The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to reveal its findings of a year-long investigation, at the Capitol in Washington on June 21.Al Drago/The Associated Press
For the past year, a congressional committee has been investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters intent on reversing his presidential election loss to Joe Biden. This past month, the committee has laid out its findings in televised hearings.
Combining live testimony with prerecorded depositions, video clips and documents, the committee has sketched a clear narrative: how Mr. Trump put pressure on state officials, the Department of Justice and his own vice-president to overturn the 2020 election before assembling the crowd that attacked the Capitol.
Committee chair Bennie Thompson described it as “a sprawling, multistep conspiracy” that amounted to “an attempted coup” against democracy. The panel is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, with Mr. Trump’s party mostly opting to boycott it.
Here is some of the evidence presented so far.
Trump planned the march on the Capitol in advance, and tried to lead it himself
Moments after exhorting a rally near the White House to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of the presidential limousine to join the attack. When the head of Mr. Trump’s security detail refused, the president lunged at the Secret Service officer’s clavicle. “I’m the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now,” he said.
This scene, described to the committee by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, was the culmination of a plan by Mr. Trump to have his supporters target Congress as legislators were formally tallying the electoral votes that would deliver Mr. Biden the presidency. U.S. news media, citing an unnamed Secret Service source, have reported that Mr. Trump’s bodyguards confirm the president wanted to go to the Capitol, but dispute that he grabbed the steering wheel or assaulted anyone.
In text messages revealed by the committee, three rally organizers – Katrina Pierson, Kylie Jane Kremer and Ali Alexander – said in the days before Jan. 6 that Mr. Trump was going to send protesters to the Capitol. This evidence could be important in showing premeditation on Mr. Trump’s part, undermining efforts to portray the riot as a spontaneous event that got out of hand.
Trump was repeatedly told by his own people that the 2020 election was not stolen
In the weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020, vote, Republican officials and members of Mr. Trump’s campaign launched investigations into claims Democrats rigged the election. None of them found anything.
“I did not see evidence of fraud that would have affected the outcome of the election,” Bill Barr, Mr. Trump’s attorney-general, said in a taped deposition for the committee.
Jared Kushner, Mark Meadows and Matt Oczkowski – Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, chief of staff, and campaign data expert, respectively – told the then-president he had lost, the committee heard. Even Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified that she “accepted” there had been no fraud.
But Mr. Trump aligned himself with conspiracy theorists who claimed the election was stolen.
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone told the committee that in one late-night Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump’s staff got into a shouting match with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, retired general Michael Flynn and lawyer Sidney Powell, who fed Mr. Trump outlandish stories, including that the Venezuelan government used internet-enabled Nest thermostats to manipulate voting machines.
Trump pushed Republican state officials to overturn the election, and his team put together slates of fake electors
In November, 2020, Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani pressed Rusty Bowers, the Republican Speaker of Arizona’s House, to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in the state. Thousands of undocumented immigrants and dead people had fraudulently voted, they claimed. But when Mr. Bowers asked for proof, Mr. Giuliani admitted, “we’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,” Mr. Bowers told the committee.
Mr. Trump made similarly unsuccessful attempts with Republican officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Meadows and a group of pro-Trump lawyers also assembled slates of fake electoral college members to vote for Mr. Trump in seven swing states, the committee heard. They cast fake ballots and signed paperwork falsely claiming to be the legitimate electors, according to documents presented by the committee and the testimony of several Republican officials.
The plan was to get then-vice-president Mike Pence to throw out electoral college votes for Mr. Biden and replace them with the ones for Mr. Trump.
Trump’s pressure on Pence
On the morning of Jan. 6, Mr. Trump called Mr. Pence from the Oval Office. He repeated a demand he’d been making for weeks: that Mr. Pence, presiding over the electoral vote count later that day, overturn the election result by rejecting Biden electors from several swing states.
When Mr. Pence again refused, according to White House witnesses, Mr. Trump called his vice-president a “wimp” and said “you’re not tough enough to make the call.”
That afternoon, as rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence” and the vice-president was rushed to a secure location in the Capitol’s basement, Mr. Cipollone implored Mr. Meadows to have Mr. Trump tell his supporters to stop, Ms. Hutchinson recounted. “You heard him, Pat,” she quoted Mr. Meadows replying. “He thinks Mike deserves it.”
The theory that Mr. Pence had the authority to reject electoral votes came from a lawyer named John Eastman, who wrote a memo and met with Mr. Pence’s staff to push his case, the committee heard.
Trump pressured the Justice Department to overturn the election result
After the election, Mr. Trump had daily meetings and telephone calls with top officials at the Justice Department, at which he badgered them to use the government’s judicial resources to push his election-fraud claims, the officials testified before the committee.
Among other things, Mr. Trump pressed the department to file a lawsuit calling for the election result to be overturned and to send letters to the legislatures of Georgia and other swing states urging them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory.
When acting attorney-general Jeff Rosen refused to comply, Mr. Trump threatened to fire him and replace him with Jeffrey Clark, the lawyer who had drafted the letter Mr. Trump wanted sent to the legislatures.
Mr. Rosen and two of his former subordinates told the committee that Mr. Trump only backed down after a Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, at which several Justice officials and Mr. Trump’s own White House lawyers informed him the entire senior leadership of the Justice Department would resign if Mr. Clark were appointed.
It was clear ahead of time how dangerous some of the Jan. 6 protesters were
In the days after Mr. Trump announced a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6, the online rhetoric swiftly turned violent. His supporters vowed a “firing squad” to put police officers “in a pool of their own blood” and said they would “bring handcuffs.”
Mr. Alexander, the rally organizer, started a group chat with Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, leaders of far-right groups the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, according to documents presented by the committee. The groups were also in touch with Mr. Flynn and political operative Roger Stone, associates of Mr. Trump’s.
Using evidence from ongoing court cases, the committee showed the Proud Boys opening up the first breach in police lines at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The Oath Keepers allegedly tried to hunt down House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Ahead of his Jan. 6 speech, Mr. Trump was informed many in the crowd were armed and so couldn’t go through the metal detectors to get close to the stage. Not only did Mr. Trump exhort them to march on the Capitol anyway, Ms. Hutchinson testified, he told the Secret Service to get rid of the magnetometers: “‘I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me.’”
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