Right here’s a take a look at a number of the most extraordinary and necessary proof within the choose committee’s information.
“He does do his personal tweets”
Jan. 6 investigators have pored over the circumstances of Trump’s tweet from Dec. 19, 2020, exhorting followers to come back to Washington to protest the counting of electoral votes by Congress. “Can be wild,” Trump wrote, a message that specialists and safety officers considered as rocket gas for extremists.
The committee’s proof features a textual content change from Jan. 22, 2021, between Trump adviser Katrina Pierson and his longtime social media guru Dan Scavino through which Scavino makes clear: Nobody instructed Trump to writer the tweet. Scavino rejected the notion that advocates concerned in “Cease the Steal” efforts had something to do with Trump’s determination to situation the tweet. And in what seems to be a nod to its authorship, Scavino wrote “He does do his personal tweets.”
In an earlier change, simply hours after Congress concluded certifying the election for Biden, Scavino instructed Pierson: “We’re dealing w/lot now, however we’ll prevail.”
Scavino was an elusive witness for the choose committee, and the Home voted to carry him in contempt for refusing to cooperate, however the Justice Division declined to prosecute him.
“Encompass the Capitol”
Two days after the Jan. 6 assault, Trump adviser Steve Bannon instructed his spokeswoman that he didn’t essentially assume the struggle to forestall a Biden administration had ended.
In an interview with Bannon’s spokesperson Alexandra Preate, the choose committee learn from a textual content change Preate had with Bannon on Jan. 8, 2021.
“We should flip up the warmth,” Bannon wrote to Preate.
When Preate requested when Trump was leaving city forward of Biden’s inauguration, Bannon replied: “He’s not staying within the White Home after the twentieth. However who says we don’t have a million folks the subsequent day?”
“I’d encompass the Capitol in whole silence,” Bannon added.
New name logs
The choose committee posted Trump’s full White Home name logs from Jan. 2, Jan. 3 and Jan. 5, 2021 — every reflecting the then-president’s intense concentrate on remaining in energy.
The Jan. 2 name log denotes Trump’s hour-long name with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, through which Trump famously urged him to “discover” sufficient votes to flip the election outcomes to him. The logs put that decision in context: Instantly afterward, Trump had a Zoom assembly with lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a cellphone name with chief of workers Mark Meadows and a 22-minute name with Bannon.
On Jan. 3, Trump’s name logs mirror a flurry of contacts with prime Justice Division officers as he contemplated elevating Jeffrey Clark to performing lawyer normal — a determine he considered as sympathetic to his bid to remain in energy. Trump spoke to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) that afternoon simply earlier than the decision logs mirror Clark truly being elevated, nevertheless briefly, to the highest DOJ submit. However the transfer didn’t maintain. The specter of a mass resignation by DOJ leaders prompted Trump to again away from the plan.
“A harmful concept”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) strategized with Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell about her effort to assist the marketing campaign promote the notion that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud and irregularities. However Lee repeatedly pressed Mitchell on the “slippery slope” he stated her arguments entailed.
“Jan. 6 is a harmful concept,” Lee stated, in a message change with Mitchell that she offered to the choose committee. “Not only for the republic itself, but in addition for the president.”
Lee lamented that no court docket or state authority had backed Trump’s effort, so he didn’t view Congress as an acceptable backstop.
“I had someway thought you and I agreed that we’d want one thing like a judgment from a court docket of competent jurisdiction or a call by a state legislature,” Lee wrote.
“That was again once I believed we might get a day in court docket,” Mitchell replied.
The 2 mentioned a technique to have pleasant GOP senators maintain election-related public hearings. Lee initially stated he considered it as a strategy to put an finish to Jan. 6 challenges altogether — give Trump and his supporters a venue to air their frustrations with out lodging precise election challenges. However Mitchell stated she considered the hearings as a prelude to the Jan. 6 challenges.
“We have to make a report,” she stated, including that she had mentioned the technique with Meadows.
Lee famous that the issues might be dealt with by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Judiciary Committee or Sen. Ron Johnson’s Homeland Safety Committee. However Mitchell stated she considered Johnson as a “free cannon.”
“All of us appear like home terrorists now”
Trump aide Hope Hicks texted with Ivanka Trump’s chief of workers Julie Radford on the afternoon of Jan. 6, decrying Trump’s actions and lamenting that their careers had been probably doomed.
“All of us that didn’t have jobs lined up might be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset,” Hicks wrote. “All of us appear like home terrorists now.”
“Oh sure I’ve been crying for an hour,” Radford replied.
“Not being dramatic however appears to be like like we’re all fucked,” Hicks continued. “Alyssa appears to be like like a genius.”
Hicks’ message was an obvious reference to Alyssa Farah, a former Trump White Home aide who departed the administration weeks earlier than Jan. 6.
Turning again to Trump, Hicks expressed outrage about his assault on Vice President Mike Pence within the midst of the violence. “Wtf is unsuitable with him?” she wrote.
Redlines
The choose committee’s proof features a model of Trump’s Jan. 6 rally speech that reveals how a lot he deviated from the written textual content and ad-libbed a few of his most incendiary strains.
“Extra probably a catastrophe”
A bunch of Trump-aligned attorneys, together with John Eastman, William Olson and Kris Kobach, spent the times earlier than Christmas 2020 debating whether or not to file a lawsuit towards Pence, an effort to power his hand and persuade a decide to declare that the vp had the authority to reject Biden’s electoral votes.
That lawsuit would finally be filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and a few of Trump’s GOP allies like Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward in a Texas-based federal court docket. However initially the Trump attorneys fearful that submitting the swimsuit in D.C. — a extra pure venue — would face close to sure defeat or worse: a ruling that Pence was required to depend the electoral votes in Biden’s favor. Their preliminary intuition, when lawyer Larry Joseph despatched a draft of the criticism to the group on Dec. 22, 2020, was that he not file it but.
“I apologize for being so blunt, as all of us are working beneath strain, however strategically though this criticism might be a house run, however extra probably a catastrophe, because it may utterly tank the January 6 technique if it resulted in a judicial willpower within the District through which the Congress will meet that Pence is constrained [by the Electoral Count Act],” Olson wrote.
Olson put the percentages of success in D.C. federal courts at 10 %. However Eastman went additional.
“I put the percentages at successful in both [D.C. federal district or appeals courts] nearer to zero, and the chance of getting a court docket ruling that Pence has no authority to reject the Biden-certified ballots very excessive,” Eastman replied. “And hazard that SCOTUS will decline to take as properly. Finest we may hope for, then, is a dismissal as non-justiciable.”
Gohmert’s swimsuit was filed on Dec. 27 within the Jap District of Texas and was dismissed by a decide there and by an appeals court docket panel.
Trump needed to stroll to the Capitol
The choose committee additionally posted a journal entry produced by Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump White Home press secretary, from Jan. 6 describing a number of the chaos and interactions she noticed that day.
“POTUS needed to stroll to capital [sic]. Bodily stroll,” she wrote. “He stated nice experience beast. Meadows stated not protected sufficient.”
She described efforts to craft tweets with Trump responding to the violence on the Capitol, a name from Sen. Lindsey Graham fearful about studies that the Nationwide Guard had been delayed, and famous that Trump appeared on the TV whereas Biden was delivering remarks on the assault.
“Biden requires him to talk actually as potus filming,” she wrote.
McEnany wrote that as they ready Trump’s video handle, they made positive to have Trump inform rioters to “go dwelling.” “Vital a part of message,” she wrote.
Gen. Charles Flynn disclaims his brother’s fringe “martial regulation” effort
Gen. Charles Flynn told the Jan. 6 select committee that he didn’t share his brother Michael Flynn’s excessive view about using “martial regulation” to grab voting machines or contain the army in Trump’s effort to stay in energy.
“Congresswoman, my brother’s politics are his personal, not mine,” Flynn stated amid questioning by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the committee.
Charles Flynn was briefly current throughout a cellphone name amid the Jan. 6 violence with Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and different safety officers as they mentioned deployment of the Nationwide Guard.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, put a finer point on it, telling the choose committee that Michael Flynn’s phrases crossed strains that might warrant punishment, although he stopped wanting advocating for it.
Milley says Trump admin thought of court-martialing retirees who criticized Trump
Milley’s 300-page interview transcript is jammed with a number of the most explosive information of the Jan. 6 committee’s complete investigation. In a single change, additionally about Flynn, he stated he needed to dissuade Trump administration figures from a suggestion that retired army officers who wrote op-eds important of Trump must be recalled and court-martialed.
“I suggested them not to do this,” Milley stated.
Milley additionally stated he had post-election conversations with senior figures within the Trump administration, together with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and Meadows through which all uniformly described Trump as being in a “darkish place” due to his defeat.
Milley additionally stated he had dozens of calls with overseas counterparts after the Nov. 3, 2020, election to reassure them of America’s stability, regardless of appearances.
Milley says he labeled Jan. 6 docs to make sure “acceptable” dealing with
On the outset of his interview with the choose committee, Milley stated he had gone to extraordinary lengths to gather and shield a “boatload” of paperwork he stated he anticipated can be related to future investigations.
“I knew the importance, and I requested my workers, freeze all of your data, collate them, get them collected up,” he stated.
Later within the interview, he added one other element: After the paperwork had been gathered, Milley stated, he labeled all of it “at a reasonably excessive degree” to make sure solely “acceptable” folks noticed it. He stated most of it might be unclassified and shared with lawmakers and workers.
“Asking for Weight loss program Cokes”
Trump White Home photographer Shealah Craighead told the Jan. 6 select committee that she remembered a reluctant and fidgety Trump struggling to ship his strains throughout early takes of a Jan. 7 video meant to start therapeutic after the assault on the Capitol.
“His agitation of stopping and beginning the dialog was based mostly on asking for Weight loss program Cokes a number of occasions, or stopping to take a sip after which beginning once more, instantly stopping and taking one other sip after which beginning once more, studying a number of the scroll, after which asking for a brand new Coca-Cola, or needing a towel to wipe his head or one thing,” Craighead stated. “Something that he may procrastinate with earlier than getting the phrases out he would do.”
Craighead stated she notably struggled to specific assist for the transition to Biden.
“The ambiance and the temper, in my commentary, based mostly on what I noticed, was that he was nonetheless very a lot towards the transition of the subsequent President and administration coming in,” Craighead stated.
Chesebro pleads the Fifth
Ken Chesebro, an architect of Trump’s plans to ship “alternate” electors to Congress and to make use of them to disrupt the Jan. 6 session of Congress, repeatedly pleaded the Fifth throughout his deposition with the choose committee.
The primary invocation got here when a committee investigator requested him, “Did you could have any conferences with the President?”
He then largely declined to reply substantive questions, citing each Fifth Modification and attorney-client privileges.
Like Eastman, nevertheless, Chesebro didn’t produce any proof of an attorney-client relationship with the Trump marketing campaign. He prompt he was working professional bono and had been drafted to hitch the trouble by Wisconsin-based lawyer Jim Troupis, who dealt with issues for Trump in that state.