It was one of the many long nights when I went through this report.
BROADWATER: Yeah. And the committee touched on this a bit during one of its hearings. It was the hearing led by Zoe Lofgren. And she said that it was not only the big lie, but it was also the big rip-off. And they had, I think, one video presentation at that hearing about what they call the big rip-off. There’s a lot more information in the appendix about how Trump supporters were marketed, what they were told, and where the money went. And a lot of the money did not go to fighting the election as had been promised. It actually went to various other causes that had nothing to do with fighting the election.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147073087/how-the-jan-6-committee-used-tv-tactics-and-dark-humor-in-its-case-against-trump
What next for the investigation of Donald Trump? BROADWATER: The status of the committee on criminal referrals against a former president of the United States
I want to look at what happens next. The work was done by the committee. And the Justice Department, you know, is looking into this. Jack Smith is a special counsel. And, you know, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has said, we will go where the facts lead us. The report, of course, recommends criminal charges against Trump and lays out its case. What other considerations will the Justice Department take into account? You know, federal prosecutors have discretion. Sometimes you can suggest that there’s a crime here. I think we have a chance to prove it. But for other reasons, we’re going to choose not to prosecute. What are the other factors that could affect the Justice Department’s direction?
BROADWATER: Right. They have a higher standard than what a legislative committee does. The criminal referrals are to investigate Donald Trump. And they lay out the evidence that they believe – they accumulated and the crimes they believe the evidence shows he committed. That’s the beginning of the investigation by the Justice Department. The Justice Department has to consider, you know, the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt and whether they can convince a jury at that standard to hold a former president of the United States accountable in a criminal way.
Do we want to be a country where the old administration is thrown in jail by the new administration? You know, we have no precedent for that in America. I don’t think he’ll make that new precedent. There is no precedent for former presidents refusing to concede after they lose an election. So you know, this whole situation is very unprecedented. Does he take an unprecedented step for the Justice Department in terms of charging a past president because of how Donald Trump behaves?
And, you know, he’s assigned a special counsel, Jack Smith. If the recent subpoenas that went out are any indication, he is taking it very seriously. I know they’re seeking to interview people who have been interviewed already by the January 6 committee. And that’s been a pattern for a number of months, where the January 6 committee will interview somebody. They will make some of that evidence public. Then the person will be called in to testify for the Justice Department, and that person will provide the same testimony they provided before a grand jury or investigators. The investigation is still going on. But it is – there are huge, huge decisions for Merrick Garland that are both evidentiary in nature and also political in nature.
DAVIES: There is an irony to the situation in that Donald Trump’s conduct should be considered a violation of the law by the committee. But in some ways, to me, I mean, the more serious conduct that he’s responsible for is convincing tens of millions of Americans that they can’t trust elections, that votes are going to be stolen in the dead of night despite, you know, any credible evidence that it happened. That’s a recipe for disaster for a democracy. It seems like there’s not any criminal statute that has gravity to address that fundamental offense which is a body blow to American democracy. So it’s kind of a mismatch in a way between, you know, the criminal code and what’s happened.
BROADWATER: It is true that everything that’s bad and a negative force in our politics is not a crime, right? It is hard to see how it is a crime to convince people not to believe in the institutions of the country, even though it is a dark force in our culture today. It has not been a crime to lie to voters. And I think that’s one of the things the Justice Department has to struggle with is there were a lot of really, really bad actions taken, but they may not violate a criminal statute. And do we want to be a country where we do throw politicians in jail who lie? They are thinking about those type of things.
I think that the facts of January 6 aren’t really in dispute at this point, which is something they have to consider. I think we know a ton of facts from this committee’s investigation. Maybe there are more to discover. But we basically know what happened. And now it’s a matter of interpreting those facts and applying them to the law and saying, are these facts a crime? Are these facts enough to bring about a criminal conviction? And that’s the question they have to wrestle with.
There is a man namedDAVies. The committee is no longer up and running. There’s a narrow Republican majority in Congress. What do we think will happen to the committee’s work and legacy, the website with all that information on it?
And so I do think that that will be a thread that we see going forward in Congress, where the Republicans are investigating the January 6 committee and trying to undermine their work in the new Congress. The committee wanted to put out the full transcripts before they left because they were concerned that Republicans wouldn’t know the full context of what was said. In the past couple of weeks, they released many documents.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147073087/how-the-jan-6-committee-used-tv-tactics-and-dark-humor-in-its-case-against-trump
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