House Investigation Hearing of 1/6 Attack

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10-7-2021

A Report From The Senate Judiciary Committee__

Reveals new details about former president Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Report Cites New Details of Trump Pressure on Justice Dept.
Over Election:

A Senate panel fleshed out how Donald Trump pursued his plan to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to pursue unfounded reports of fraud.

Jeffrey Clark, who led the Justice Department’s civil division, was working with President Trump to devise ways to cast doubt on the election results.
Jeffrey Clark, who led the Justice Department’s civil division, was working with President Trump to devise ways to cast doubt on the election results

Updated Oct. 7, 2021, 6:06 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON —
Even by the standards of President Donald J. Trump, it was an extraordinary Oval Office showdown. On the agenda was Mr. Trump’s desire to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to carry out his demands for more aggressive investigations into his baseless claims of election fraud.

On the other side during that meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 were the top leaders of the Justice Department, who warned Mr. Trump that they and other senior officials would resign en masse if he followed through. They received immediate support from another key participant: Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. According to others at the meeting, Mr. Cipollone indicated that he and his top deputy, Patrick F. Philbin, would also step down if Mr. Trump acted on his plan.

Mr. Trump’s proposed plan, Mr. Cipollone argued, would be a “murder-suicide pact,” one participant recalled. Only near the end of the nearly three-hour meeting did Mr. Trump relent and agree to drop his threat.

Mr. Cipollone’s stand that night is among the new details contained in a lengthy interim report prepared by the Senate Judiciary Committee about Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to do his bidding in the chaotic final weeks of his presidency.

The report draws on documents, emails and testimony from three top Justice Department officials, including the acting attorney general for Mr. Trump’s last month in office, Jeffrey A. Rosen; the acting deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, and Byung J. Pak, who until early January was U.S. attorney in Atlanta. It provides the most complete account yet of Mr. Trump’s efforts to push the department to validate election fraud claims that had been disproved by the F.B.I. and state investigators.

The interim report, released on Thursday, describes how Justice Department officials scrambled to stave off the pressure during a period when Mr. Trump was getting advice about blocking certification of the election from a lawyer he had first seen on television, and the president’s actions were so unsettling that his top general and the House speaker discussed the nuclear chain of command.
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“This report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis,” Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the department to his will. But it was not due to a lack of effort.”

Mr. Durbin said that he believes the former president, who remains a front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024, would have “shredded the Constitution to stay in power.”

The report by Mr. Durbin’s committee hews closely to previous accounts of the final days of the Trump administration, which led multiple Congressional panels and the Justice Department’s watchdog to open investigations.

As Mr. Rosen prepared to become acting attorney general, an aide to Mr. Trump emailed him about specious allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.
As Mr. Rosen prepared to become acting attorney general, an aide to Mr. Trump emailed him about specious allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.

But, drawing in particular on interviews with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue, both of whom were at the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, it brings to light new details that underscore the intensity and relentlessness with which Mr. Trump pursued his goal of upending the election, and the role that key government officials played in his efforts.

On at least nine occasions in December and early January, the report found, Mr. Trump asked officials to take actions that they believed would undermine an election result that they had deemed to be valid, and that he and his allies contacted department leaders nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

On Dec. 14, the same day that Attorney General William P. Barr informed Mr. Trump that he was stepping down, leaving Mr. Rosen as acting attorney general, Mr. Trump had an aide email Mr. Rosen two items, the report said.

One was a set of talking points about claims of voter fraud in Michigan. The other was a purported examination of problems with Dominion Voting Systems machines in Michigan. For the next three weeks, the report said, Mr. Trump would continue to push the Justice Department to investigate similarly specious allegations.

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The report fleshes out the role of Jeffrey Clark, a little-known Justice Department official who participated in multiple conversations with Mr. Trump about how to upend the election and who pushed his superiors to send Georgia officials a letter that falsely claimed the Justice Department had identified “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.”

Mr. Trump was weighing whether to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark. At the start of the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, Mr. Rosen recounted, Mr. Trump said, “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.”

The report also detailed a Jan. 2 confrontation during which Mr. Clark seemed to both threaten and coerce Mr. Rosen to send the letter. He first raised the prospect that Mr. Trump could fire Mr. Rosen, and then said that he would decline any offer to replace Mr. Rosen as acting attorney general if Mr. Rosen sent the letter.

Mr. Clark also revealed during that meeting that he had secretly conducted a witness interview with someone in Georgia in connection with election fraud allegations that had already been disproved.

The report raised fresh questions about what role Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, played in the White House effort to pressure the Justice Department to help upend the election. Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to pressure him into investigating debunked election fraud allegations that had been made in Pennsylvania, the report said, and he complained to Mr. Donoghue that the Justice Department was not doing enough to look into such claims.

Mr. Clark, the report said, also told officials that he had participated in the White House’s efforts at Mr. Perry’s request, and that the lawmaker took him to a meeting at the Oval Office to discuss voter fraud. That meeting occurred at around the same time that Mr. Perry and members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus met at the White House to discuss the Jan. 6 certification of the election results.

The report confirmed that Mr. Trump was the reason that Mr. Pak hastily left his role as U.S. attorney in Atlanta, an area that Mr. Trump wrongly told people he had won. Mr. Trump told top Justice Department officials that Mr. Pak was a never-Trumper, and he blamed Mr. Pak for the F.B.I.’s failure to find evidence of mass election fraud there.

A monthslong campaign. During his last days in office, President Donald J. Trump and his allies undertook an increasingly urgent effort to undermine the election results. That wide-ranging campaign included perpetuating false and thoroughly debunked claims of election fraud as well as pressing government officials for help.

Baseless claims of voter fraud. Although Mr. Trump’s allegations of a stolen election have died in the courts and election officials of both parties from every state have said there is no evidence of fraud, Republicans across the country continued to spread conspiracy theories. Those include 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying the election.

Intervention at the Justice Department. Rebuffed by ranking Republicans and cabinet officials like Attorney General William P. Barr, who stepped down weeks before his tenure was to end, Mr. Trump sought other avenues to peddle his unfounded claims. In a bid to advance his personal agenda, Mr. Trump plotted to oust the acting attorney general and pressed top officials to declare that the election was corrupt. His chief of staff pushed the department to investigate an array of outlandish and unfounded conspiracy theories that held that Mr. Trump had been the victor.

Pressuring state officials to “find votes.” In a taped call, Mr. Trump urged Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the presidential election and vaguely warned of a “criminal offense.” And he twice tried to talk with a leader of Arizona’s Republican party in a bid to reverse Joseph R. Biden’s narrow victory there.

Contesting Congress’s electoral tally on Jan. 6. As the president continued to refuse to concede the election, his most loyal backers proclaimed Jan. 6, when Congress convened to formalize Mr. Biden's electoral victory, as a day of reckoning. On that day, Mr. Trump delivered an incendiary speech to thousands of his supporters hours before a mob of loyalists violently stormed the Capitol.

Partisan election reviews. Since leaving office, Mr. Trump and his loyalists have embraced partisan reviews of the 2020 election. In Arizona, a criticized Republican review of the results in the state’s largest county failed to support Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud. Despite that, the so-called Stop the Steal movement appears to be racing forward as more G.O.P. politicians announce Arizona-style reviews in other states.

During the Jan. 3 meeting in the Oval Office, Mr. Donoghue and others tried to convince Mr. Trump not to fire Mr. Pak, as he planned to resign in just a few days. But Mr. Trump made it clear to the officials that Mr. Pak was to leave the following day, leading Mr. Donoghue to phone him that evening and tell him he should pre-emptively resign.

Mr. Trump also went outside the normal line of succession to push for a perceived loyalist, Bobby L. Christine, to run the Atlanta office. Mr. Christine had been the U.S. attorney in Savannah, and had donated to Mr. Trump’s campaign.

The Senate report found that Byung J. Pak resigned as U.S. attorney in Atlanta before he could be fired by Mr. Trump.
The Senate report found that Byung J. Pak resigned as U.S. attorney in Atlanta before he could be fired by Mr. Trump.Credit...Ron Harris/Associated Press
Republicans have sought for months to downplay reports of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign, arguing that he simply cast a wide net for legal advice and correctly concluded that it would be a mistake to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, echoed those sentiments on Thursday with the release of a report by committee Republicans, which called Mr. Trump’s actions “consistent with his responsibilities as president to faithfully execute the law and oversee the Executive Branch.”

But Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Pak — all Republicans — testified that Mr. Trump was not seeking their legal advice, but strong-arming them to violate their oaths of office, undermine the results of the election and subvert the Constitution.

The report is not the Senate Judiciary Committee’s final word on the pressure campaign.

The panel is still waiting for the National Archives to furnish documents, calendar appointments and communications involving the White House that concern efforts to subvert the election. It asked the National Archives, which stores correspondence and documents generated by previous presidential administrations, for the records this spring.

It is also waiting to see whether Mr. Clark will sit for an interview and help provide missing details about what was happening inside the White House during the Trump administration’s final weeks. Additionally, the committee has asked the District of Columbia Bar, which licenses and disciplines attorneys, to open a disciplinary investigation into Mr. Clark based on its findings.

The report recommended that the Justice Department tighten procedures concerning when it can take certain overt steps in election-related fraud investigations. As attorney general, the report said, Mr. Barr weakened the department’s decades-long strict policy of not taking investigative steps in fraud cases until after an election is certified, a measure that is meant to keep the fact of a federal investigation from impacting the election outcome.

The Senate panel found that Mr. Barr personally demanded that the department investigate voter fraud allegations, even if other authorities had looked into them and not found evidence of wrongdoing. These allegations included a claim by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a prime force behind the unfounded election fraud allegations, that he had a tape that showed Democratic poll workers kicking their Republican counterparts from a polling station and fraudulently adding votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. into the count.

On Dec. 1, just two weeks before saying he would step down, Mr. Barr said that the Justice Department had found no evidence of voter fraud widespread enough to change the fact that Mr. Biden had won the presidency.

But Mr. Trump kept coming back to
unsubstantiated accounts of election fraud.

Soon after the completion of the Oval Office meeting on the night of Jan. 3, the committee’s report said, Mr. Trump reached out to Mr. Donoghue, asking him to look into reports that the Department of Homeland Security had taken possession of a truck full of shredded ballots outside of Atlanta.

The report turned out to be false.

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10-24-2021

Republican Paul Gosar told Jan. 6 rioters
they'd get a blanket pardon from Trump.

Rolling Stone is reporting that a pair of witnesses have spoken to the House Jan. 6 Select Committee revealing that Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) told them President Donald Trump would issue a blanket pardon for some who attacked the U.S. Capitol that day.

According to the report, some of the planners of the rally are communicating with the investigators and the committee.

"Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump's efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent," said the report, saying that it confirmed the account from a third person.

It's the first time that Americans have heard about a member of Congress being officially tied to the events that unfolded that day.

"While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also
the first account detailing their purported role and
its scope," said the report.
Both of the sources said that there were several members of Congress who participated in planning calls, but Gosar, in particular, was named for making blanket promises that couldn't be kept.

Gosar participated in a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on May 12, 2021, that focused on the Capitol attack and unanswered questions.

"And Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further," said the report.
"Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a 'blanket pardon' in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests."

"Our impression was that it was a done deal," the organizer told Rolling Stone, "that he'd spoken to
the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up.
They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support."

They noted that Gosar made the promise "several" times.

"I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you've been doing," Gosar told those on the call.

"I would have done it either way with or without the pardon," the organizer explained. "I do truly believe
in this country, but to use something like that and put that out on the table when someone is so desperate, it's really not good business."

The report said that it has "documentary evidence"
to prove what the three sources claimed.

Trump campaign aide Katrina Pierson has also been called a "liaison" between the insurrectionists and the White House and Mark Meadows was also named as
a key part of the organizing.

Read the full report from Rolling Stone.
Great report- should read.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/exclusive-jan-6-organizers-met-congress-white-house-1245289/

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10-25-2021

'Call your lawyer':
Legal experts weigh in on report naming GOPers
involved in Jan. 6 rally planning.

Legal experts including a Harvard professor and a top election and voting rights law attorney are weighing in on Sunday night's bombshell report from Rolling Stone naming members of Congress and the Trump administration who were involved in the planning and organizing of the January 6 rally and/or "Trump's efforts to overturn his election loss," according to
two of the planners of the "Stop the Steal" rally.

Rolling Stone reports "planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump's efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent."

Those named in the Rolling Stone report as allegedly being involved include Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and these members of Congress or their staffers: Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

Harvard professor, well-known national security expert Juliette Kayyem says clearly:
"Mark Meadows, just three words: call your lawyer."

Marc Elias, a top election law attorney who oversaw the 50-state response to the Trump campaign's attempts contesting the 2020 election for the DNC calls for every member of Congress involved to be "expelled."

Elie Mystal, the Justice Correspondent for The Nation says this is a matter for the DOJ:

"The potential that Members of Congress were deeply involved in the failed Trump Coup is another reason AG Garland must appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Jan. 6th,"There are Congressional staff who can testify to the involvement of Members."

Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor for
30 years, is calling it the "mother of all cover-ups."

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While Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and others continue to defy the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, other witnesses are cooperating and "providing reams of evidence to investigators," according to a report from Axios.

The report cites Rolling Stone's bombshell story from Sunday, which revealed that two "Stop the Steal" organizers told investigators they discussed plans for the protests with House Republicans and Trump aides.

"The report — despite being hailed by some Democrats as a 'smoking gun' and grounds for expulsion (from Congress) — does not allege those Republicans were involved in a plot to attack the Capitol," Axios reported. "It does indicate key players in the day's events may be cooperating and providing new information to the committee."

In addition to the Stop the Steal organizers, cooperating witnesses include former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark — whom Trump sought to install as attorney general — and, according to CNN, at least five White House staffers from the Trump administration.

"The five former staffers who have had conversations with the committee have done so with either members or their staff. Some believe they have information worth sharing, while others are hoping to avoid being legally compelled to talk to the committee," CNN reported.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the committee, told CNN: "I've got good reason to believe a number of them are horrified and scandalized by what took place on January 6th and they want to do their legal duty and their civic duty by coming forward to explain exactly what happened."

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12-13-2021

Jan. 6 committee 'has the receipts' from Meadows --
and they deliver a brutal narrative about Trump.

Gangel said on Monday that the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol
riots has everything it needs to paint a brutal narrative about former President Donald Trump's reaction to the civil unrest he inspired.

While talking with host Jake Tapper, Gangel broke down the importance to the records that the committee has already obtained from former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.

"Mark Meadows was in the room on January 6th
and the committee has a lot of the receipts," she said. "Jake, a source familiar tells me that, among the communications and texts and emails, the committee is going to simply lay out how much was going on in real time:
What meadows knew, who was speaking to him... and we're going to see those actual texts."

Meadows's texts were with GOP loyalists and White House allies, and that many would show them trying in vain to get Trump to publicly come out and denounce the violence.

One text message cited by Gangel came from a former Trump White House official who begged Meadows to put out a statement on the White House's behalf if Trump was unwilling.

"You guys have to say something," the official wrote, according to Gangel.
"Even if the president is not willing to put out a statement, you should go to the cameras and say,
we condemn this. Please stand down. If you don't, people are going to die.

"

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The House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 is reportedly looking closer at the phone calls that former President Donald Trump made to the so-called "war room" his supporters set up at the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C.

Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell is now reporting that it wasn't just a single war room with all of the Trump allies together working in a single suite -- in fact, there were several war rooms set up.

As one of Lowell's Twitter follower pointed out, there were photos showing the war room with Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. But previous Guardian reports cited another war room with Rudy Giuliani and former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who were joined by Steve Bannon.

The rooms for Kerik and Giuliani were actually reimbursed to the tune of $50,000, according to reporter Betsy Woodruff Swan.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who has written books about the history of authoritarian movements, writes that such arrangements are not uncommon among insurrectionists.

"In a coup, each main conspirator has his own constituency of operatives that he's seen through the recruitment and planning phases," she writes on Twitter. "In time we'll know more about the role of each - and their plans for a Trump 2.0 Cabinet."

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7-20-2022

MAGA lawmakers who trembled during J6 attack will be 'humiliated' at Thursday hearing.

GOP lawmakers are going target Republican lawmakers during Thursday's primetime hearing by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack at the U.S. Capitol.

"The Jan. 6 committee plans to use its Thursday night hearing to call out insurrection-friendly lawmakers who cowered during the Capitol attack but have since downplayed the insurrection’s severity," Rolling Stone reported Wednesday, citing "two sources familiar with the committee’s planning."

One source told the magazine, “they have plans to paint a really striking picture of how some of Trump’s greatest enablers of his coup plot were — no matter what they’re saying today — quaking in their boots and doing everything shy of crying out for their moms."

“If any of [these lawmakers] were capable of shame, they would be humiliated," the source added.

Thursday's hearing will also reportedly feature new video evidence.

"The bulk of the Thursday night hearing is expected to focus on Trump’s actions during the insurrection, including whether he took any action to defuse the riot at a time when lawmakers were under attack," the magazine reported.

"But using photos and footage to slap down MAGA lawmakers’ claims of a 'tourist visit' from 'peaceful patriots' is part of a broader effort to bring reality to bear on a fictitious, pro-Trump reimagining of Jan. 6."

One such moment occurred after Rep. Andrew Clyde compared that unsuccessful insurrection to a "normal tourist visit."

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