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What We Learned on Day 2 of the Jan. 6 Hearings

What We Learned on Day 2 of the Jan. 6 Hearings


The one large theme on the second day of hearings by the Jan. 6 committee was that former President Trump was informed repeatedly — together with by his personal legal professional basic — that his “big lie” a few fraudulent election was baseless. But he made the faux declare on election night time anyway, and hasn’t stopped since.

As they did throughout the opening listening to, committee members used video testimony from some of Mr. Trump’s closest associates and advisers — together with blunt feedback from former Attorney General William P. Barr — to indicate that the president will need to have recognized that his claims had been baseless.

Here are another takeaways from the second day of the hearings.

Trump was described as ‘detached from reality’ after the election.

Mr. Barr’s video testimony was some of the most compelling of the morning, with the former legal professional basic describing Mr. Trump as more and more “detached from reality” in the days after the election. In his testimony, Mr. Barr stated he informed the president repeatedly that his claims of fraud had been unfounded, however that there was “never an indication of interest in what the actual facts are.”

The unvarnished portrait of Mr. Trump is a linchpin of the argument that the committee is making an attempt to make: that Mr. Trump knew his claims of a fraudulent election weren’t true and made them anyway. Mr. Barr stated that in the weeks after the election, he repeatedly informed Mr. Trump “how crazy some of these allegations were.”

The committee is making the case that Mr. Trump was a understanding liar. But Mr. Barr’s testimony provided one other potential rationalization: that the president really got here to imagine the lies he was telling.

“I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with, with — he’s become detached from reality, if he really believes this stuff,” Mr. Barr informed the committee.

(*6*)Two teams surrounded Trump: ‘Team Normal’ vs. ‘Rudy’s Team.’

One factor that got here throughout clearly on Monday was that there have been two completely different teams of folks round Mr. Trump in the days and weeks after the election.

Bill Stepien, Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign supervisor, characterised his staff as “Team Normal,” versus the staff led by Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s private lawyer.

A veteran Republican operative, Mr. Stepien was amongst the marketing campaign aides, legal professionals, White House advisers and others who urged Mr. Trump to desert his unfounded claims of fraud. Mr. Giuliani’s staff was feeding the president’s paranoia and pushing him to again unsubstantiated and fanciful claims of poll harvesting, voting machine tampering and extra. “We call them kind of my team and Rudy’s team,” Mr. Stepien informed committee investigators in interviews. “I didn’t mind being characterized as being part of Team Normal.”

Committee members are hoping that the description of the two competing teams in Mr. Trump’s orbit is proof that Mr. Trump made a selection — to take heed to the group led by Mr. Giuliani as an alternative of to those that ran his marketing campaign and labored in his administration. Mr. Trump selected, in the phrases of “Team Normal,” to take heed to these spouting “crazy” arguments as an alternative.

An image emerges of election night time at the White House.

Monday’s listening to opened with a vivid portrait of election night time at the White House, describing the response from the president and people round him when Fox News known as Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Using video testimony of the president’s closest advisers and a few members of his household, the committee confirmed how Mr. Trump rejected the cautionary recommendation he obtained.

Mr. Stepien stated in the video that he had urged the president to not declare victory prematurely, having already defined that Democratic votes had been almost certainly to be counted later in the night time. Mr. Trump ignored him, Mr. Stepien and others stated. Instead, he listened to Rudy Giuliani, who aides stated was drunk that night time, and was urging the president to say victory and say the election was being stolen.

Chris Stirewalt, the Fox News political editor who was fired after his community’s on-air name for Arizona, informed the committee that the shift in returns that night time that prompted the president’s claims of voter manipulation had been not more than the anticipated outcomes of Democratic votes being counted after Republican ones. He expressed delight that his staff was first to precisely name the Arizona outcomes and stated there was “zero” likelihood that Mr. Trump would have received that state.

Millions of {dollars} had been despatched to a nonexistent ‘Election Defense Fund,’ the committee stated.

It wasn’t simply the “big lie,” based on the Jan. 6 committee. It was additionally “the big rip-off.”

In a video presentation that concluded its second listening to, the committee described how Mr. Trump and his marketing campaign aides used baseless claims of election fraud to persuade the president’s supporters to ship hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to one thing known as the “Election Defense Fund.” According to the committee, Mr. Trump’s supporters donated $100 million in the first week after the election, apparently in the hopes that their cash would assist the president combat to overturn the outcomes.

But a committee investigator stated there was no proof that such a fund ever existed. Instead, hundreds of thousands of {dollars} flowed into an excellent PAC that the president arrange on Nov. 9, simply days after the election. According to the committee, that PAC despatched $1 million to a charitable basis run by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of employees, and one other $1 million to a political group run by a number of of his former employees members, together with Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, summed up the discoveries this fashion: (*2*) She added, “So not only was there that big lie, there was the big rip-off. Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.”



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