‘One man’: Trump central cause of deadly January 6 attack, panel says

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President Donald Trump plotted in advance to declare victory in the 2020 election whatever the outcome and was the “central cause” of the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6, a congressional panel alleged on Thursday.

A House of Representatives select committee investigating last year’s riot reconvened in Washington after a two-and-a-half month hiatus for its ninth and possibly final televised hearing. It presented devastating witness testimony that put Trump at the heart of a premeditated coup attempt and violent assault on American democracy.

“The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of January 6th was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed,” Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said in an opening statement. “None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it.

“Exactly how did one man cause all of this? Today, we will focus on President Trump’s state of mind, his intent, his motivations, and how he spurred others to do his bidding, and how another January 6th could happen again if we do not take necessary action to prevent it.”

The argument echoed earlier hearings which maintained a tight focus on Trump as the singular architect of the insurrection, albeit with the help of aides and enablers, white nationalist extremists and a mob of supporters ready to do his bidding.

Cheney – nearing the end of her tenure in Congress after losing a Republican primary race in Wyoming – noted that the committee may ultimately decide to make criminal referrals to the justice department.

Leaving no doubt about Trump’s culpability, she added: “Claims that President Trump actually thought the election was stolen are not supported by fact and are not a defence. There is no defence that Donald Trump was duped or irrational. No president can defy the rule of law and act this way in a Republic, period.”

The select committee has been investigating the attack on the Capitol for more than a year, interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses. It surpassed many observers’ expectations over the summer with a series of hearings that may have convinced some Republicans that Trump bears some responsibility for the riot.

A Reuters/ Ipsos poll showed that in early June, about a third of Republicans said Trump was at least partly responsible for the deadly attack. By late July, the share of Republicans with that view had risen to two in five.

On Thursday the panel sought to reclaim the spotlight less than a month before congressional midterm elections, in which hundreds of Republicans who back Trump’s false claim of election fraud are running for office.

There was no live witness testimony this time but, one by one, committee members presented video evidence from witnesses – some of whom had not been seen at its earlier hearings – and information from nearly a million emails, documents and recordings obtained from the Secret Service.

Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic congresswoman and member of the panel, argued that Trump planned well in advance to declare victory even before all the ballots had been counted.

She said: “We now know more about President Trump’s intention for election night. The evidence shows that his false victory speech was planned well in advance before any votes had been counted. It was a premeditated plan by the president to declare victory no matter what the actual result was. He made a plan to stay in office before election day.”

On 31 October 2020, it emerged, the conservative activist Tom Fitton sent an email to Trump aides Molly Michael and Dan Scavino providing a draft statement for Trump to declare victory before mail-in ballots had been counted. It stated: “We had an election today – and I won.”

At around 2.30am on 4 November 2020, in the east room of the White House, Trump held a celebratory event in which he declared: “Frankly, we did win this election.”

The committee recently obtained footage of Roger Stone, a political consultant and self-proclaimed dirty trickster who worked for Richard Nixon, from a Danish film crew that followed Stone before and after the election for a documentary entitled A Storm Foretold.

A clip from 2 November showed Stone commenting: “I said, fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.” Although it does not have all relevant records of Stone’s communications, the panel said, even Stone’s own social media posts acknowledge that he spoke with Trump on 27 December – as preparations for January 6 were underway.

Video evidence also showed that Brad Parscale, a former Trump campaign manager, testified to the panel that, as early as July, Trump had planned to declare victory in the 2020 election even if he lost.

And congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, told the hearing: “A newly obtained secret service message from that day shows how angry President Trump was about the outcome. ‘Just fyi. POTUS is pissed – breaking news – Supreme Court denied his law suit. He is livid now.'”

Trump and his supporters – including many Republicans on Capitol Hill – have dismissed the January 6 panel as a political witch-hunt, but the panel’s backers say it is a necessary investigation into a violent threat against democracy.

But the committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson, started Thursday’s hearing by making the case that its work is not politically motivated, but rather a bipartisan attempt to get to the bottom of an assault on America’s democracy.

“Over the course of these hearings, the evidence has proven that there was a multi-part plan led by former president Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election,” the Mississippi congressman said. “When you look back at what has come out through this committee’s work the most striking fact is that all this evidence has come almost entirely from Republicans.”

Committee members, who are working on an official report, have said Trump incited the riot by refusing to admit he lost the election and through comments including a December tweet calling on supporters to flock to Washington on January 6, saying, “Be there, will be wild.”

The businessman and former reality TV star denies wrongdoing, repeatedly hinting he will run for the White House again in 2024. He regularly holds campaign rallies where he continues to push his “big lie” falsely that he lost because of widespread fraud.

The attack on the Capitol injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths. More than 880 people have been arrested in connection with the riot, with more than 400 guilty pleas so far.