Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Home choose committee, middle, Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair, proper, in addition to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, left, and Rep. Stephanie Murphy, third from left, arrive through the second listening to on Monday, June 13. (Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Photographs)
The Home committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol detailed Monday how these round then-President Donald Trump informed him he misplaced the 2020 election — however he refused to hear, turning as a substitute to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to embrace false claims that the election was stolen.
The listening to Monday was one witness quick from what was deliberate, however the panel heard testimony from a former Fox Information digital politics editor, a conservative lawyer, a former US lawyer and a former Republican election official — who all mentioned it was clear President Joe Biden gained the election and Trump’s claims of fraud have been nonsense.
The following listening to is about to happen Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, mentioned the presentation will deal with Trump’s “broader planning for Jan. 6, together with his plan to deprave the Division of Justice.” The witnesses haven’t but been introduced.
Listed here are the important thing takeaways from the panel’s second listening to this month about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the violence within the Capitol on Jan: 6.
Stepien shock units off a scramble — however committee shortly adapts: The committee stunned many observers Sunday when it introduced that Trump marketing campaign supervisor Invoice Stepien could be testifying in-person at Monday’s listening to. However Stepien had a shock of his personal on Monday morning, when he came upon that his spouse went into labor, so he pulled out of the listening to.
This whirlwind of occasions compelled the committee to scramble — they usually dealt with it deftly, albeit after a 45-minute delay.
Lawmakers and committee employees have been clearly ready with video clips from Stepien’s personal deposition. And so they performed loads of footage from his testimony Monday, which revealed new particulars about his conversations with Trump and the way he suggested the President to not prematurely declare victory on election evening.
In some methods, the result gave the Democratic-run committee extra energy to manage what the general public heard from Stepien. He wasn’t within the room to say his piece, which might have included some defenses of Trump and a few pushback towards the committee. As an alternative, the panel might decide and select which deposition clips it performed, they usually targeted like a laser on probably the most damaging materials for Trump.
Prolonged depositions happen of witness testimony: Stepien’s testimony wasn’t the committee’s solely use of depositions on Monday. The panel performed prolonged parts of former Legal professional Normal William Barr’s deposition with the committee, the place he described intimately why Trump’s fraud claims have been “bogus” and why he has seen nothing since to persuade him there was fraud.
“There was by no means a sign of curiosity in what the precise information have been,” Barr mentioned in video of his deposition performed Monday. “I used to be considerably demoralized, as a result of I assumed, ‘Boy, if he actually believes these items, he has misplaced contact with — he is grow to be indifferent from actuality if he actually believes these items.’ “
The committee didn’t invite Barr to testify publicly for Monday’s listening to, however the minutes of his deposition that performed made it really feel at occasions as if he was there.
The video depositions have additionally given the committee the prospect to indicate testimony from others in Trump’s interior circle — together with Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner — with out having to carry them in to testify. And by simply exhibiting video depositions, the committee controls which soundbites are aired.
Barr turns into debunker-in-chief: Democrats reviled Barr when he was in workplace — accusing him of wielding the powers of the Justice Division to do Trump’s bidding, undermining the Russia investigation, and pushing right-wing conspiracy theories. However during the last two weeks, Barr has grow to be a brand new hero of types for liberals, for aggressively debunking and condemning Trump’s lies concerning the 2020 election.
The Democratic-run committee has featured clips from Barr’s deposition greater than another witness to date, they usually interviewed greater than 1,000 folks as a part of their yearlong investigation. These clips have established Barr because the highest-ranking Trump administration official to affirm the legitimacy of the election outcomes and disavow Trump’s relentless effort to say that the election was tainted by fraud.
Throughout Monday’s listening to, Barr dismantled particular Trump-backed claims about unlawful “vote dumps” in Detroit, nationwide vote-rigging by Dominion with its election machines, and different conspiracy theories.
Learn extra takeaways right here.