More details emerge in new filing on Jan. 6
WASHINGTON — Before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump White House officials and members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus strategized about a plan to direct thousands of angry marchers to the building, according to newly released testimony obtained by the House committee investigating the 2021 riot and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
On a planning call that included Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff; Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer; Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; and other Freedom Caucus members, the group discussed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, according to one witness’s account.
The idea was endorsed by Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who now leads the Freedom Caucus, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows, and no one on the call spoke out against the idea.
“I don’t think there’s a participant on the call that had necessarily discouraged the idea,” Hutchinson told the committee’s investigators.
The nearly 2-mile march from the president’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol, where parts of the crowd became a violent mob, has become a focus of the House committee and the Justice Department as they investigate who was responsible for the violence.
Meadows and members of the Freedom Caucus, who were deeply involved in Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, have condemned the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and defended their role in spreading the lie of a stolen election.
Hutchinson’s testimony and other materials disclosed by the committee in a 248-page court filing Friday added new details and texture to what is publicly known about the discussions in
Trump’s inner circle and among his allies in the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 assault.
The filing is part of the committee’s effort to seek the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against it by Meadows. It disclosed testimony Meadows was told plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent. Even so, he pushed forward with the rally that led to the march on the Capitol, according to the filing.
The filing also disclosed new details of Meadows’ involvement in attempts to pressure Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, over Trump’s loss there.
At rallies in Washington in November and December 2020, Trump’s supporters did not march to the Capitol and mostly refrained from violence. But on Jan. 6, Trump encouraged a crowd of thousands to march to the building, telling them: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.” He did so after the White House’s chief of operations had told Meadows of “intel reports saying there could potentially be violence on the 6th,” according to the filing.
Two rally organizers, Dustin Stockton and his fiancée, Jennifer L. Lawrence, have also provided the committee with evidence they were concerned a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 would mean “possible danger” and Stockton’s “urgent concerns” were escalated to Meadows, according to the committee.
The Justice Department and the committee have been investigating how the crowd moved from the Ellipse to the Capitol.
Committee investigators have obtained draft copies of Trump’s speech. This month, they pressed its author, Stephen Miller, a former White House adviser, on whether Trump’s repeated use of the word “we” had been an effort to direct his supporters to join him in moving on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying his defeat.