Takeaways from the January 6 hearing day 7

CNN

By Marshall Cohen, Jeremy Herb and Zachary Cohen, CNN

The latest hearing from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection fleshed out the links between former President Donald Trump’s and the far-right extremist groups that were at the vanguard of the violent effort to stop the transition of power and keep him in office, despite his election loss.

The hearing on Tuesday focused on the loose affiliations between Trump, his informal political advisers, and members of far-right militia groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

The committee walked through snippets of witness depositions, court documents, previously unseen emails and other materials, to make the case that Trump coyly courted these militants and saw them as his troops on the ground, to pressure Congress to overturn the 2020 election.

“All of these efforts would converge and explode on January 6,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and committee member who led parts of Tuesday’s hearing, said during his opening statements.

Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s hearing.

Panel highlights Trump’s ‘call to arms’ tweet

The panel repeatedly highlighted a Trump tweet from December 2020, which they said was a galvanizing call-to-arms that motivated his supporters to come to Washington and disrupt the transition of power.

The tweet claimed that it was “statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” and said there would be a “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” Trump infamously added, “Be there, will be wild!”

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat who led part of the hearing, said that the post was “a call to action, and in some cases as a call to arms, for many of President Trump’s most loyal supporters,” citing comments from many of the rioters and far-right extremists, who said they were inspired by the tweet.

After the tweet, pro-Trump groups rescheduled planned protests for late January and switched the date to January 6, according to the committee. “Stop the Steal” leader Ali Alexander quickly registered the website WildProtest.com and used the site as a clearinghouse for information about the protest.

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones promoted Trump’s tweet and urged people to flock to DC. Jim Watkins, the administrator of 8kun, an online forum that is the home of the QAnon conspiracy, told the House panel that he decided to go to Washington on January 6 after Trump’s tweet.

“There is going to be a red wedding going down January 6,” a person identified as Salty Cracker said in another clip, referring to a massacre from the television show “Game of Thrones.”

Cipollone interview plays a key role in Tuesday’s hearing

Tuesday’s hearing was the select committee’s first chance to show video clips from former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who was interviewed by the committee in a video deposition on Friday.

Cipollone’s testimony added a top voice to the chorus of former Trump aides who have testified to the committee they told the President there was no substantial evidence that the election was stolen from him.

The video clips of Trump’s former aides, which have been played throughout the January 6 hearings, have helped the committee illustrate how those around Trump didn’t believe his baseless claims about the election, even as he continued to plow ahead with efforts to try to overturn the election leading up to January 6.

The committee issued a subpoena to ultimately obtain Cipollone’s video testimony last week after he was called out at an earlier hearing for not agreeing to sit for a deposition. The clips from Cipollone’s pivotal eight-hour interview last week highlighted the split that had grown between Trump and his highest-ranking legal adviser.

In the clips played Tuesday, Cipollone said he was told by then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that in November 2020 Trump would eventually agree to make a graceful departure, that he believed Trump should concede, and that he argued the proposal for the federal government to seize voting machines was a “terrible idea.”

“That’s not how we do things in the United States. There’s no legal authority to do that,” Cipollone said. “There is a way to contest elections. You know, that happens all the time. But the idea that the federal government could come in and seize election machines — I don’t understand why I would even have to tell you why that’s a bad idea for the country. That’s a terrible idea.”

There were numerous clips of Cipollone’s interview played Tuesday, but he could play an even larger role in next week’s hearing that’s expected to focus on what was going on inside the West Wing while the Capitol attack occurred on January 6.

Six witnesses detail ‘unhinged’ Oval Office meeting in December 2020

The committee revealed during Tuesday’s hearing testimony from six participants of a December 18, 2020, Oval Office meeting that devolved into chaos as Trump allies clashed with White House lawyers over various plans for overturning the presidential election — with Trump looking on.

Raskin said the December 18 meeting was “critically important because President Trump got to watch up close for several hours as his White House counsel and other White House lawyers destroyed the baseless factual claims and ridiculous legal arguments offered by Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn and others.”

The committee played video from its interviews with six witnesses who took part in the heated meeting, including Cipollone, who told the panel that he was “not happy” to see people such as Flynn, Powell and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in the Oval Office with the former President.

“I don’t think any of these people were providing the President with good advice, so I did not understand how they had gotten in,” Cipollone said in his deposition, according to video played by the committee Tuesday.

Others who were in the room described how the hours-long meeting broke into screaming matches as outside Trump allies Flynn and Powell accused White House advisers of quitting on the President after they challenged their baseless claims about election fraud and outlandish plans for overturning the results.

“It was not a casual meeting. At times there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other. It wasn’t just sort of people sitting around on the couch like, chitchatting,” former White House adviser Derek Lyons told the panel, according to video of his deposition.

“The four outsiders in the room claiming to have ample evidence to support the findings and others including myself disputing that and then there was a discussion of, well, we don’t have it now, but we will have it or whatever,” he added.

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann also told the committee that the meeting got to the point where “screaming was completely — completely out there.”

“It was really unprecedented. … I thought it was nuts,” he said in the deposition video, acknowledging he told the group of outside Trump allies to “shut the F up.”

Powell accused the White House lawyers of failing to propose any ideas and showing “nothing but contempt and disdain of the President” during the meeting, according to video from her deposition.

White House aides who participated in the meeting, including Cipollone, also pushed back intensely on the suggestion of naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations when it was raised in the meeting.

“I was vehemently opposed — I didn’t think she should be appointed to anything,” Cipollone told the committee, according to a video clip from that meeting played Tuesday.

Flynn had suggested prior to the meeting that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden — an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, a source previously told CNN.

At the time, it wasn’t clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down.

Another idea floated in the meeting was an executive order that would permit the government to access voting machines to inspect them, CNN has reported and deposition video played Tuesday confirmed.

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CNN’s Alex Rogers and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.