TAKEAWAYS FROM SECOND JAN. 6 HEARING
The Jan. 6 committee used its second hearing to lay out evidence that Donald Trump must have known better: that he was repeatedly informed that his claims of widespread voter fraud were bogus and that he had lost the 2020 election — and he pressed forward in trying to overturn the result regardless.
The question is crucial when it comes to determining whether Trump’s effort meets the legal definition of acting “corruptly.” Here are some takeaways from the hearing.
1. Trump was told, but he didn’t care
Last week, it was an open question as to just how often Trump was actually told that what he was saying was false. Monday’s hearing indicated the answer: plenty of times. Former Attorney General William Barr featured prominently. The committee played video of Barr saying that he had debunked specific allegations to Trump. And former deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue also ran through a litany of allegations in significant detail, saying he informed Trump that there was nothing to them. He specifically cited a popular theory — elevated by Trump — about a “suitcase” of votes in Georgia that wasn’t actually a suitcase. He said he told Trump that “was not true.”
“I tried to, again, put this in perspective and to try to put it in very clear terms to the president,” Donoghue said. “And I said something to the effect of, ‘Sir, we’ve done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed. We’ve looked in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada. We’re doing our job. Much of the info you’re getting is false.’ “
From there, the question is whether Trump understood or agreed. But both Barr and Donoghue indicated that Trump wasn’t much interested in his claims being debunked or actually delving into details.
“I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has … become detached from reality,’” Barr said.
Donoghue added that “there were so many of these allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it, but he would move to another allegation.”
That sounds a lot more like a guy who is looking for a pretext to overturn an election than one who is legitimately worried about election integrity.
2. More evidence that almost everyone knew Trump had lost Early in the hearing, the committee played testimony from White House lawyer Eric Herschmann saying that he “never saw any evidence whatsoever” to support Trump’s claims about voting machines being used to overturn the election.
They also showed Trump campaign general counsel Matt Morgan saying that any evidence of wrongdoing was “not sufficient to be outcome-determinant,” a conclusion he said was shared by two key advisers to Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.
The committee also played clips of Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and campaign aide Jason Miller saying they advised against Trump declaring victory that night — as Trump ultimately did — because votes were still coming in and the outcome was indeed in doubt. And it played video of Barr confirming that he knew in advance that Democrats would gain substantial ground as mail votes were counted, especially in urban areas. (Trump would later baselessly claim that such gains were suspicious.)
3. Giuliani’s time in the barrel
This brings us to the question of who was delivering the counterprogramming to Trump. As Monday’s hearing wore on, it became abundantly clear how little regard Trump aides had for the man who filled the vacuum: Rudy Giuliani.
Early in the hearing, the committee played video of Miller confirming that Giuliani was inebriated on election night, including when he was seeking to influence Trump’s actions. Miller said Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated.”
As the hearing progressed, the witnesses painted a picture of this man — one who was intoxicated on such an important night — essentially hijacking Trump’s campaign apparatus.
At another point, the committee played audio of Trump’s sonin-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner saying he told Trump that listening to Rudy Giuliani was “not the approach I would take if I was you.”
4. A new crime floated
As its investigation has unfolded, the committee has floated a number of laws Trump might have broken, including obstruction of an official proceeding and witness tampering.
But on Monday, the committee gestured at a new one: fundraising fraud.
Committee investigator Amanda Wick detailed Trump’s fundraising practices. She said he raised $250 million after the election, while pushing for donors to support something called his “Official Election Defense Fund.”
But she disclosed that Trump aides Hanna Allred and Gary Coby said no fund technically existed. She also noted that most of the money went to Trump’s Save America PAC, and very little was used for challenging the election results.
The clear implication was that this was, at the very least, a highly deceptive fundraising ploy, deceptive because it relied on lies about voter fraud, but also because the money wasn’t going to what people believed it did.
Asked after the hearing whether this broke the law, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told CNN: “We’re a legislative committee. And it’s clear that he intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what it said.”
We’ll see how much the committee presses on this matter.