Jan. 6 Panel HearingsTrump Planned March to Capitol, Jan. 6 Committee Says

The panel obtained a draft tweet saying supporters should go to the Capitol after his speech on Jan. 6. It also presented evidence that the former president wanted the march to seem spontaneous.

Follow live updates on the House committee hearing on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Image
The committee obtained a draft of a Twitter post from the National Archives that members said showed the former president’s plan for a march of the Capitol.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Live Chat

Michael S. Schmidt
July 12, 2022, 7:17 p.m. ET

Four takeaways from the latest hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee.

Video
Video player loading
The panel presented new evidence on President Trump’s attempts to hold on to power and build momentum around events planned for Jan. 6, 2021, after legal challenges to the 2020 election results had been exhausted.CreditCredit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

The seventh public hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot focused on how Donald J. Trump and his allies turned their efforts toward summoning a mob of his supporters to Washington to protest the certification of the election after they had exhausted all legal avenues. Relying on testimony from Trump aides, right-wing media commentators and militia members, the committee demonstrated how Mr. Trump’s public statements led his supporters to believe the election had actually been stolen and storm the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification.

Here are the four main takeaways from the hearing:

A Trump Tweet Mobilized the Crowd for Jan. 6

In the early morning hours of Dec. 19, 2020, Mr. Trump put out a tweet calling on his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6.

“​Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Be there, will be wild!”

The committee demonstrated how the tweet served as a rallying cry for Mr. Trump’s supporters — including extremist organizations and right-wing media commentators.

They immediately began whipping up support, both within far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and among ordinary citizens who believed Mr. Trump’s lies about the election. And in many cases, the online commentary that followed what Mr. Trump’s supporters heard as a call to arms was infused with talk of violence.

“We are going to only be saved by millions of Americans moving to Washington, occupying the entire area, if necessary, storming right into the Capitol,” Matt Bracken, a right-wing commentator, said in a video clip posted soon after Mr. Trump’s tweet and played on Tuesday by the committee. “We know the rules of engagement. If you have enough people, you can push down any kind of a fence or a wall.”

Once the crowd came to Washington, testimony on Tuesday showed, Mr. Trump’s supporters continued to take their cues from him.

“I was hanging on every word he was saying,” said one supporter, Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly and disruptive conduct for his role in attacking the Capitol.

Mr. Ayers said that he had not planned to rush the Capitol but decided to do so after hearing Mr. Trump address the crowd on the Ellipse, near the White House.

“Well, basically, you know, the president, you know, he got everybody riled up, told everybody to head on down, so we basically were just following what he said,” Mr. Ayers said.

Mr. Ayers said that he was angry because he was convinced the election had been stolen and something had to be done to right that wrong. He said that the crowd believed Mr. Trump was going to meet them at the Capitol.

“I think everybody thought he was going to be coming down,” Mr. Ayers said. “You know, he said in his speech, you know, kind of like he’s going to be there with us. So I mean, I believed it.”

New Evidence Showed Plans to Go to the Capitol

The committee presented new evidence that showed Mr. Trump and his allies had more extensive plans than previously known for him and his supporters to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Documents obtained by the committee showed that a tweet was drafted for Mr. Trump — which he saw — that called on his supporters to march to the Capitol after his address.

“Making a big speech at 10:00 A.M. January 6 south of the White House,” the draft tweet said. “Please arrive early. Massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!”

The tweet was never sent, but the committee suggested it was just one piece of evidence showing that, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Mr. Trump and his allies had discussed plans for him to go to the area around the Capitol after the rally on the Ellipse.

The committee showed a text message that a Trump ally, Michael J. Lindell, the head of the company My Pillow, had received from a rally organizer on Jan. 4 in which the organizer said that a second stage was going to be set up at the Supreme Court, across the street from the East Front of the Capitol.

The rally organizer, Kylie Kremer, wrote: “It cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and Sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly.’”

Other text messages sent around that time showed that right-wing activists also believed Mr. Trump would be joining them as they massed at the Capitol.

“Trump is supposed to order us to the capitol at the end of his speech but we will see,” said Ali Alexander, who led the “Stop the Steal” campaign.

The committee also cited a deposition by the White House photographer, Shealah Craighead, who was present at an Oval Office gathering on the evening of Jan. 5, when Mr. Trump and some of his aides could hear a crowd of his supporters who were gathered nearby. Ms. Craighead testified that Mr. Trump was saying, “We should go up to the Capitol. What’s the best route to the Capitol?”

An Epic Oval Office Clash

Four days after states voted in the Electoral College, essentially ending all legal challenges to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, a group of Mr. Trump’s outside advisers were hustled into the West Wing to meet with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. The advisers — including the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the retired general who had served briefly as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — came armed with draft executive orders they wanted Mr. Trump to sign that would have used the Defense Department to seize voting machines to try to prove baseless claims of election fraud.

Shortly after the meeting began, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone — who did not believe the election had been stolen and had been pushing for Mr. Trump to concede — learned of it and rushed into the Oval Office so fast that Ms. Powell said he set “a new land speed record.”

“I opened the door and I walked in and I saw General Flynn, I saw Sidney Powell sitting there — I was not happy to see the people who were in the Oval Office,” Mr. Cipollone said in videotaped testimony he provided the committee last Friday, clips of which were played in Tuesday’s hearing.

Mr. Cipollone testified that he turned to one of the advisers he did not know and asked his identity. He turned out to be the founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne. “I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice,” Mr. Cipollone said.

“There is a way to contest elections that happens all the time, but the idea that the federal government could come in and seize election machines? No — I don’t understand why I even have to tell you why that’s a bad idea,” Mr. Cipollone testified. “It’s a terrible idea.”

In the hours that followed, a meeting ensued that is considered among the most contentious of Mr. Trump’s presidency, as Mr. Cipollone and other White House lawyers, including Eric Herschmann, faced off against Ms. Powell, Mr. Flynn, and Mr. Byrne.

“At times, there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other. It wasn’t just people sitting around on a couch chitchatting,” said Derek Lyons, who was then the White House staff secretary.

Ms. Powell testified that she thought Mr. Trump had appointed her as a special counsel to investigate the election fraud claims. But the testimony played by the committee revealed that Mr. Cipollone strongly objected to such a move and essentially killed it by refusing to do the paperwork needed for such an appointment.

After all the fighting between the outside advisers and the White House lawyers, Mr. Trump declined to go along with the plan of using the military or other federal agencies to seize the voting machines.

Hours later, he would turn to Twitter to post his call to his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6.

More Warnings Against Witness Tampering

As she did at the end of the previous hearing two weeks ago, Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, warned against witness tampering in her closing statement — and this time her message was aimed directly at Mr. Trump.

Ms. Cheney said that a witness — whom she declined to identify other than to say the person’s testimony had not been made public so far — had gotten a call in the last two weeks from Mr. Trump. The witness, Ms. Cheney said, received the call after the last hearing, in which Cassidy Hutchinson, a former West Wing aide, provided damning testimony about Mr. Trump.

Ms. Cheney said that the witness declined to pick up Mr. Trump’s call or respond to it. But the witness told his or her lawyer, who alerted the committee. The committee then passed the information along to the Justice Department, which on Tuesday declined to comment.

“Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Ms. Cheney said.

After Ms. Hutchinson’s public testimony on June 28, the committee disclosed efforts by Trump allies to reach a witness, who turned out to be Ms. Hutchinson.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Ms. Cheney was trafficking in “innuendo and lies,” but did not directly address whether Mr. Trump had tried to reach out to a witness.

Zach Montague contributed reporting.

Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 6:20 p.m. ET

A Trump official blames the former president’s rhetoric for a Jan. 6 death.

Video
Video player loading
The Jan. 6 committee showed texts from Brad Parscale, a former manager of President Donald J. Trump’s campaign, in which he blamed Mr. Trump’s rhetoric for a death that occurred during the storming of the Capitol.CreditCredit...Al Drago for The New York Times

Six months after he had been summarily removed as the manager of the campaign he helped build, Brad Parscale watched the aftermath of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and texted a colleague.

“This is about Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country,” Mr. Parscale told Katrina Pierson, another Donald J. Trump adviser and one who had warned other officials about some of the people appearing at Mr. Trump’s rally at the Ellipse, ahead of the riot.

“A sitting president asking for civil war,” wrote Mr. Parscale, who ran Mr. Trump’s digital campaign in 2016. “This week I feel guilty for helping him win.”

“You did what you felt right at the time and therefore it was right,” Ms. Pierson replied. “Yeah,” Mr. Parscale said. “But a woman is dead,” prompting Ms. Pierson to reply, “You do realize this was going to happen.”

“Yeah. If I was trump and knew my rhetoric killed someone,” Mr. Parscale said, to which Ms. Pierson replied: “It wasn’t rhetoric.”

Mr. Parscale then said, “Katrina. Yes it was.”

Mr. Parscale’s texts were coming after a long and complicated history with Mr. Trump. The former president fired Mr. Parscale and then, in September 2020, Mr. Parscale had a personal breakdown. Police were called to his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where his wife told officers he was inside the house, ranting, acting erratically, with a loaded and cocked gun. He was hospitalized and then worked to move on by restarting his political consulting firm, Parscale Strategy, and a few other business ventures.

His raw missives reflected a sentiment that many other Trump advisers, privately and publicly, described having as they watched the events of that day. Several Cabinet officials resigned, and former officials issued statements condemning what had taken place. But few officials were as interwoven with Mr. Trump’s political operation, and his rhetoric about fighting, as Mr. Parscale.

Mr. Parscale is still deeply interwoven with Mr. Trump’s operation. His company powers Mr. Trump’s email blasts, among other activities, and he helped create Mr. Trump’s online fund-raising apparatus.

People close to Mr. Trump, who often tries to punish people for speaking against him, grumbled privately, according to people familiar with his comments, about the text messages after they were shown. But given how entangled Mr. Parscale is with Mr. Trump’s political operation, it remains to be seen whether there will be fallout.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Jeremy W. PetersLuke Broadwater
July 12, 2022, 5:50 p.m. ET

The former C.E.O. of Overstock is expected to speak to investigators.

Image
Patrick Byrne, right, former chief executive of Overstock, with Michael Flynn, center, the former National Security Advisor, at a Trump rally in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020.Credit...Jack Gruber / USA TODAY NETWORK

Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com who was present at a meeting that became a focal point of Tuesday’s hearing, is expected to speak on Friday with the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, said the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson.

Mr. Byrne was at a meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, in which Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, the pro-Trump lawyer, pressed to seize voting machines and name Ms. Powell as a special counsel to work to overturn the election.

“He’ll be here for a transcribed interview,” Mr. Thompson said. “We’re looking forward to that. He was one of the people in the White House late night talking about the stop the steal rally and other things.”

Mr. Byrne stood out as a vocal purveyor of conspiracy theories even before he was among those who surrounded Trump in his final days as president. He lost his job at Overstock in 2019 after releasing a statement with references to the “Deep State” and “Men in Black” in which he said he had been romantically involved with Maria Butina, a woman accused of being a Russian spy. Ms. Butina, who tried to befriend politically powerful people before the 2016 election, spent more than a year in prison for conspiring to act as a foreign agent.

Then Mr. Byrne showed up at the White House in December 2020 — at whose invitation is unclear. According to a long and digressive blog post he published after the meeting, he wrote that he had urged Mr. Trump to “‘find’ that there was adequate evidence of foreign interference with the election” so that the president could use his powers to direct federal law enforcement to get involved with vote-counting.

He wrote that Mr. Trump responded, “Knowing I was cheated, that they rigged this election? How can I just walk away from that?”

Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 5:35 p.m. ET

Cheney, warning against tampering, says Trump reached out to a Jan. 6 witness.

Video
Video player loading
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said the Jan. 6 committee was told that former President Donald J. Trump tried to reach out to a witness in its investigation.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Representative Liz Cheney said on Tuesday that the House Jan. 6 committee had been told that former President Donald J. Trump reached out in the last two weeks to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.

Ms. Cheney supplied few details and did not identify the witness in question, but she pointedly linked Mr. Trump’s outreach to concerns the committee has raised in the past about witness tampering.

“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” said Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who serves as the committee’s vice chairwoman.

“That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call, and instead alerted their lawyer to the call,” she continued. “Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.”

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on whether the department had received the information or was acting on it. A spokesman for Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Ms. Cheney was trafficking in “innuendo and lies,” but did not directly address whether Mr. Trump had tried to reach out to a witness.

Ms. Cheney’s remarks came in the closing moments of Tuesday’s hearing and two weeks after the previous hearing, when a former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that Mr. Trump was aware that some members of the crowd on Jan. 6 were armed, that he wanted to lead his supporters to the Capitol anyway, and that White House officials had expressed concerns that Mr. Trump’s plan for Jan. 6 could be unlawful.

At the end of the public hearing with Ms. Hutchinson, Ms. Cheney raised the prospect that Mr. Trump and his allies were tampering with a witness — later revealed to be Ms. Hutchinson — and shared messages sent to her by people close to Mr. Trump.

In one phone call, according to the account provided by the committee at the time, the witness was told that Mr. Trump was paying attention to the hearings and reading the transcripts. The caller said that the witness would “continue to stay in good graces in Trump world” if the person continued to “be a team player” and demonstrate that they were “protecting” who they needed to protect.

In another call, according to the committee, the witness was told that Mr. Trump “knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”


“I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses, to testify untruthfully, presents very serious concerns,” Ms. Cheney said at that hearing.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Michael C. Bender
July 12, 2022, 4:48 p.m. ET

Trump’s behavior is weighing on Republicans as they consider 2024 options.

Image
Former President Donald J. Trump’s actions after the 2020 election are seen very differently by Democrats and Republicans — but also among members of his own party.Credit...Ash Adams for The New York Times

Donald J. Trump’s behavior in the days leading up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was viewed by 75 percent of likely Republican presidential primary voters as the president “just exercising his right to contest the election,” while 19 percent said he “went so far that he threatened American democracy,” according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

But among Republicans who said they wouldn’t back the former president in the 2024 primary, 32 percent said he was a threat to democracy, suggesting that contingent could form the base of Mr. Trump’s opposition.

For those primary voters who wouldn’t back Mr. Trump, 59 percent said Mr. Trump was just contesting the election. However, 21 percent said Mr. Trump’s behavior included serious federal crimes, compared with 3 percent of Mr. Trump’s core supporters who said the same.

The poll also showed that 86 percent of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary voters believed Mr. Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. One-third of the Republican anti-Trump voters said the same.

Still, while Mr. Trump has described election integrity as the country’s most pressing concern, just 3 percent of the Republican respondents named it as the nation’s top problem.

Travis Reinink, a Republican voter in Nevada who participated in the poll, said President Biden’s victory was illegitimate and that he viewed the House investigations into Mr. Trump’s behavior as “one-sided.” Still, he said recent testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson “opened my eyes to some stuff.”

Mr. Reinink said he would vote for Mr. Trump in a rematch of the 2020 contest.

“I know that he was very brazen,” Mr. Reinink said. “But Trump is who he is, and he’s not going to change. It’s one of the things I both like and dislike about him.”

Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 4:03 p.m. ET

The hearing has concluded, and in a remarkable scene here, Ayres, the Jan. 6 rioter, is shaking hands with the Capitol Police officers whose lines he breached while storming the building that day.

Image
Credit...Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 3:57 p.m. ET

Stephen Miller, the former Trump adviser whose testimony was played, told me that the committee had deceptively edited his words about Eric Herschmann and left out his rebuttal of “their ludicrous conspiracy theories” about the draft of Trump's speech at the Ellipse.

Image
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 3:56 p.m. ET

Cheney says that in the last week, Trump called one of the witnesses the committee has interviewed, but that the witness did not pick up the call. She ends her remarks with a warning against witness tampering and says the committee flagged the call for the Department of Justice. Cheney did not name the witness, but said it was someone who has not yet been featured in public hearings.

Video
bars
0:00/0:38
-0:00

transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 —> 00:00:02.880 After our last hearing, 00:00:02.880 —> 00:00:06.390 President Trump tried to call a witness 00:00:06.390 —> 00:00:08.570 in our investigation, 00:00:08.570 —> 00:00:12.870 a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. 00:00:12.870 —> 00:00:16.110 That person declined to answer or respond 00:00:16.110 —> 00:00:20.700 to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer 00:00:20.700 —> 00:00:22.110 to the call. 00:00:22.110 —> 00:00:25.740 Their lawyer alerted us, and this committee 00:00:25.740 —> 00:00:29.880 has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. 00:00:29.880 —> 00:00:32.340 Let me say one more time, we will 00:00:32.340 —> 00:00:36.490 take any effort to influence witness testimony 00:00:36.490 —> 00:00:38.810 very seriously.

Video player loading
Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 3:54 p.m. ET

As the hearing draws to a close, Murphy draws on her personal experience to drive home the importance of today’s hearings. Her family fled violence in Vietnam, a country where political power was seized by violence, for safety in America. Her patriotism, she says, springs in part from a deep desire to protect the country that protected her.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Zach Montague
July 12, 2022, 3:48 p.m. ET

Panel members dissected the ‘craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.’

Video
Video player loading
In taped interviews, witnesses described a meeting in which President Donald J. Trump’s outside advisers proposed an executive order to have the military seize voting machines in crucial states Mr. Trump had lost.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Digging into the aftermath of the 2020 election, members of the Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday focused on a meeting between former President Donald J. Trump and outside advisers that devolved into what they described as a chaotic confrontation over a desperate attempt to overturn the election.

Drawing from testimony from former Attorney General William P. Barr and others, the committee described in detail a hastily organized meeting in which advisers proposed an executive order to have the military seize voting machines in crucial states Mr. Trump had lost.

“On Friday, Dec. 18, his team of outside advisers paid him a surprise visit in the White House that would quickly become the stuff of legend,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland. “The meeting has been called unhinged, not normal, and the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.”

According to the panel, in the weeks before the meeting in December, several of Mr. Trump’s advisers including Mr. Barr and Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, had publicly and privately dismissed the possibility of wide-scale voter fraud, and urged Mr. Trump to concede. Mr. Barr made a public announcement on Dec. 1 to affirm that he had not found significant evidence of fraud.

Just four days before the meeting, on Dec. 14, the Electoral College met to certify the election results, which in a taped interview Mr. Barr told the committee “should have been the end of the matter.”

But on the evening of Dec. 18, several of Mr. Trump’s outside advisers, including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, came to Mr. Trump to urge him to consider the plan to seize voting machines.

As the meeting grew heated, Mr. Cipollone told the committee that other plans were discussed, including to grant Ms. Powell a security clearance and name her special counsel, putting her in charge of Mr. Trump’s legal effort to contest the election results.

The meeting lasted hours, moving from the Oval Office to other areas of the West Wing before ending in the presidential residence, according to the committee. And arguments broke out throughout the evening, including “challenges to physically fight,” Mr. Raskin said.

In a taped interview presented on Tuesday, Derek Lyons, a former White House staff secretary, said, “At times, there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other — it wasn’t just sort of people sitting around on a couch like chit-chatting.”

The panel showed evidence suggesting that the meeting ended around midnight, without agreement among participants on how to proceed.

But committee members used the hearing on Tuesday to suggest that as Mr. Trump apparently grew frustrated with the lack of options to contest the election results during the meeting in December, it was in that moment that he turned to his supporters, encouraging them to come to Washington on Jan 6.

Just over an hour after the meeting was said to have ended, Mr. Trump tweeted at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19 that it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost the election. In the tweet, he also urged supporters to gather in Washington to demonstrate, drawing dozens of responses from people sharing plans to occupy the Capitol building and photos of weapons they said they planned to bring.

“Be there, will be wild,” the tweet said.

Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 3:46 p.m. ET

Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, who was seriously wounded in the attack on the Capitol, was sitting in the front row of today’s hearing as Raskin lauded him. DC Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who was brutally crushed in the door of the Capitol on Jan. 6 by rioters, was sitting next to him and patted him on the shoulder as Raskin delivered his remarks.

Image
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Carl Hulse
July 12, 2022, 3:43 p.m. ET

Cautionary testimony from the two witnesses, Stephen Ayres and Jason Van Tatenhove, about what could occur in the coming elections if misinformation is allowed to persist.

Alan Feuer
July 12, 2022, 3:41 p.m. ET

Stephen Ayres is not alone among rioters at the Capitol who once supported Trump but now feel that the former president betrayed them. Many other people facing criminal charges in connection with Jan. 6 have also said that Trump’s lies about the election ruined their lives — but not his life.

Image
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 3:41 p.m. ET

Jason Van Tatenhove, the former Oath Keepers spokesman, says, “We need to quit mincing words and just talk about truths, and what it was going to be was an armed revolution.”

Video
bars
0:00/1:06
-0:00

transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:00.130 —> 00:00:02.940 I think we need to quit mincing words 00:00:02.940 —> 00:00:05.050 and just talk about truths. 00:00:05.050 —> 00:00:09.130 And what it was going to be was an armed revolution. 00:00:09.130 —> 00:00:12.340 I mean, people died that day. 00:00:12.340 —> 00:00:14.420 Law enforcement officers died this day. 00:00:14.420 —> 00:00:17.740 There was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol. 00:00:17.740 —> 00:00:19.780 This could have been the spark that 00:00:19.780 —> 00:00:24.670 started a new Civil War and no one would have won there. 00:00:24.670 —> 00:00:28.690 That would have been good for no one. 00:00:28.690 —> 00:00:31.840 He was always looking for ways to legitimize 00:00:31.840 —> 00:00:35.560 what he was doing, whether by wrapping it 00:00:35.560 —> 00:00:37.020 in the trappings of 00:00:37.020 —> 00:00:37.970 it’s not a militia. 00:00:37.970 —> 00:00:40.660 It’s a community preparedness team. 00:00:40.660 —> 00:00:41.900 We’re not a militia. 00:00:41.900 —> 00:00:43.970 We’re an educational outreach group. 00:00:43.970 —> 00:00:45.880 It’s a veteran support group. 00:00:45.880 —> 00:00:49.930 But again, we’ve got to stop with this dishonesty 00:00:49.930 —> 00:00:51.730 and the mincing of words and just call 00:00:51.730 —> 00:00:53.290 things for what they are. 00:00:53.290 —> 00:00:56.740 You know, he, he’s a militia leader. 00:00:56.740 —> 00:01:01.570 He had these grand visions of being a paramilitary leader, 00:01:01.570 —> 00:01:04.690 and the Insurrection Act would have given him 00:01:04.690 —> 00:01:07.290 a path forward with that.

Video player loading
CreditCredit...Reuters
Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 3:39 p.m. ET

Ayres testifies that he and his fellow rioters left the Capitol right after Trump issued a series of tweets asking them to go home, underscoring his power over the mob and his unwillingness to prevent the violence before then.

Video
bars
0:00/1:32
-0:00

transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:00.540 —> 00:00:03.480 “I first want to ask you about what 00:00:03.480 —> 00:00:05.560 finally caused you to leave 00:00:05.560 —> 00:00:07.470 on January the sixth? 00:00:07.470 —> 00:00:11.130 We know that the medieval-style combat 00:00:11.130 —> 00:00:15.840 with our police, the occupation of the building, 00:00:15.840 —> 00:00:17.760 this was going on for several hours 00:00:17.760 —> 00:00:24.930 until the president issued at 4:17 a tweet, I believe, 00:00:24.930 —> 00:00:27.960 that included a video telling people to go home. 00:00:27.960 —> 00:00:29.110 Did you see that? 00:00:29.110 —> 00:00:32.340 And did that have any effect on what you were doing?” 00:00:32.340 —> 00:00:35.400 “Well, when we were there, as soon as that come out, 00:00:35.400 —> 00:00:37.390 everybody started talking about it. 00:00:37.390 —> 00:00:41.040 And that’s, it seemed like it started to disperse. 00:00:41.040 —> 00:00:44.400 You know, some of the crowd, obviously, once we got back 00:00:44.400 —> 00:00:46.800 to the hotel room, we seen that it was still going on, 00:00:46.800 —> 00:00:49.420 but it definitely dispersed a lot of the crowd.” 00:00:49.420 —> 00:00:52.200 “What lessons, finally, do you want the American people 00:00:52.200 —> 00:00:55.560 to learn from the way you and your family 00:00:55.560 —> 00:00:59.310 have suffered as a result of these events?” 00:01:01.470 —> 00:01:04.319 “Biggest thing is I consider myself a family man, 00:01:04.319 —> 00:01:06.255 and I love my country. 00:01:08.130 —> 00:01:10.200 I don’t think any one man is bigger 00:01:10.200 —> 00:01:13.360 than either one of those. 00:01:13.360 —> 00:01:15.230 I think that’s what needed to be taken. 00:01:15.230 —> 00:01:18.810 You know, people 00:01:18.810 —> 00:01:20.910 dive into the politics. 00:01:20.910 —> 00:01:25.280 And for me, I felt like I had, like, horse blinders on. 00:01:25.280 —> 00:01:29.380 I was locked in the whole time. 00:01:29.380 —> 00:01:31.400 Biggest thing for me is take the blinders off. 00:01:31.400 —> 00:01:34.470 Make sure you step back and see what’s going on.”

Video player loading
Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 3:32 p.m. ET

The leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, “was always looking for ways to legitimize what he was doing,” the group’s former spokesman said, a key fact as we continue to see extremist groups attempting to make inroads with sitting members of Congress.

Carl Hulse
July 12, 2022, 3:27 p.m. ET

The committee is using the in-person testimony of a Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol, Stephen Ayres, to show how he was influenced directly by the president at the time.

Video
Video player loading
Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 3:22 p.m. ET

“A sitting president asking for civil war. This week I feel guilty for helping him win,” Parscale wrote.

Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 3:21 p.m. ET

In striking, not-before-seen text messages, Brad Parscale, Trump's former campaign manager, tells Pierson to accept that Trump’s rhetoric unleashed violence against the very government that the president was sworn to protect, and that led to Ashli Babbitt’s death — points that former administration officials have refused to acknowledge to this day.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Alan Feuer
July 12, 2022, 3:15 p.m. ET

The Witnesses

Stephen Ayres entered the Capitol with the Jan. 6 mob. Now he’s back as a witness.

Video
Video player loading
Stephen Ayres testified that he and some of his fellow rioters left the Capitol after former President Donald J. Trump issued a series of tweets asking them to go home.CreditCredit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

Tuesday’s Jan. 6 committee hearing is featuring a new kind of witness: For the first time, a defendant who faced criminal charges for taking part in the attack on the Capitol will testify live in front of the panel.

The defendant, Stephen Ayres, was arrested in Ohio and pleaded guilty in June to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building. He is scheduled to be sentenced in September.

Mr. Ayres is expected to tell the panel how former President Donald J. Trump inspired the mob to gather at and ultimately storm into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter. He was first reported as a witness for the committee by ABC News.

A little more than a week before the building was attacked, Mr. Ayres warned on social media that a civil war would erupt if Mr. Trump did not remain in power. As Jan. 6 drew nearer, court papers say, Mr. Ayres posted an image on Facebook citing a Twitter post by Mr. Trump inviting his supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest.

That tweet — posted by the former president on Dec. 19, 2020 — will figure prominently at the hearing on Tuesday as the panel seeks to implicate Mr. Trump as the driving force behind the riot. While ordinary protesters like Mr. Ayres were encouraged by the tweet, it was received with particular urgency by far-right extremist groups, which sprang into action for Jan. 6, almost immediately after it was posted on to Twitter.

Mr. Ayres was only in the Capitol for about 10 minutes, court papers say. But prosecutors note that on the day after the attack, he took part in a video posted on YouTube that claimed without basis that Democratic politicians, the police and leftist activists had conspired to instigate the attack.

Alan Feuer
July 12, 2022, 3:15 p.m. ET

The Witnesses

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former Oath Keepers spokesman, now talks about its dangers.

Video
Video player loading
Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, said the far-right extremist militia wanted Jan. 6 to become “an armed revolution.”CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

One witness appearing at the House select committee’s hearing on Tuesday will likely give an insider’s glimpse of the Oath Keepers militia: Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the group who left it several years ago and has more recently been speaking out about the dangers it presents.

Mr. Van Tatenhove is expected to testify about the history of the Oath Keepers, which was founded in 2009 by a former Army paratrooper, Stewart Rhodes, and how the group became increasingly radical in the months and years leading up to the Capitol attack, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Van Tatenhove’s testimony will also likely touch on how Mr. Rhodes used conspiracy theories to raise money for the group and increase its membership.

Mr. Van Tatenhove began to work with the Oath Keepers around 2014, eventually becoming the public face of the group during several prominent anti-government and militia operations. He issued statements for the organization — and answered questions from the media — after Mr. Rhodes and his men helped support the rancher Cliven Bundy in an armed standoff with federal agents in Nevada.

Mr. Van Tatenhove was also involved in the Oath Keepers’ media operation when the group deployed as self-appointed vigilantes to Ferguson, Mo., after chaotic protests broke out over the death of Michael Brown, a young Black man killed by the police.

In more recent years, Mr. Van Tatenhove, who lives in Colorado, has turned to art and journalism, starting a blog about local news and culture in his state. He did not respond to several messages and phone calls seeking comment on his appearance before the committee.

Since leaving the Oath Keepers, Mr. Van Tatenhove has occasionally spoken out about the threatening nature of the group, though his testimony on Tuesday will offer the biggest public stage yet for his criticism of Mr. Rhodes and his subordinates.

“I have these self-realization moments where I’m like, ‘I helped these guys out, I helped spread the message,’” he told The Denver Post in an interview in February. “And yeah, it was just with words, but I’ve got to try to do something to try and make up for that in my own life.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 3:14 p.m. ET

Stephen Miller, Trump’s former policy adviser, is shown in a video clip describing Eric Herschmann wanting a reference to Pence, pressing him to take action against the electoral college certification, taken out of a draft of Trump’s speech for the Ellipse rally.

Video
Video player loading
CreditCredit...Reuters
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 3:14 p.m. ET

The committee just made an interesting decision to show Ivanka Trump denying she’d said she wanted to attend the Ellipse speech with her father to try to calm him down, and then cut to video of her former chief of staff affirming exactly that.

Video
Video player loading
Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 3:13 p.m. ET

Of course, Ms. Lesko was one of the 147 House Republicans to vote to overturn the election even after rioters broke into the Capitol.

Carl Hulse
July 12, 2022, 3:13 p.m. ET

The recording of Representative Debbie Lesko was very revealing because she conceded ahead of time that Trump supporters were going to go “nuts” once they realized that Congress would not overturn the election, as Ms. Lesko was sure would happen.

Video
Video player loading
Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 3:07 p.m. ET

Building on Hutchinson’s account of Trump’s demands to join his supporters at the Capitol, Representative Stephanie Murphy has shown that the former president wanted to make that trek after his closest allies publicly discussed plans for violence on Jan. 6.

Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 3:07 p.m. ET

The committee is featuring clips of far-right activists and personalities using bellicose language to amp up expectations for Jan. 6. Several Republican members of Congress echoed that rhetoric, calling the day the party’s “1776 moment” and suggesting that Trump was the victim of an attempted “coup.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 2:59 p.m. ET

It wasn’t just members of Trump’s inner circle who were worried about what would transpire on Jan. 6. I recall talking with a Republican congressman in the days before the certification who told me that he knew busloads of his constituents were coming to Washington for the rally, and that he was worried what would happen when they found out that Pence could not legally overturn the election results.

Carl Hulse
July 12, 2022, 2:58 p.m. ET

Unprompted, Cipollone praises Vice President Pence for acting courageously in resisting the intense pressure to try and overturn the electoral result. Says in his view, Pence did the right thing.

Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 2:57 p.m. ET

We heard in previous hearings that Representative Mo Brooks asked for a pardon after the riot broke out. The committee today revealed that, ahead of the rally, Brooks told Meadows that “only citizens can exert the necessary influence” on Congress to undo Trump’s election loss.

Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 2:55 p.m. ET

Pierson’s testimony — that Trump “loved people who viciously defended him” — is key to what took place after Nov. 3, 2020, and long before it. Throughout his life, Trump has loved people willing to lay themselves on the line for him, starting with his lawyer, Roy Cohn. Cohn "brutalized for you," Trump told one of his biographers, Tim O'Brien.

Video
Video player loading
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 2:49 p.m. ET

This hearing is uncomfortable for the Trump associates whose depositions or text messages are being heard or seen, both in terms of the focus on them and the possibility that Trump will hear them speaking about him or the events of that day in ways that draw his wrath.

Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 2:49 p.m. ET

The committee showed a draft tweet that Trump never sent, in which he was going to direct people to march to the Capitol from the rally. The tweet is in the National Archives.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 2:48 p.m. ET

Katrina Pierson, who had tried to raise concerns to other officials about some of the “crazies,” as she put it, who were involved with events related to Jan. 6, is featuring prominently in this hearing. The committee is using Pierson’s testimony to bolster Hutchinson’s testimony, among others.

Image
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 2:39 p.m. ET

Raskin is drawing a connection between Roger Stone, Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, and some of the extremists, mentioning a group chat called Friends of Stone that our colleague Alan Feuer wrote about previously. Stone has denied any involvement in the Capitol riot.

Video
bars
0:00/1:09
-0:00

transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 —> 00:00:02.940 Encrypted chats obtained by the select committee, 00:00:02.940 —> 00:00:05.280 showed that Kelly Meggs, the indicted leader 00:00:05.280 —> 00:00:07.500 of the Florida Oath Keepers, spoke directly 00:00:07.500 —> 00:00:09.870 with Roger Stone about security 00:00:09.870 —> 00:00:13.020 on Jan. 5 and 6. 00:00:13.020 —> 00:00:14.960 In fact, 00:00:14.960 —> 00:00:18.590 on Jan. 6, Stone was guarded by two Oath Keepers who 00:00:18.590 —> 00:00:20.240 have since been criminally indicted 00:00:20.240 —> 00:00:22.050 for seditious conspiracy. 00:00:22.050 —> 00:00:23.630 One of them later pleaded guilty 00:00:23.630 —> 00:00:25.520 and according to the Department of Justice, 00:00:25.520 —> 00:00:28.310 admitted that the Oath Keepers were ready to use, quote, 00:00:28.310 —> 00:00:30.740 “lethal force, if necessary, against 00:00:30.740 —> 00:00:33.490 anyone who tried to remove President Trump 00:00:33.490 —> 00:00:37.400 from the White House, including the National Guard.” 00:00:37.400 —> 00:00:39.440 As we’ve seen, the Proud Boys were also 00:00:39.440 —> 00:00:41.400 part of the Friends of Stone network. 00:00:41.400 —> 00:00:44.410 Stone’s ties to the Proud Boys go back many years. 00:00:44.410 —> 00:00:47.600 He’s even taken their so-called fraternity creed 00:00:47.600 —> 00:00:50.710 required for the first level of initiation to the group. 00:01:07.447 —> 00:01:08.807 “Thank you, Roger.”

Video player loading
Alan Feuer
July 12, 2022, 2:39 p.m. ET

A group chat linked to Roger Stone shows the ties among key Jan. 6 figures.

Video
Video player loading
Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, said encrypted chats showed that Mr. Stone and the head of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers communicated about security before and on the day of the Capitol attack.CreditCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The roster of participants in a group chat known as F.O.S. — or Friends of Stone — highlights how Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime political operative and adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, was involved with a strikingly large number of people who sought to overturn the 2020 election.

There were “Stop the Steal” organizers, right-wing influencers and more than one failed candidate loyal to Mr. Trump. One participant ran a website that promoted disinformation about the Capitol attack. Another was an officer in the Army Reserve allied with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser.

At least three members of the group chat have been charged in connection with the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They include Owen Shroyer, the right-hand man of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the Proud Boys; and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia.

While little is known about what was said on the chat, the membership list of Friends of Stone, provided to The New York Times by one of its participants, offers a kind of road map to Mr. Stone’s associations, showing their scope and nature in the critical period after the 2020 election.

Mr. Stone had pre-existing political ties with many people on the group chat, but the roster of participants suggests that Mr. Stone had the means to be in private contact with key players in the events of Jan. 6 — political organizers, far-right extremists and influential media figures who subsequently played down the attack.

Carl Hulse
July 12, 2022, 2:38 p.m. ET

The focus in this new presentation so far is to show how extremist groups that typically act independently were coming together around Jan. 6 — the unaligned were aligning, in the words of one District of Columbia security official.

Video
Video player loading

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Alan Feuer
July 12, 2022, 2:35 p.m. ET

The Proud Boys, who were at the center of the Capitol riot, have a history of street fighting.

Image
Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, at a protest in Washington in December 2020.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

For nearly the entirety of Donald J. Trump’s four years in the White House, the Proud Boys protested — and often brawled — on the streets as part of a never-ending series of culture-war skirmishes. They opposed the removal of Confederate-era statues, the supposed spread of Shariah law and the mass demonstrations that emerged in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

But investigators have placed the far-right group at the center of a far more prominent and damaging street fight: the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Scores of Proud Boys took part in the assault and played a crucial role in the breaching of the building. Nearly 40 members of the group have been arrested in the vast investigation of the riot — and more arrests are likely to follow. Those in custody include the organization’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and four of his lieutenants, who stand accused of seditious conspiracy for having opposed “the lawful transfer of presidential power by force.”

The Proud Boys were founded in 2016, in the heat of Mr. Trump’s first presidential run, by Gavin McInnes, a co-founder of the hipster magazine Vice. Tailoring the group to so-called Western chauvinists who espoused a kind of patriarchal nationalism and opposed — sometimes violently — the left’s embrace of inclusion and diversity, Mr. McInnes quickly attracted a following, largely from the ranks of disaffected men.

While the Proud Boys inserted themselves over and over again into violent demonstrations during Mr. Trump’s first three years in office, typically as supporters of the president, they achieved real notoriety in September 2020 when Mr. Trump mentioned them by name during a presidential debate. Asked by the moderator if he would disavow white nationalist groups, Mr. Trump said, “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by.”

Prosecutors say that when the former president posted a tweet announcing a “wild” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, the Proud Boys sprang into action, starting to prepare.

Lawyers for Mr. Tarrio and other Proud Boys facing charges have denied that the men conspired in advance to storm the Capitol.

Joseph Biggs, a Proud Boy leader charged along with Mr. Tarrio, has been accused of inciting an assault on police officers that served as the tipping point to the attack. Dominic Pezzola, a New York Proud Boy also facing charges in the case, was the first man in the mob to break a window at the Capitol, allowing rioters inside.

Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 2:34 p.m. ET

The committee has returned to the hearing, now with live witnesses talking about extremist groups who united to come to the Capitol.

Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 2:09 p.m. ET

The committee is moving to a 10-minute recess.

Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 2:09 p.m. ET

Raskin is underscoring how deeply white nationalism became intertwined with the Stop the Steal movement. One of the messages he read from referenced a popular white supremacist novel that culminates in mass hangings of perceived “race traitors.”

Video
bars
0:00/0:47
-0:00

transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 —> 00:00:02.850 Some of the online rhetoric turned openly 00:00:02.850 —> 00:00:07.740 homicidal and white nationalist, such as, “Why don’t we 00:00:07.740 —> 00:00:09.870 just kill them, every last Democrat, 00:00:09.870 —> 00:00:12.750 down to the last man, woman and child?” 00:00:12.750 —> 00:00:14.970 And, “It’s time for the ‘Day of the Rope.’ 00:00:14.970 —> 00:00:18.810 White revolution is the only solution.” 00:00:18.810 —> 00:00:20.520 Others realize that police would 00:00:20.520 —> 00:00:23.160 be standing in the way of their effort 00:00:23.160 —> 00:00:24.910 to overturn the election. 00:00:24.910 —> 00:00:27.370 So one wrote, 00:00:27.370 —> 00:00:29.780 “I’m ready to die for my beliefs. 00:00:29.780 —> 00:00:33.060 Are you ready to die, police?” 00:00:33.060 —> 00:00:37.920 Another wrote on the Donald.win, 00:00:37.920 —> 00:00:40.500 “Cops don’t have standing if they’re 00:00:40.500 —> 00:00:44.010 laying on the ground in a pool of their own blood.” 00:00:44.010 —> 00:00:45.840 The Donald.win was an openly racist 00:00:45.840 —> 00:00:48.230 and anti-Semitic forum.

Video player loading
Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 2:08 p.m. ET

Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump wanted his supporters at the Ellipse, knowing that they were armed, gives important context to today’s clips of Trump supporters. They believed that the former president wanted them to push down fences, to stop the certification of the election and to spark a “red wedding,” referring to a fictional massacre that took place on the TV show "Game of Thrones."

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Carl Hulse
July 12, 2022, 2:02 p.m. ET

Raskin is tying Trump’s “will be wild” tweet to the aftermath of the explosive White House meeting, suggesting that the frustrated president took matters into his own hands after the inconclusive and incendiary session.

Image
Credit...U.S. House Select Committee
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 1:55 p.m. ET

Had Sidney Powell not needed a security clearance, she may indeed have ended up with a White House role, is the clear takeaway from Cipollone’s testimony.

Video
Video player loading
Catie Edmondson
July 12, 2022, 1:52 p.m. ET

Between this hearing and last week’s hearing, the committee has teased out striking imagery of a White House engulfed in chaos: a president furiously throwing plates and staining the walls with ketchup, attorneys name-calling and screaming at each other in the private residence, and the chief of staff escorting one of the president’s personal attorneys off the campus grounds.

Katie Benner
July 12, 2022, 1:50 p.m. ET

It’s fascinating to see Cipollone and Powell in agreement about her unwillingness to provide facts for her fraud claims. It’s a stark distillation of the final days of the administration.

Carl Hulse
July 12, 2022, 1:49 p.m. ET

Cipollone and other Trump aides are painting a pretty indelible scene of the Dec. 18 meeting and their shock at what was transpiring.

Video
bars
0:00/2:33
-0:00

transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:49.230 —> 00:00:51.060 “And, you know, then there was discussion of, well, 00:00:51.060 —> 00:00:53.490 ‘We don’t have it now, but we will have it or whatever.’” 00:01:00.410 —> 00:01:03.180 “It’s Derek and I both challenged what she’s saying, 00:01:03.180 —> 00:01:06.480 and she says, ‘Well, the judges are corrupt.’ 00:01:06.480 —> 00:01:08.327 And I was like, ‘Every one? 00:01:08.327 —> 00:01:10.410 Every single case that you’ve done in the country, 00:01:10.410 —> 00:01:11.050 you guys lost? 00:01:11.050 —> 00:01:12.258 Every one of them is corrupt? 00:01:12.258 —> 00:01:14.870 Even the ones we appointed?’ 00:01:14.870 —> 00:01:15.620 And —” 00:01:15.620 —> 00:01:16.530 “What —” 00:01:16.530 —> 00:01:17.490 “I’m being nice. 00:01:17.490 —> 00:01:18.907 I was much more harsh to her. 00:01:18.907 —> 00:01:20.240 I think that it got to the point 00:01:20.240 —> 00:01:21.700 where the screaming was — 00:01:24.260 —> 00:01:27.153 completely, completely out there. 00:01:27.153 —> 00:01:29.070 And it was late at night, it had been a long day. 00:01:29.070 —> 00:01:32.130 And what they were proposing 00:01:32.130 —> 00:01:35.530 I thought it was nuts.” 00:01:35.530 —> 00:01:40.160 “I’m going to categorically describe it as 00:01:40.160 —> 00:01:43.010 you guys are not tough enough. 00:01:43.010 —> 00:01:46.510 Or maybe I put it another way, ‘You’re a bunch of [expletive].’ 00:01:46.510 —> 00:01:50.290 Excuse the expression, but that’s 00:01:50.290 —> 00:01:51.780 almost certain the word was used.” 00:01:51.780 —> 00:01:53.110 “Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter, 00:01:53.110 —> 00:01:55.193 and everything, kept standing up and turning around 00:01:55.193 —> 00:01:57.180 and screaming at me. 00:01:57.180 —> 00:01:59.960 Then at a certain point I had it with him. 00:01:59.960 —> 00:02:04.060 So I yelled back. 00:02:04.060 —> 00:02:06.350 ‘Better come over. 00:02:06.350 —> 00:02:08.330 Sit your f-in ass back down.’” 00:02:08.330 —> 00:02:09.620 “At the end of the day, 00:02:09.620 —> 00:02:12.180 we landed where we started the meeting, 00:02:12.180 —> 00:02:17.450 at least from a structural standpoint, which was 00:02:17.450 —> 00:02:20.180 Sidney Powell was fighting. 00:02:20.180 —> 00:02:21.530 Mike Flynn was fighting. 00:02:21.530 —> 00:02:26.490 They were looking for avenues that would enable, 00:02:26.490 —> 00:02:29.650 that would result in 00:02:29.650 —> 00:02:32.530 President Trump remaining President Trump 00:02:32.530 —> 00:02:34.590 for a second term.”

Video player loading
CreditCredit...Reuters
Maggie Haberman
July 12, 2022, 1:47 p.m. ET

It’s hard to express how wild it is hearing former White House staff who participated in that Dec. 18 meeting describing it on the record. Cipollone referred to Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com, as “the Overstock person.” Byrne joined Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn at the meeting.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
July 12, 2022, 1:17 p.m. ET

A tweet by Trump has been examined as a catalyst for the Capitol violence.

Image
Protestors waving flags in support of President Donald J. Trump near the Washington Monument on January 6, 2021.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators have gathered evidence of how a tweet by President Donald J. Trump less than three weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, served as a crucial call to action for extremist groups that played a central role in storming the Capitol.

Mr. Trump’s Twitter post in the early hours of Dec. 19, 2020, was the first time he publicly urged supporters to come to Washington on the day Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College results showing Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential vote.

His message — which concluded with, “Be there, will be wild!” — has long been seen as instrumental in drawing the crowds that attended a pro-Trump rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and then marched to the Capitol.

But the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the riot and the parallel inquiry by the House select committee have increasingly shown how Mr. Trump’s post was a powerful catalyst, particularly for far-right militants who believed he was facing his final chance to reverse defeat and whose role in fomenting the violence has come under intense scrutiny.

Responding to the president’s words, the groups sprang into action, court filings and interviews by the House committee show: Extremists began to set up encrypted communications channels, acquire protective gear and, in one case, prepare heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington.

As part of the congressional inquiry, investigators are trying to establish whether there was any coordination beyond the post that ties Mr. Trump’s inner circle to the militants and whether the groups plotted together.

Lawyers for the militants have repeatedly said that the groups were simply acting defensively in preparing for Jan. 6. They had genuine concerns, the lawyers said, that leftist counterprotesters might confront them, as they had at earlier pro-Trump rallies.

July 12, 2022, 1:17 p.m. ET

Trump played a role in weighing proposals to seize voting machines.

Image
Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald J. Trump, asked the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states. He was told that wasn’t an option. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Six weeks after Election Day, with his hold on power slipping, President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states, The New York Times reported in January.

Mr. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s acting deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority to audit or impound the machines.

Three people familiar with the matter said Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Giuliani to make that inquiry on Dec. 18, 2020, after rejecting a separate effort by his outside advisers to have the Pentagon take control of the machines.

The outreach to the Department of Homeland Security came not long after Mr. Trump, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, raised the possibility of whether the Justice Department could seize the machines, a suggestion that Mr. Barr immediately shot down.

The plans would have taken the United States into uncharted territory by using federal authority to seize control of the voting systems run by states on baseless grounds of widespread voting fraud.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Emily Cochrane
July 12, 2022, 1:12 p.m. ET

The Committee

Stephanie Murphy: Her roots in Vietnam fuel a concern for democracy.

Image
Representative Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida, came to the U.S. from war-torn Vietnam as a child. “I don’t want anybody, Democrat or Republican, in the future to be able to exploit the system, because then we’re no better than the autocracy I escaped,” she said.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

In spring 2002, Representative Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat who was born in Vietnam, returned to the country for the first time as an adult with her father, as local elections were underway. She was shocked by the propaganda, as well as her relatives’ frank acknowledgment that their votes would not make a difference.

Her aunt “basically checked the box, literally, on having voted — but knowing that it didn’t matter what box she checked,” Ms. Murphy recalled in an interview. “That, to me, is so stunning. And we can’t, in this incredible democracy, sow that kind of cynicism and allow people to get to a place where they believe that their vote doesn’t count.”

Her family’s escape from a war-torn Vietnam to the United States is part of what has shaped Ms. Murphy’s work on the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The first Vietnamese American woman elected to the House, Ms. Murphy is also reflecting on the work she did as a national security specialist for the Defense Department that often involved what she described as struggling or nascent democracies abroad.

“I don’t want anybody, Democrat or Republican, in the future to be able to exploit the system, because then we’re no better than the autocracy I escaped,” she said.

She added, “I believe in our democracy, and I believe that as a citizen and an elected member, I have a responsibility to do everything I can to protect it. I just know how fragile it is.”

As a lead member of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, Ms. Murphy has both worked closely with leadership and at times frustrated them with demands issued on behalf of the dwindling group of moderates in her party. She has privately worked to elevate newer members and counter the top-down leadership style imposed by the generation of octogenarians overseeing the party.

Her appointment to the committee, however, is the latest instance in which Democratic leaders have elevated Ms. Murphy as a representative of the broader caucus, where her reputation for pragmatism could help counter charges of partisanship.

“My hope is that the viewers of the hearings come to it, setting aside their reflexive partisan framework and cynicism about politics in America, and view the information we have to provide with an open mind,” she said.

She announced she would not seek re-election in November, facing the prospect of a more conservative district. Ms. Murphy, who toyed with running for the Senate this year against Marco Rubio, a Republican, has not ruled out seeking another political office.

Alan Feuer
July 12, 2022, 1:00 p.m. ET

Prosecutors are pressing ahead with sedition cases against Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Image
Jessica Marie Watkins, left, and Donovan Ray Crowl are both members of the Oath Keepers militia from Ohio who have been charged in connection with the Capitol riot.Credit...Jim Bourg/Reuters

As far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are set to take center stage on Tuesday at the House Jan. 6 hearing, criminal prosecutions of several members of both organizations have been moving forward down the street from the Capitol, in the federal courthouse.

Five leaders of the Proud Boys, including the group’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and nine top members of Oath Keepers, including the organization’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, have been indicted on seditious conspiracy charges, the most serious allegations filed against any of the more than 840 rioters charged in the Capitol attack.

Image
Stewart Rhodes is one of nine top members of the Oath Keepers who have been indicted on seditious conspiracy charges.Credit...Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Prosecutors have built their cases against the groups in a similar fashion, drawing on a combination of private chats and text messages seized from the defendants’ cellphones and the assistance of a number of cooperating witnesses.

While much of the government’s evidence will only be revealed as the cases near trial at the end of this year, prosecutors have already painted a portrait of both groups as questioning President Donald J. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election not long after the votes were cast and ultimately using force to stop the lawful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.

The two sedition cases are the most significant prosecutions to have stemmed so far from the Capitol attack, but they are not the only ones involving members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and other far-right extremist organizations.

More than 40 other Proud Boys are facing charges, including for assaulting police officers and obstructing a congressional proceeding, in a series of separate cases. Nine members of the Oath Keepers have been charged in a separate case with conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election results, but not with seditious conspiracy.

In March, Guy Wesley Reffitt, a self-described member of the Texas Three Percenters, was convicted of obstructing Congress’s certification of the election results in the first Capitol riot case to go to trial. Several other defendants accused of being Three Percenters, a militia movement based on a radical belief in gun rights, are also facing charges and are scheduled for trial.

While the cases involving far-right extremist groups have attracted outsized attention, they represent only about 15 to 20 percent of the total cases brought in connection with Jan. 6.

Dozens of other defendants, court papers show, had connections of one sort or another to the extremist QAnon conspiracy theory. The theory claims, without evidence, that during his time in office, Mr. Trump was at war with a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats and liberal celebrities who trafficked children.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Denise LuEleanor Lutz
July 12, 2022, 12:45 p.m. ET

Here’s the timeline prosecutors laid out of the Oath Keepers plot to storm the Capitol.

Image
Members of the Oath Keepers in front of the Capitol on Jan. 6.Credit...Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press

In laying out the sedition charge against Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the far-right Oath Keeper militia, and 10 others, federal prosecutors have built a timeline of events as evidence of a conspiracy to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year.

Seditious conspiracy can be a difficult charge to prove, and it requires prosecutors to show that at least two people conspired to overthrow the government or delay the execution of a U.S. law. The charge is the most serious yet to be filed in connection with the riot. More than 700 people have been accused of crimes related to the Jan. 6 assault.

The case is ongoing, but the charging documents released earlier this year provide a detailed look at activities of Mr. Rhodes and other Oath Keepers, beginning as early as two days after Election Day in 2020.