Jan. 6 committee holds second hearing

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol detailed Monday how those around then-President Donald Trump told him he lost the 2020 election — but he refused to listen, turning instead to his attorney Rudy Giuliani to embrace false claims that the election was stolen.

The hearing Monday was one witness short from what was planned, but the panel heard testimony from a former Fox News digital politics editor, a conservative lawyer, a former US attorney and a former Republican election official — who all said it was clear President Joe Biden won the election and Trump’s claims of fraud were nonsense.

The next hearing is set to take place Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, said the presentation will focus on Trump’s “broader planning for Jan. 6, including his plan to corrupt the Department of Justice.” The witnesses have not yet been announced.

Here are the key takeaways from the panel’s second hearing this month about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the violence in the Capitol on Jan: 6.

Stepien surprise sets off a scramble — but committee quickly adapts: The committee surprised many observers Sunday when it announced that Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien would be testifying in-person at Monday’s hearing. But Stepien had a surprise of his own on Monday morning, when he found out that his wife went into labor, so he pulled out of the hearing.

This whirlwind of events forced the committee to scramble – and they handled it deftly, albeit after a 45-minute delay.

Lawmakers and committee staff were obviously prepared with video clips from Stepien’s private deposition. And they played a lot of footage from his testimony Monday, which revealed new details about his conversations with Trump and how he advised the President not to prematurely declare victory on election night.

In some ways, the outcome gave the Democratic-run committee more power to control what the public heard from Stepien. He wasn’t in the room to say his piece, which could have included some defenses of Trump and some pushback against the committee. Instead, the panel could pick and choose which deposition clips it played, and they focused like a laser on the most damaging material for Trump.

Lengthy depositions take place of witness testimony: Stepien’s testimony wasn’t the committee’s only use of depositions on Monday. The panel played lengthy portions of former Attorney General William Barr’s deposition with the committee, where he described in detail why Trump’s fraud claims were “bogus” and why he has seen nothing since to convince him there was fraud.

“There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” Barr said in video of his deposition played Monday. “I was somewhat demoralized, because I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.’ “

The committee did not invite Barr to testify publicly for Monday’s hearing, but the minutes of his deposition that played made it feel at times as though he was there.

The video depositions have also given the committee the chance to show testimony from others in Trump’s inner circle – including Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner – without having to bring them in to testify. And by just showing video depositions, the committee controls which soundbites are aired.

Barr becomes debunker-in-chief: Democrats reviled Barr when he was in office — accusing him of wielding the powers of the Justice Department to do Trump’s bidding, undermining the Russia investigation, and pushing right-wing conspiracy theories. But over the last two weeks, Barr has become a new hero of sorts for liberals, for aggressively debunking and condemning Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

The Democratic-run committee has featured clips from Barr’s deposition more than any other witness so far, and they interviewed more than 1,000 people as part of their yearlong investigation. These clips have established Barr as the highest-ranking Trump administration official to affirm the legitimacy of the election results and disavow Trump’s relentless effort to claim that the election was tainted by fraud.

During Monday’s hearing, Barr dismantled specific Trump-backed claims about illegal “vote dumps” in Detroit, nationwide vote-rigging by Dominion with its election machines, and other conspiracy theories.

Read more takeaways here.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Monday he plans to watch all of the hearings of the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol — and that the prosecutors handling criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6 insurrection are watching, too.

“I am watching and I will be watching all the hearings, although I may not be able to watch all of it live,” Garland said. “But I will be sure that I am watching all of it. And I can assure you that the Jan. 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings as well.”

Garland has faced mounting pressure from Democrats to pursue a criminal case against former President Donald Trump and his allies related to Jan. 6.

Where things stand in the DOJ investigation: The Justice Department has arrested over 840 individuals, charging roughly 255 with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers that day – 90 of whom are charged with using a weapon or causing serious injury to an officer. 

Roughly 185 Capitol rioters have been sentenced so far, with over 80 receiving jail time.   

But the investigation is nowhere close to being over. The Justice Department is still looking for over 350 individuals who they say, “committed violent acts on Capitol grounds.” 

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed reporting to this post.

The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 claimed on Monday that former President Donald Trump and his allies used millions of dollars raised under the guise of assisting with the campaign’s election challenges for unrelated political purposes.

The panel made the case that Trump’s false claims about voter fraud dovetailed with his campaign’s fundraising effort — resulting in $250 million being donated to what was called an “official election defense fund,” that did not exist.

“The ‘Big Lie’ was also a big rip-off,” Rep Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, said during Monday’s hearing.

Instead, the committee claimed that most of the money raised went to the “Save America PAC,” which Trump created on Nov. 9 2020, less than a week after the election.

The PAC then made a series of large donations to a handful of other groups. More than $5 million went to Event Strategies Inc., the company that ran President Trump’s Jan. 6 rally on the ellipse that preceded the attack on the Capitol, according to the committee.

Also among the groups that received donations from Trump’s newly-created PAC was the Conservative Partnership Institute, a political organization led by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that the committee said received $1 million from the Save America PAC.

The committee also claimed that $1 million went to the America First Policy Institute, a conservative organization which employs several former Trump administration officials. More than $200,000 was also donated to the Trump Hotel Collection. 

The Trump team sent out as many as 25 fundraising emails a day, according to the committee’s financial investigator Amanda Wick. “They knew the claims were false,” said Wick during the video played during Monday’s hearing.

“I don’t believe there is actually a fund called the Election Defense Fund,” said Hannah Allred, a former Trump campaign staffer, in a video played during Monday’s hearing.

In that same video presentation, Gary Coby, a former Trump campaign digital director, responded “yes” when asked if the election defense fund was a marketing tactic. 

“Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached,” Lofgren said during Monday’s hearing.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told CNN that the evidence that the committee unveiled today shows directly that former President Donald Trump raised money for purposes that were much different than he and his campaign claimed there were going to be used for. 

“I think it’s a very important part of the story, which is, there was the motivation to try to overturn the election, when he lost it when he knew he lost it, totally lost it. But they still wanted to raise money from it. And they told people this big lie, and they asked him for their money. They said they needed it for their election, Defense Fund, and there was no election Defense Fund. So it just shows more of the corruption of that whole effort,” he said.

Schiff said Trump’s peddling of election lies around the 2020 presidential results was also corrupt, but added that it was not for him to say that it was a crime. 

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the Jan. 6 House select committee, told CNN that the Trump campaign misled donors by spreading false election claims — and both he and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, stopped short of saying Trump committed crimes, arguing that the Justice Department must make that case.

“We’re a legislative committee. And it’s clear that he intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what is said. Now it’s for someone else to decide whether that’s illegal or not. That’s not the purview of a legislative committee,” Lofgren said.

Lofgren said there’s no need to bring former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien back to the committee in person because the video deposition was sufficient. Stepien was set to testify in the hearing Monday, but pulled out of the appearance because his wife was in labor.

She also said former Attorney General Bill Barr doesn’t want to appear in person before the committee as he feels his video deposition of 2.5 hours was sufficient and the panel does not need him in person.

As CNN has previously reported, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien is advising Harriet Hageman, who has backed election fraud claims and is challenging January 6 Committee vice chairwoman Liz Cheney in the Wyoming GOP primary.

At depositions played during this morning’s hearing, Stepien testified that as votes continued to be counted in the days after Election Day in 2020 he and other advisers told former President Donald Trump that the odds of him winning the election were “5 to 10%.” Stepien also said that his assessment at the time was that things were looking “very, very, very bleak.”

But Hageman, who has been endorsed by Trump, has called into question the results of the 2020 election. During an interview with CNN off-camera last year, Hageman repeatedly decline to acknowledge that Joe Biden won, and said, “I think that there are legitimate questions about what happened during the 2020 election.”

In February, she told The New York Times that she didn’t know who the legitimate winner of the 2020 election was. 

Hageman also appeared with Trump at a May rally in Wyoming during which Trump spread falsehoods about the election results.

Stepien’s firm has received more than $190,000 from Hageman’s campaign this election cycle for strategy and fundraising consulting and video production, according to federal election filings.

CNN has reached out Stepien’s lawyer for comment. 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House Select Committee investigating January 6, said in an interview Monday that the committee has evidence that members of the Trump family personally benefited from money that was raised based on the former President’s false election claims.

Lofgren, who played a key role in Monday’s hearing, said specifically that Kimberly Guilfoyle was paid a $60,000 speaking fee for introducing her fiancé, Donald Trump Jr., at the Jan. 6 Ellipse rally that immediately preceded the Capitol riot. 

“It’s a grift,” Lofgren said, though she would not say if she believed there was a financial crime committed.

CNN has reached out to Guilfoyle for comment.

The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol held its second public hearing of the month on Monday, which was focused on former President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

The committee heard testimony today from several witnesses, including former Fox digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt, conservative Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg, former US attorney for the North District of Georgia BJay Pak and former Republican Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt — who all said it was clear President Biden won the 2020 election and Trump’s claims of fraud were not factual.

The panel also played video of recorded depositions from witnesses, including son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Attorney General William Barr. Ex-Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien was slated to testify today but did not appear at the hearing because his wife is in labor. Instead, the panel showed video of his closed-door interviews.

If you’re looking to get caught up on the hearing, here were some of the key moments:

Read takeaways from today’s hearing here.

Monday’s second hearing from the House Jan. 6 committee brought new information to light on what happened the night of the 2020 election inside former President Donald Trump’s White House.

Here’s what we know:

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee, said Monday’s hearing was “very narrowly focused,” but the panel plans to lay out evidence that paints a broader picture of former President Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot at its next hearing, which is set to take place Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET.

The presentation will focus on Trump’s “broader planning for Jan. 6, including his plan to corrupt the Department of Justice,” Cheney said in her closing remarks.

The committee’s central mission has been to uncover the full scope of Trump’s unprecedented attempt to stop the transfer of power to President Biden. This includes Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat by pressuring state and federal officials, and what committee members say was his “dereliction of duty” on Jan. 6, 2021, while his supporters ransacked the US Capitol.

Cheney outlined more of the committee’s plans during the panel’s first prime-time hearing last Thursday. Here’s what to expect moving forward:

Potential upcoming witnesses: CNN has learned that two people directly tied to former Vice President Mike Pence are among those who have received invitations to appear before the committee. Former Pence chief counsel Greg Jacob and former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig have received outreach from the committee about their possible testimony.

In addition, CNN has also learned former Pence chief of staff Marc Short is expected to be called to testify. All three men have already been interviewed privately by committee investigators. In some cases, their testimony has already been used by the committee as part of court filings and subpoena requests of other potential witnesses in their investigation.

How to watch: The committee’s next hearing on Wednesday will be aired live on CNN and a livestream will be featured on CNN.com without requiring a login. CNN’s special coverage of the hearing will stream live on the CNN app, and live coverage with updates will be on CNN.com and cnnespanol.cnn.com.

The Jan. 6 committee’s second hearing has ended.

In a video clip played at the hearing, former Attorney General Bill Barr shot down efforts by former President Donald Trump to suggest there was significant fraud that could have impacted election results in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Barr instead argued that the reality was simply that Trump did not perform particularly well electorally in the state.

“The President has repeatedly suggested there was some kind of outpouring of unexpected votes in inner-city areas like Philadelphia,” Barr said in the video clip. The former attorney general referenced a January interview with NPR where Trump suggested that more people voted in Philadelphia than there were voters. “That was absolute rubbish,” Barr said of the claim.

Barr said there was nothing abnormal about how many people came out to vote in Philadelphia — and that the “obvious explanation” was that “Trump ran weaker than the Republican ticket generally” in the state.

Here’s what Barr said:

“There was nothing strange about the Philadelphia turnout. It wasn’t like there was all these unexpected votes that came out in Philadelphia. I think once you actually look at the votes, there’s an obvious explanation. For example, in Pennsylvania, Trump ran weaker than the Republican ticket generally. He ran weaker than two of the state candidates. He ran weaker than the congressional delegation running for federal Congress, and — I think, I haven’t looked at this recently — but he generally was a weak element on the Republican ticket. So that does not suggest that the election was stolen by fraud.”

While Trump won the state of Pennsylvania in 2016 — which is usually highly contested in presidential elections — President Joe Biden won the state in 2020.

Conservative Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg said there was “never” an instance in which a court found that Trump’s campaign’s fraud claims were credible.

“There was never that instance. In all the the cases that were brought in — and I looked at more than 60 that include more than 180 counts. And no, the simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case,” he told the committee.

Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California said the select committee has identified 62 post-election lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and his allies between Nov. 4, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021. Lofgren said those cases resulted in 61 losses and “only a single victory which actually didn’t affect the outcome for either candidate.”

Asked what he thinks of the claims that Trump was not given an opportunity to provide evidence they had voter fraud and whether they had their day in court, Ginsberg said, “They did have their day in court. About half of those cases that you mentioned were dismissed at the procedural stage for a lack of standing, the proper people didn’t bring the case, or there wasn’t sufficient evidence and it got dismissed on a motion to dismiss.”

“But in the other, there were discussions of the merits that were contained in the complaints. And in no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real. And it’s also worth noting that even if the Trump campaign complained that it did not have its day in court, there had been post-election reviews in each of the six battleground states that could have made a difference,” he told the committee. He went on to list list examples, including the hand recount in Georgia.

More on the witness: Ginsberg is considered a leading Republican expert on election fraud and played a critical role in the Florida recount case when then-candidate George W. Bush defeated then-Vice President Al Gore.

Even before the election, Ginsberg was vocal about the weakness of the former President’s claims. In a September 2020 essay, Ginsberg criticized the assertions as lacking evidence and “unsustainable.”

The hearing on Monday morning was set to focus on how Trump questioned the election process widely, knowing their assertions would not change the outcome, committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican of Wyoming, said last week. 

She said the committee will strive to show how “Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information” even though “Trump and his advisors knew that he had, in fact, lost the election.” 

CNN’s Jamie Gangel contributed reporting to this post.

BJay Pak, the former US attorney for the North District of Georgia, said his office found that the alleged “suitcase full of ballots” was an official lockbox.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has petitioned the US Supreme Court to take up a lawsuit against Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, claiming that there are voting irregularities in each state that still require investigation.

The filing says there is video of “suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables after poll watchers were told to leave.”

Georgia Secretary of State’s office investigated these but didn’t find any evidence of fraud.

Pak said his office conducted its own investigation and found that the “suitcase full of ballots” was an official lockbox where ballots were stored to be kept stafe. The boxes were kept under the tables, he said.

Pak said there was a “misunderstanding” and the partisan poll watchers, assigned by each respective, were told they were done counting ballots for the night and were told they could go home.

“Once they realized the mistake, someone from the secretary of state’s office had indicated ‘no, no, no, we’re not done for the night. You need to go ahead continue counting,’” Pak said.

Pak said they brought back the official ballot box and the poll workers started counting the ballots from the lockbox that was initially packed up.

“Unfortunately, during the Senate hearing, Mr. Giuliani only played a clip that showed them pulling out the official ballot box from under the table,” Pak said.

“In actuality, in review of the entire video, it showed that it was an official ballot box that was kept underneath the tables,” Pak added. “Then we saw them pack up, because the announcement they thought they were done for the night — once the announcement was made that they should continue counting, they brought the ballot box back out.”

Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, said the threats against him became more specific and more graphic after former President Donald Trump tweeted against him.

“On some level it feels almost silly to talk about a tweet, but we can really see the impact that they have. Because prior to that [tweet], the threats were pretty general in nature,” he told the Jan. 6 committee. “After the President tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic. And included not just me by name but included members of my family by name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home.”

Trump, who continues to make unfounded claims about voter fraud and claims that the election has been stolen from him, had attacked Schmidt on Twitter on Nov. 11, 2020, calling him a “RINO,” or a “Republican in name only.”

“He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty. We win!” Trump had tweeted.

Al Schmidt, who served as the only Republican member of Philadelphia’s three-member city commission overseeing the 2020 presidential election, said the commission investigated claims made by Trump and his team of election fraud and found none.

These claims, made by Trump’s allies, included an allegation by Rudy Giuliani that 8,000 dead people voted in the state of Pennsylvania in 2020. Schmidt said this was not true.

Schmidt said that the team “took seriously every case that was referred to us, no matter how fantastical, no matter how absurd,” including the claim of thousands of dead voters.

Former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt is testifying now before the Jan. 6 committee hearing.

“Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania. There wasn’t evidence of eight. We took seriously every case that was referred to us no matter how fantastical no matter how absurd and took every one of those seriously, including these,” he said as he answered a question about a claim from the Trump campaign that “8,000 dead people voted in Pennsylvania.”

The Republican official was a notable voice in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, when he debunked then-President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud in the city.

Schmidt’s home state of Pennsylvania was key in the Trump campaign’s efforts to potentially overturn the 2020 election results.

Schmidt was in a position to investigate fraud claims after the 2020 election, and did not uncover evidence of substantial fraud.

Former US attorney for the North District of Georgia BJay Pak, who abruptly quit during then-President Donald Trump’s mission to overturn the results of the election, is testifying now before the Jan. 6 committee. He was in the position to investigate fraud claims after the 2020 election, and did not uncover evidence of substantial fraud.

Pak resigned from his position after learning that Trump was considering firing him in early January, around the same time that Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” enough votes for Trump to win.

He is appearing before the House select committee Monday voluntarily after receiving a letter of invitation. He is not testifying under a subpoena, his attorney, Edward Kang, told CNN.

The circumstances surrounding Pak’s departure were among the lingering mysteries from a chaotic stretch in early January. At the time, Trump and his allies were focused squarely on Georgia as they sought to push unfounded claims of mass election fraud. Two days before Pak’s resignation on Jan. 4, Trump pressured Raffensperger to validate bogus claims of election fraud in the state.

After Pak’s surprise resignation, Trump replaced him with his US attorney in Savannah, bypassing the normal chain of succession and raising suspicions about Pak’s departure.

CNN’s Evan Perez and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

Read more background on Pak here.

Former President Donald Trump’s Attorney General William Barr provided the House Jan. 6 Committee with a detailed, point-by-point rebuttal of Trump’s false claims about the election in his closed-door deposition. 

In lengthy excerpts of Barr’s taped deposition played during Monday’s hearing, Barr told the committee there was an “avalanche” of fraud allegations coming into the Justice Department after the election that he likened to “playing whack-a-mole.

“There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” Barr said. “My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud. And I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that.” 

On Dec. 1, 2020, Barr told the Associated Press that the Justice Department did not find substantial evidence of voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election. Trump was furious at Barr during an Oval Office meeting later that day, Barr said in his deposition.

Among Barr’s rebuttals of fraud played at Monday’s hearing: 

Clarification: This post has been updated to clarify when the “absolute proof” exchange between Barr and Trump took place.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is back after taking a short break.

Here’s who is testifying next:

Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien told the House Jan. 6 committee that as votes continued to be counted in the days after Election Day in 2020 he and other advisers told former President Donald Trump that the odds of him winning the election were “5 to 10%.”

Stepien also said that his assessment at the time was that things were looking “very, very, very bleak.”

“With each day that wore on, I mean the trajectory of the race on Election Night — Trump ahead in many states — and as that week wore on, as the third became the fourth became the fifth and so on and so forth, and the vote by mail ballots were tabulated, you know, Trump’s lead, you know, grew more narrow. And in, and in some places Biden surpassed, you know, Trump in the vote totals,” Stepien said in a video the committee showed.

Stepien continued, “So as the week wore on, as we paid attention to those numbers, every single — multiple times a day, you know, internally, you know, I was feeling less confident for sure.” 

On the tape, Stepien was then asked, “What was your view on the state of the election at that point?”

“You know, very, very, very bleak. You know, I, we told him, the group that went over there, outlined, you know, my belief in, in chances for success at this point and then we pegged it at, you know, 5, maybe, maybe, 10% based on recounts that were, you know, either were automatically initiated or could be initiated based on, you know, realistic legal challenges, not all the legal challenges that eventually were pursued,” Stepien said. 

“My belief was that it was a very, very — 5 to 10% is not a very good, optimistic outlook,” Stepien said. 

Stepien did not appear in person before the committee on Monday after his wife went into labor, but the committee showed video from Stepien’s previous closed-door deposition. 

As the House Jan. 6 committee’s hearing plays out this morning, the White House is continuing to watch and monitor closely. 

However, as far as President Biden himself is concerned, White House officials do not intend on the President weighing in on the day-to-day, more incremental developments of the committee’s hearings. Instead, the hope is that when Biden does weigh in, those moments are more reserved for significant developments in the hearings, according to a source familiar with the White House’s thinking. 

The bigger context here is that there are certain things that White House officials want to be careful to try to avoid – including the perception that the White House is injecting politics into an ongoing congressional investigation, as well as handing former President Donald Trump and his allies more ammunition to accuse Biden and his team of politicizing the Jan. 6 committee’s work. (All of this, of course, doesn’t mean that there’s no chance that we see Biden – when confronted with questions from reporters in the coming days and weeks – engage on the topic of the Jan. 6 hearings more than his aides would like.)

Asked last week whether he had watched that day’s hearing, Biden shrugged as he told CNN’s Kevin Liptak that he “didn’t have time” to do so.

Donald Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon testified that Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro accused him of being an agent of the “deep state” after Cannon dismissed various 2020 election fraud claims.

But there’s no evidence from Navarro — who refused to cooperate with the select committee’s subpoena — saying that he can’t violate Trump’s executive privilege.

He was arrested last week on contempt of Congress charges.

Navarro’s next court appearance is Friday, but he’s so far argued that he was mistreated by the FBI upon his arrest at Reagan National Airport and denied a post-arrest phone call. The FBI, on the other hand, say Navarro had wanted to call the media, rather than an attorney.

The FBI also says Navarro called the arresting officers “kind Nazis.”

In a video played at today’s hearing, former Attorney General Bill Barr said he thought that he would be fired after telling the Associated Press that there was no widespread election fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Here’s what Barr said in the clip:

“I felt it was time for me to say something — so I set up a lunch with the AP reporter Mike Balsamo and I told him at lunch, I made the statement, that to date we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election. I had a later meeting scheduled at the White House at 3 o’clock with Meadows, this was previously scheduled so I knew this was going to come up. I went over there and I told my secretary that I thought I would probably be fired and told not to go back to my office. I said you might have to pack up for me. So when I got over there, I met with the chief of staff, he said the President was angry.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, had this to say before playing the clip of the former attorney general: “Barr told the Associated Press on December 1, that there was no evidence of election fraud and immediately after Attorney General Barr’s statement went public, Mr. Trump berated and he nearly fired Barr, but Barr persisted in telling the President that there was no evidence to support the fraud claims.”

The AP published a story on Dec. 1 with the headline: Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud

Some of then-President Donald Trump’s top aides were deeply uncomfortable with the conspiracy theories that his outside advisers were pushing about the 2020 election, according to new testimony revealed Monday at the Jan. 6 committee hearing. 

In a videotaped deposition, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said he opposed Rudy Giuliani’s post-election activities, though based on Kushner’s own description of his pushback, it did not sound all that forceful. 

“I guess, yes,” Kushner said, explaining that he told Trump that Giuliani’s strategy was “basically not the approach I would take if I was you.” Kushner said Trump responded by expressing “confidence in Rudy.”  

Some lawyers who had been helping the Trump campaign also balked at what was happening. 

“I had conversations with probably all of our counsel who are signed up to assist on election day…. the general consensus was that the law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making publicly,” Trump campaign general counsel Matt Morgan said in a videotaped deposition, a portion of which was played by the committee. 

This dynamic was reported in real time, with some prominent GOP lawyers steering clear of the more unhinged voter-fraud claims emanating from Trump’s orbit. One major law firm that was involved in a Republican-backed lawsuit put out a statement in November 2020, distancing itself from Trump’s legal strategy, and another law firm that represented the Trump campaign in a Pennsylvania case abruptly withdrew after Trump ramped up his election lies. 

A video clip was played during Monday’s hearing featuring former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien describing a conversation he had with then-President Donald Trump on election night, in which Trump disagreed with Stepien’s recommendation to say it was too early to call the race.

The conversation is one of the first instances during the Jan. 6 congressional hearings where a witness has detailed what conversations they were having with Trump on election night.

The committee played video from Stepien’s deposition where he said that it was his recommendation to say it was “too early to tell” who won the race.

During Monday’s hearing, the committee also played a clip from Trump’s speech in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2020, where he falsely said he had won.

“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election, frankly we did win this election,” Trump said at the time.

Stepien was supposed to testify in person at Monday’s hearing, but he was unable to appear after his wife went into labor. Instead, the committee used video from his previous deposition to help illustrate testimony.

After then-President Trump lost Arizona in the 2020 presidential election, his chances of reelection were “none,” said former Fox digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt.

Stirewalt, who was fired after backlash to the network after — correctly — calling Arizona for now-President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election, also explained why he didn’t think a recount could change the election results in Trump’s favor.

“Ahead of today, I thought about what are the largest margins that could ever be overturned by a recount,” he told the Jan. 6 committee today. “In modern history, you’re talking about 1,000-1,500 votes, at the way, way outside. Normally, you’re talking about hundreds of votes, maybe 300 votes that will change.”

“So the idea that through any normal process in any any of these states — remember he had to do it thrice. He needed three of these states to change … You’re better off to play the Powerball than to have that come in,” Stirewalt said.

Two senior Trump campaign officials testified to the Jan. 6 committee that they told him not to prematurely declare victory on election night 2020 – but that he went ahead and did it anyway.

“It was far too early to be making any calls like that,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in videotaped testimony, a portion of which was played Monday. “Ballots were still being counted… it was far too early to be making any proclamation like that.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller told the committee during his closed-door interview that he told Trump that “we should not go declare victory until we have a better sense of the numbers.”

This matters because it’s part of the committee’s central argument that Trump was told that he lost and shouldn’t declare victory – and that he kept lying about voter fraud and trying to overturn the results.

Stepien said in his deposition that he advised Trump to say that it was “too early to tell” who won but that “we were proud of the race we ran… and think we’re in good position.” But Stepien said Trump made it clear to him that he disagreed with that plan, and he would be declaring victory anyway. Miller said that Trump said that anyone who didn’t support that approach was “weak.”

Late on election night, in an address to the nation from the White House, Trump baselessly said, “we did win this election” and falsely claimed that he was the victim of a nationwide voter-fraud conspiracy.

The committee played clips of Stepien’s and Miller’s testimony, though they haven’t released transcripts of their full depositions. Miller complained last week that the panel cherry-picked some of his words. Stepien was supposed to testify in-person today but pulled out this morning because his wife is in labor.

During Monday’s hearing, the House Jan. 6 committee used video testimony from two of former President Donald Trump’s family members to describe what election night in 2020 was like inside the White House.

“There was an event that was organized in the residence so I moved between the residence, a room sort of off the residence where some family members were,” Trump’s daughter and former White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump said in a clip of her video testimony played on Monday.

Her husband and fellow former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said the former President was “upstairs” in the residence at the White House.

“We were kind of on the first floor, so not upstairs. We were mostly with Ivanka and her brothers and a couple of other people who had been coming in and out,” Kushner said.

Today’s hearing, the House January 6 committee’s second this month, is focusing on Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr told the House Jan. 6 committee that then-President Donald Trump claimed there was major fraud underway “right out of the box on election night … before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence,” according to a previously unseen video clip from his closed-door interview with the panel played during today’s hearing. 

Barr’s testimony adds to the committee’s argument that Trump was already laying the groundwork for his unfounded claim that the election was stolen before it was conceivable that anyone had a chance to examine whether any evidence of widespread voter fraud existed. 

“It seemed to be based on the dynamic that, at the end of the evening, a lot of Democratic votes came in which changed the vote counts in certain states, and that seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud,” Barr says in the video. 

“And I didn’t think much of that, because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night,” Barr adds.

Earlier in the hearing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren linked Trump’s pushing of unfounded fraud claims to fundraising efforts, after Election Day 2020, saying, “The big lie was also a big rip-off.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, asked one of the witnesses at Monday’s hearing —  former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt — about the so-called “red mirage,” which gave a rosier picture for Trump on election night that slowly faded as Democratic-leaning mail ballots were tallied. 

That dynamic – also known as the “blue shift” – was particularly pronounced in 2020, because of the significant uptick in mail-in voting during the Covid-19 pandemic. But this increase didn’t happen evenly across the board – Democrats flocked to postal voting in 2020, while many Republicans preferred in-person voting on Election Day, thanks in large part to Trump’s claims that vote-by-mail was a sham.

This divide created an interesting phenomenon when it came time to count the votes.

Here’s what CNN said about this in September 2020: It takes longer to count mail-in ballots, and in many states, ballots are still admissible if they are postmarked by Election Day but arrive later. In simple terms, this means the partial results that get reported on Election Night will probably look worse for then-candidate Joe Biden than the final, complete count.

“In every election, Republicans win Election Day and Democrats win the early vote. Then you wait and stat counting,” Stirewalt, who was involved in Fox News’ election projections, testified. “…Usually it’s election day votes that count first. You see the Republican shoot ahead… you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it’s not really a lead.”

Check out our full explanation of the “red mirage” here.

Witness Chris Stirewalt, a former digital politics editor for Fox, discussed the “controversial” decision to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.

“Well, it was really controversial to our competitors who we beat so badly by making the correct call first,” Stirewalt told the committee during his testimony.

Stirewalt claimed that his team had “a different set of data than our competitors,” which included more research and a “better system” that allowed them to make the call.

Stirewalt said that his team “knew it would be a consequential call” because Arizona was one of the states “that mattered.” He added that their team “knew Trump’s chances were very small and getting smaller based on what we had seen.”

“We were able to make the call early. We were able to beat the competition,” Stirewalt said, adding that while other outlets were “freaking out and losing their mind” they made the call on Arizona, and then the Fox team moved on to looking at other states’ results.

Asked if as of Nov. 7, 2020 — in his judgment — what were the chances of President Trump winning the election, Stirewalt said, “none.”

Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox digital politics editor, is testifying now before the House Jan. 6 committee.

Fox fired Stirewalt in January 2021 after the right-wing backlash to the network after — correctly — calling Arizona for now-President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.

Stirewalt wrote in a Los Angeles Times piece after his firing that the refusal to believe the election results among many of former President Donald Trump’s supporters was a “tragic consequence of the informational malnourishment so badly afflicting the nation.”

Stirewalt said during an appearance on NewsNation on Friday, where he is now employed as political editor, that he had “been called to testify before this committee and will do so on Monday.”

During the NewsNation interview, Stirewalt said, “I am not in a position now to tell you what my testimony will be about.” He continued: “I was asked to testify and I got to go.”

He criticized both parties for politicizing the Jan. 6 investigation, adding, “These two parties have screwed it up from pen to post.”

Before today’s testimony, Stirewalt published an opinion piece explaining why he is testifying today.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California and Jan. 6 committee member, said in her opening statement that the committee would demonstrate the 2020 election was not stolen, adding, that the Trump campaign’s “big lie was also a big rip-off.” 

“The American people elected President Joe Biden. We’ll present evidence that Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud were false, that he and his closest advisers knew the claims were false but they continued to pedal them anyway right up until the moments before a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol.” 

Lofgren continued: “We’ll also show that the Trump campaign used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts but the Trump campaign didn’t use the money for that. The big lie was also a big rip-off.”

Eric Herschmann, a lawyer who worked in the Trump White House, told the committee he never believed conspiracy theories that election contractor Dominion Voting Systems had switched votes. 

“I thought the Dominion stuff was … I never saw any evidence whatsoever to sustain those allegations,” Herschmann said in his taped deposition, of which the committee played a short clip. 

“His view was shared by many of the Trump team whom we interviewed,” Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney said. Cheney also quoted former Attorney General Bill Barr, who called the Dominion accusations “complete nonsense.” 

Accusations about Dominion became a key part of the Trump campaign’s efforts in court to sow doubt in Joe Biden’s win in late 2020.  

The committee is highlighting on Monday how Donald Trump and his close advisers knew their accusations of widespread fraud were false, yet continued to spread disinformation. Trump and his team also used the false claims of voter fraud to raise campaign funds after the election.  

Several Trump allies — including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell — falsely claimed that Dominion took part in a plot to rig the 2020 election, and spread the idea that voting software was used to swing an election in Venezuela. That was not true, and Dominion has sued Giuliani, Powell and several others for defamation, seeking billions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuits are ongoing. 

Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California and member of the Jan. 6 committee, is speaking now in the hearing.

According to panel aides, Lofgren will play a “key role” in the committee’s presentation today, but the hearing will technically still be led by Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.

Lofgren served as an impeachment manager in the first impeachment trial against Trump. Lofgren is also chair of the Committee on House Administration. Lofgren was first elected to Congress in 1994. She also served as a staffer on Capitol Hill for eight years.

Lofgren has a background as an immigration lawyer and has made reforming immigration law a key part of her portfolio as a member of Congress. She also represents a big part of the Silicon Valley and as a result has had a heavy focus on tech related issues.

She is a long-time ally and friend to Pelosi. The duo has served in the California Congressional delegation together for close to three decades and both represent different parts of the bay area in Northern California.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Jan. 6 select committee, opened today’s hearing by stating that when former President Donald Trump “didn’t have the numbers” to win the 2020 presidential election he “decided to wage an attack on our democracy.”

“[Trump] didn’t have the numbers. He went to court. He still didn’t have the numbers. He lost. But he betrayed the trust of the American people. He ignored the will of the voters. He lied to his supporters and the country,” Thompson said.

Thompson said that Trump “tried to remain in office after the people had voted him out, and the courts upheld the will of the people.” 

The Jan. 6 select committee said Monday that it has evidence showing how then-President Donald Trump cast aside his legal team when they told him that he lost the 2020 election, and replaced them with conspiracy-pushing advisers like Rudy Giuliani. 

“Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani, to just claim that he won,” Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chairwoman of the committee, said in her opening statements. 

Cheney didn’t initially disclose why the committee believes that Giuliani was drunk, though the panel later played a clip from Trump spokesman Jason Miller, whose said in his deposition that “the mayor was definitely intoxicated” at the White House on election night.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a deposition clip, which was played Monday, that Trump “was growing increasingly unhappy with his team” after the election, which “paved the way” for Giuliani to take the reins of the campaign’s legal strategy.

After key states were called for then-candidate Joe Biden, Giuliani and his allies pushed a wide array of debunked theories about massive voter fraud in 2020, and occasionally clashed with the more professional members of Trump’s legal apparatus who knew that the results were legitimate. 

Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing related to the efforts to overturn the election.

This post has been updated.

The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has begun its second public hearing of the month.

House select committee aides said the hearing would scrutinize how Trump embraced false claims of fraud in the 2020 election and how he decided to declare victory in the hours after the election, even though he was told that the numbers didn’t bear it out.

Here’s who is testifying in today’s hearing:

Ex-Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer testify “due to a family emergency.”

A source told CNN that Stepien’s wife is in labor, which is why the committee has released him from his subpoena for the day. The committee has been prepared for such contingencies and has at its disposal deposition video clips from Stepien’s earlier testimony, according to a source.

Read more about today’s hearing here.

CNN’s Manu Raju contributed reporting to this post.

Georgia investigators looking into potential criminality around then-President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state are keeping an eye on the Jan. 6 hearings for anything relevant to their case, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Investigators from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office have already met with staffers from the Jan. 6 select committee to discuss overlap between their investigations. But the committee’s hearings could help shed light on Trump’s motivation and state of mind at the time as he continued to press Georgia officials to upend the results showing Joe Biden won the state.

Over the next two weeks, the congressional committee is slated to hear public testimony from three relevant witnesses in the Georgia probe. Byung “BJay” Pak, a former Atlanta-area US attorney, resigned as Trump was pushing baseless election fraud claims is set to testify today. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who Trump pressed to “find” the votes needed to overturn Georgia’ results is expected to testify next week along with his deputy, Gabe Sterling.

Jeff DiSantis, a spokesperson for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, said, “All relevant evidence will be considered, whether gathered by us or another investigative body.”

The anticipated testimony of former President Donald Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien before the House January 6 committee was unexpectedly upended Monday when Stepien said he couldn’t appear due to a family emergency.

The development is “disruptive” to Monday’s hearing, a source familiar with the committee’s plans said, but the panel has been prepared for such contingencies and has at its disposal deposition video clips from Stepien’s earlier testimony.

Monday’s hearing, the House Jan. 6 committee’s second this month, will focus on Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

House select committee aides said the hearing would scrutinize how Trump embraced false claims of fraud in the 2020 election and how he decided to declare victory in the hours after the election, even though he was told that the numbers didn’t bear it out.

Aides said that the hearing would show how Trump’s team pursued legal challenges in court and lost those cases, and that Trump then chose to ignore the will of the courts and continued to try to overturn the election.

The hearing will also seek to connect Trump’s lies about the election to the violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, aides said, including how rioters echoed the former President’s baseless allegations that the election was being stolen.

Among those expected to testify is former Fox digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt, whose decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night infuriated the Trump campaign — and conservative Fox hosts.

A second panel of witnesses testifying Monday includes former US attorney for the North District of Georgia BJay Pak, who was pressured to embrace Trump’s fraud claims and resigned; former Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt, who debunked false claims about election fraud in Philadelphia; and conservative election attorney Ben Ginsberg, who is expected to speak about the failed court cases pursued by Trump’s team.

Stepien was perhaps the most intriguing witness, as a key member of Trump’s team during the 2020 campaign. He was set to appear under subpoena, he told CNN on Sunday.

Here are key things to watch during Monday’s hearing:

Debunking Trump’s fraud claims

The hearing is the second of seven that the January 6 committee has planned for this month as it lays out a case putting Trump at the center of the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on January 6.

Monday’s hearing is focused on election fraud, and the committee seeks to demonstrate to the public that Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen — which have been embraced by significant share of Republicans, including many GOP candidates running for office this year — are wrong.

More video from testimonies

Stepien’s role in the hearing — and what he has to say about election fraud —was anticipated to provide the most noteworthy moments on Monday. But aides said they also planned to play more video from closed-door interviews they’ve conducted with many in Trump’s orbit.

Those videos proved key in the committee’s opening hearing on Thursday, which previewed how the panel has been told that many of those around Trump knew his claims about election fraud were false.

A more traditional hearing

The first hearing featured two witnesses — a Capitol Police officer and a documentarian who was with extremist groups on Jan. 6 — but their testimony came after a lengthy presentation from committee Chairman Benny Thompson and Cheney that summarized the panel’s findings, as well as a lengthy video showing new footage from the violent attack on the Capitol.

Aides said Monday’s hearing would be a return to a more traditional congressional hearing, with the rest of the committee involved in asking questions and two panels of witnesses.

While Thompson will be leading the hearings, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, is going to play a key role in Monday’s hearing that’s focused on voter fraud, aides said.

It’s a pattern that’s likely to continue with the rest of the committee members in future hearings as well, which will examine how Trump and his allies tried to pressure the Justice Department, state legislatures, and his former vice president, Mike Pence, to help try to overturn the election, as well as what the committee says is Trump’s role in inciting the Capitol riot and his failure to respond as the violence was unfolding.

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

Read more here.

BJay Pak, former US attorney for the North District of Georgia, is scheduled to testify in today’s Jan. 6 select committee hearing and will be the first witness to personally describe how he was pressured by the White House and then-President Trump to find fraud as a way to invalidate the election results in Georgia.

After looking at fraud allegations and finding nothing to back up the claims from Rudy Giuliani and others, Pak was forced to resign.

Pak was a conservative appointed by Trump and did not set out to work against him. 

Pak personally looked into the fraud claims in Georgia, but it wasn’t enough for Trump, who declared him a “Never Trumper” and wanted to fire him.  

More context: The theme we are expected to hear from the former Trump Justice Department witnesses — including Pak — is that even now no evidence has emerged to support Trump’s fraud claims.

It was true in December 2020 and true now: No evidence of fraud to make a difference in the election results. 

Former Attorney General Bill Barr made that point in his closed-door testimony, clips of which have already aired. 

Jan. 6 committee aides said Sunday that today’s hearing would scrutinize how former President Donald Trump embraced false claims of fraud in the 2020 election and how he decided to declare victory in the hours after the election, even though he was told that the numbers didn’t bear it out.

Aides said the hearing would show how Trump’s team pursued legal challenges in court and lost those cases, and that Trump then chose to ignore the will of the courts and continued to try to overturn the election.

“We will reveal information about how the former President’s political apparatus use these lies about fraud about a stolen election to drive fundraising, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars between Election Day 2020 and January 6,” aides added.

The hearing will also seek to connect Trump’s lies about the election to the violence at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, aides said, including how rioters echoed the former President’s baseless allegations that the election had been stolen.

In addition to live witness testimony, aides said the committee will continue to show more multimedia presentations and video recordings from closed-door depositions.

The committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people about how Trump and his team tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election on multiple fronts.

The committee’s first hearing last Thursday was bolstered with never-before-seen video clips showing members of Trump’s White House and campaign — as well as his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner — speaking about how they didn’t believe Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.

Read more about Monday’s hearing here.

Throughout the 2020 campaign, former President Trump repeatedly lied about rampant voter fraud and claimed that the election would be “rigged” against him. He escalated this rhetoric after Election Day by falsely claiming victory, and continued pushing these lies after Biden became the projected President-elect.  

Trump’s campaign and his allies then filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits across the country, seeking to overturn the results, based on spurious fraud claims. Despite losing those lawsuits, Trump continued promoting these lies while pressuring federal, state, and local officials to help him stop the transition of power. These officials largely refused to help Trump with his plan.  

Trump repeated these lies during his Ellipse rally on Jan. 6, which helped spur the Capitol riot. Trump’s rhetoric inspired the vast majority of Republicans to believe that Biden did not win the 2020 election, according to CNN polling. Many of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol also expressed this view. 

The Jan. 6 committee has released testimony from Trump advisers revealing that he was told shortly after the election that he lost – but he kept pushing ahead with disinformation and false claims about the election. Some academics and historians have dubbed this phenomenon as “the Big Lie.” 

As part of building their case today that the Trump campaign was knowingly peddling lies about the election results, the House select committee plans to show how the fundraising apparatus aided that effort and how that money may not have been raised for the purpose intended.

A source connected to the committee said they plan to show how millions of dollars were raised for a still undefined purpose on the back of the election lies.

The fundraising also points to a level of coordination because modern fundraising requires a lot of people involved on all levels and there is also a paper trail of emails, phone calls and text messages that point to that work. 

The committee has been locked in a lengthy court battle over access to fundraising communications from the Republican National Committee and its vendor Salesforce. They ended up delaying their response to a court filing until after their hearings wrap up this month. 

More context: As CNN previously has reported Trump raised enormous sums in the aftermath of the election – bringing in more than $200 million in the weeks after the election, as the President inundated his supporters with fundraising appeals and refused to concede his White House loss.

In the month after the election alone, the Trump political operation sent 414 emails — and another 132 text messages — seeking funds, a CNN tally at the time showed.

Emails asked for donations to “Stop the Left from trying to steal the Election” or offered “COUNT ALL LEGAL VOTES” T-shirts in exchange for $30 contributions. But the legal fine print on those solicitations showed that Trump’s political action committee, Save America, actually got the first cut of any money that came in.

Today, Save America has continued to pull in cash and remains a formidable financial tool for the former President — with cash reserves topping $112 million as of the end of April, according to its most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Today’s hearing before the House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection will now start 30 to 45 minutes late, according to a release from the committee.

The hearing will feature live witness testimony and show more multimedia presentations and video recordings from closed-door depositions, aides said.

The Jan. 6 select committee will try to draw out a theme in today’s hearing and beyond: that if it weren’t for principled people who stood up to him in crucial moments, former President Trump’s plan to overturn the elections could have succeeded, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The committee has witness testimony and documents backing up that argument. 

Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who will help lead the questioning of the witnesses today, will help try to make that argument.

This is a theme that the committee will begin to hammer home today and will continue over the course of the next hearings — about how close Trump was to succeeding.

Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer be appearing in front of the Jan. 6 committee today “due to a family emergency,” according to a release from the committee.

“Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning. His counsel will appear and make a statement on the record,” according to the release.

Stepien, who was at the center of former President Trump’s orbit as he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was not eager to testify but did not want to defy a subpoena, a source familiar with his thinking told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

Stepien’s wife is in labor, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN, which is why the committee has released him from his subpoena for the day. 

Stepien was set to be one of five witnesses testifying before the panel Monday and was among the most high profile given his proximity to Trump and his campaign.

A source familiar with the Jan. 6 select committee’s plans says it is “disruptive” that Stepien isn’t testifying today, but argues that the committee will still be able to make their points.

The source says the committee has been prepared for such contingencies and has at its disposal deposition video clips from Stepien’s earlier testimony. The source said they have been pulling such video clips for all witnesses, in case an emergency arises or witnesses were unable to testify due to a Covid-19 complication.

Stepien’s lawyer Kevin Marino stopped at the witness door pool cam at before the hearing began and said Stepien was planning to appear under subpoena, but learned his wife went into labor. He said it’s his understanding video testimony of Stepien will be played today.

CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed reporting to this post.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who is on the Jan. 6 House select committee, said he believes Attorney General Merrick Garland knows “what’s at stake here” when it comes to a possible indictment of former President Donald Trump from the Department of Justice.

“One of the conventions that was crushed during the Trump administration was respect by politicians for the independence of the law enforcement function,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “Attorney General Garland is my constituent, and I don’t browbeat my constituents. I think that he knows, his staff knows, US attorneys know, what’s at stake here. They know the importance of it but I think they are rightfully paying close attention to precedent in history as well as the facts of this case.”

On the committee revealing this week that multiple Republican lawmakers sought pardons from then-President Donald Trump including Rep. Scott Perry, Raskin called it “shocking.”

“It is multiple members of Congress, as the Vice-Chair said at our opening hearing, and all in due course, the details will surface,” he said. “Everything we’re doing is documented by evidence, unlike the Big Lie, which is based on nonsense as a former Attorney General Barr said, everything that we’re doing is based on facts.”

Raskin also said one of the goals of the hearings is to prove to “any reasonable, open-minded person” that Trump knew he’d lost the election and wanted to overturn the results anyway. 

“He was surrounded by lawyers, including the Attorney General of the United States William Barr, telling him in no uncertain terms in terms that Donald Trump could understand, this is BS,” Raskin said. “He heard it from the White House counsel, he heard it from all of the lawyers who threatened to resign if he staged his little mini coup against the Department of Justice by installing someone that would go along with his fairy tale about their having been electoral fraud and corruption.”

“I think any reasonable person in America will tell you he had to have known he was spreading a big lie,” he added. “He continues to spread it to this very day.”

Perhaps the most compelling and damning moment at the first prime-time hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection came at the end.

In a heavily edited montage of video from official testimony and social media, participants in the riot said they had come to protest the 2020 election results and had stormed the Capitol because Donald Trump asked them to.

This is the crux of the committee’s charge, to show that the former President, in his actions and his words, incited the 2021 riot, which was a violent attempt to stop Joe Biden’s election victory from being recognized by the Electoral College.

For how compelling the first prime-time hearing was – and parts of it were arresting – it leaves major holes for the committee to fill in during the remaining public hearings.

Here are some of the questions that still need answering:

Where is the full testimony?

Seeing a few seconds of Kushner sneering at the idea of White House lawyers quitting is one thing. The public should also see the totality of his testimony.

The same goes for Ivanka Trump, Barr and other recognizable members of the Trump administration.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Gabby Orr wrote that those still in Trump’s orbit or trying to maintain their relationships with him will say their testimony was taken out of context in the short clips released by the committee.

More should be released. House select committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told CNN’s Jake Tapper the committee plans to release transcripts, but he did not give more information.

Is there a direct link between Trump and planning for the riot?

Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, promised that hearings in the coming days will show Trump is directly responsible for the riot – which is an important charge, since Trump has argued he had nothing to do with it.

“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” the Wyoming Republican said in her opening statement. Trump did not intend to give up power, regardless of what it says in the Constitution.

Is there enough evidence for new prosecutions?

These hearings will create a fact base for the insurrection, which is important, but will not themselves create accountability for Trump or his inner circle.

The former President has already survived impeachment twice, which means he can run for president again. All indications are that he plans to.

It is not clear, as we wrote earlier, when or if the Department of Justice will move beyond prosecutions of rally participants to focus on efforts to undermine the election.

CNN’s Evan Perez and Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote before the hearing that Attorney General Merrick Garland was planning to watch but that many Democrats think Garland may have missed his moment to prosecute people from Trump’s circle.

That will remain the biggest question of these hearings – what will come of them? The Department of Justice will need to try to avoid the appearance of influencing the midterm elections by bringing cases just before November.

Read the rest here:

From left to right, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., are seated as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds its first public hearing to reveal the findings of a year-long investigation, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Related article January 6 committee: These questions still need answering | CNN Politics

The Democratic chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol said Thursday that the panel will present witnesses describing conversations between extremist groups and members of former President Donald Trump’s orbit.

Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether there was “going to be witnesses that describe actual conversations between these extremist groups and anyone in Trump’s orbit?” Rep. Bennie Thompson responded: “Yes.

“Obviously, you’ll have to go through the hearings, but we have a number of witnesses who have come forward that people have not talked to before, that will document a lot was going on in the Trump orbit while all of this was occurring,” the Mississippi Democrat said.

Thompson did not elaborate on the nature of the conversations, though evidence gathered in the Justice Department’s Oath Keepers and Proud Boys cases shows that both groups stuck close to some right-wing VIPs, especially those they believed they were providing volunteer “security” for on Jan. 5 and 6, 2021.

Joshua James, an Oath Keeper who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, chauffeured Roger Stone, for instance. Stone also has close ties to prominent members of the Proud Boys, going back years.

During the riot, some Oath Keepers discussed trying to help Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson — though they were not clear whom they were in touch with to learn about Jackson’s status.

And according to another piece of evidence in the case against the Oath Keepers, a lawyer working with the group discussed being in touch with people around the Trump campaign on a recorded November 2020 conference call.

Yet not all the contacts are described so explicitly. One Oath Keeper said as part of his guilty plea that he witnessed group head Stewart Rhodes call an unnamed person the night of January 6, and ask to speak to Trump directly. The person didn’t oblige.

Thompson’s comments came after the panel held its first prime-time hearing, detailing the findings of its investigation and playing new video from closed-door depositions of members of Trump’s team and depicting the violence at the Capitol. The committee introduced the American public to two of the most militant far-right extremist groups in the country, which were present on January 6: The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Keep reading here.

President Biden on Friday said the high-profile summer hearings of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection are “about democracy itself,” stressing that it’s important for Americans to understand what transpired.

“It’s important the American people understand what truly happened and to understand that the same forces that led January 6 remain at work today,” Biden — who has said he has not yet watched Thursday’s first prime-time hearing himself — asserted at the top of his remarks at the Port of Los Angeles.

The President also said the hearings show “how the battle for the soul of America has been far from won.”

“But I know together … we can unite and defend this nation, Democrat and Republican, allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy,” he continued. “That’s what those hearings are all about. You’re gonna hear a lot more.”

On Thursday, Biden called actions taken on the day of the insurrection a “flagrant violation of the Constitution.”

“I think it was a clear, flagrant violation of the Constitution. I think these guys and women broke the law – tried to turn around a result of an election and there’s a lot of questions, who’s responsible, who’s involved,” Biden said, but added that he would not make a “judgment” on who was involved.

Read more here.

Former President Donald Trump had a “sophisticated seven-point plan” to overturn the 2020 presidential election over the course of several months, Jan. 6 committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney said, detailing how the panel plans to use its future hearings to tackle each part of the scheme.

“On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States, despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said in her opening statement at Thursday’s prime-time hearing.

Cheney did not detail the specific points of the plan in her opening statement. She said that the rioters who breached the Capitol and fought with police were motivated by Trump’s actions falsely claiming that the election was stolen from him.

A committee source later provided CNN the following description of the “sophisticated seven-part plan”:

“President Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the transition of presidential power.

President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him. President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General, so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims. President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes in violation of the US Constitution and the law. President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials, and state legislators, to change election results. President Trump’s legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives. President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol. As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.

These are initial findings and the Select Committee’s investigation is still ongoing. In addition, the Department of Justice is currently working with cooperating witnesses, and has disclosed to date only certain of the information it has identified from encrypted communications and other sources.”

The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 is zeroing in on former President Donald Trump, and is preparing to use its platform to argue that he was responsible for grave abuses of power that nearly upended US democracy.

The committee’s central mission has been to uncover the full scope of Trump’s unprecedented attempt to stop the transfer of power to President Biden. This includes Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat by pressuring state and federal officials, and what committee members say was his “dereliction of duty” on Jan. 6, 2021, while his supporters ransacked the US Capitol.

Lawmakers will try to convict Trump in the court of public opinion — which is all they can do because it’s not within their powers to actually indict Trump. But they have an emerging legal foundation to claim that Trump broke the law, thanks to a landmark court ruling from a federal judge who said it was “more likely than not” that Trump committed crimes regarding Jan. 6, 2021.

These highly choreographed hearings will be the panel’s first opportunity to show the public what they’ve learned from more than 1,000 witness interviews and 135,000 documents.

“We are going to tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who serves on the committee, told the Washington Post last week, adding that the committee “has found evidence of concerted planning and premediated activity” related to the events of January 6.

Read more about the committee’s investigation here.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is set to continue to lay out its findings during a public hearing this morning. When and how the events occurred that day have been a key part of their probe.

Supporters of then-President Trump breached the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, engulfing the building in chaos after Trump urged his supporters to protest against the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes to certify President Biden’s win.

Here’s how key events unfolded throughout the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump’s speech:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement earlier on the evening of Jan. 6 that congressional leadership wanted to continue with the joint session that night.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor that the “United States Senate will not be intimidated. We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats.”

It took until deep in the early hours of Thursday morning (Jan. 7, 2021), but Congress eventually counted and certified Biden’s election win.

See the full timeline of events here.

CNN reported last Thursday that Justice Department officials are watching the House select committee Jan. 6 hearings for what kind of possible crimes the committee believes it has uncovered.

It’s possible at the end of the committee’s investigation, it makes criminal referrals, or something less formal by turning over evidence that prosecutors could examine. 

While the committee cannot bring legal charges against former President Trump, Chairman Bennie Thompson said the committee will cooperate with the DOJ.

During a hearing for the criminal case against the Proud Boys last week, Justice Department prosecutors said that the committee is planning to release all 1,000 witness transcripts from its investigation in early September, coinciding with the trial of five Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the riot.

Officials are mindful that some members of the committee have been critical of the pace of the DOJ investigation.

But they believe that criticism is outdated. Recent subpoenas looking into the “alternate electors” scheme and ties to the Trump campaign, as well as other indications prosecutors are looking beyond the rioters and focusing on people who helped instigate the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Where things stand in the DOJ investigation: Seventeen months after the riot, the Justice Department has arrested over 840 individuals, charging roughly 255 with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers that day – 90 of whom are charged with using a weapon or causing serious injury to an officer.  

According to the Justice Department, over 50 defendants have been charged with conspiracy, ranging from conspiring to obstruct a congressional proceeding to conspiring to obstruct law enforcement.

Sixteen individuals – members of the far-right groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers – have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their alleged actions that day, three of whom have pleaded guilty to the charge.

Roughly 305 rioters have pleaded guilty, 59 of whom have pleaded to felony charges. Of the seven January 6 cases that have gone to trial, all but one has been found guilty.

But the investigation is not close to being over. The Justice Department is still looking for over 350 individuals who they say “committed violent acts on Capitol grounds.” 

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed reporting to this post.

The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack held its first prime-time hearing Thursday evening, detailing the findings of the panel’s investigation and playing new video from closed-door depositions of members of former President Donald Trump’s team and depicting the violence at the Capitol.

Thursday’s hearing was the first in a series this month that will highlight the findings of the panel’s investigation, which included interviews with more than 1,000 people about how Trump and his team tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election on multiple fronts.

While many details have been reported by CNN and other media outlets, the committee’s hearings will try to tell the story of January 6 to the American people.

Here are the key takeaways from the hearing:

Trump’s team and family turn against him: The committee’s first hearing was bolstered with never-before-seen video clips showing members of Trump’s White House and campaign — as well as his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner — speaking about how they didn’t believe Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.

Former Attorney General William Barr said that Trump’s claims of voter fraud were “bullshit.”

Ivanka Trump said that she respected Barr and “accepted what he was saying” about the election.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the campaign data person told Trump in “pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose.”

And the committee cited testimony from Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon, who testified he told Meadows by “mid-to-late November” that the campaign had come up empty trying to find widespread fraud in key states that Trump lost. Cannon said Meadows responded to his assessment by saying, “So there’s no there there.”

Visceral footage revives Jan. 6 riot horrors: The committee played a compilation of some of the most disturbing footage from the Jan. 6 attack.

They included some never-before seen material, including birds-eye view footage from security cameras that showed the enormous pro-Trump mob as it started swarming the Capitol grounds.

The footage also showed how the crowd took its cues directly from Trump, with one rioter reading a Trump tweet on a megaphone for the other rioters to hear. In that tweet, Trump criticized Pence for announcing that he would not overturn the results of the 2020 election while presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s win.

After that moment, the committee’s montage showed a now-infamous clip of Trump supporters chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Then they showed a photograph of a makeshift noose and gallows that the rioters erected near the Capitol, as well as a haunting clip of other rioters shouting “Nancy! Nancy!” as they converged on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, searching for her.

These clips immediately harkened back the horrors of Jan. 6, which can easily get lost amid the partisan bickering over the committee and its investigation. But underneath this probe, there was a violent and deadly attack, that injured more than 140 police officers and lead to several deaths. The visceral footage served as a frightening reminder of a dark day in US history.

Trump didn’t want the riot to stop: The committee revealed testimony from Trump White House officials who said the former President did not want the US Capitol attack to stop, angrily resisted his own advisers who were urging him to call off the rioters and thought his own vice president “deserved” to be hanged.

It also offers a new window into Trump’s demeanor during the riot – something the committee has repeatedly suggested would be a key part of their public hearings.

Vice chair Liz Cheney described testimony from a witness who said Trump was aware of chants to “Hang Mike Pence” and seemed to approve of them.

“Aware of the rioters’ chants to ‘hang Mike Pence,’ the President responded with this sentiment: [quote] ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea.’ Mike Pence [quote] ‘deserves’ it,” she said.

Cheney has previously characterized Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6 during those 187 minutes as a “dereliction of duty.”

Read more takeaways here.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol announced witnesses for its hearing on Monday and the list includes former Trump Campaign Manager Bill Stepien plus former US Attorney for the North District of Georgia.

Stepien will testify before Monday’s hearing under subpoena, he tells CNN. 

CNN previously reported Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox digital politics editor, and Benjamin Ginsberg, a conservative election attorney, were set to testify.

Additionally, Al Schmidt, former city commissioner of Philadelphia is slated to testify as well.

Georgia and Pennsylvania were key states in the Trump campaign’s efforts to potentially overturn the 2020 election results.

During the Jan. 6 committee’s first hearing, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the panel, outlined what the committee plans to unveil over the course of its seven June hearings.

Two witnesses who interacted directly with the Proud Boys testified at the House select committee’s first prime-time hearing last Thursday on the Jan. 6 insurrection, setting the scene for future hearings and other witnesses.

Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and documentarian Nick Quested described their experience with the extremist group. Their live testimony followed a video played by the committee of the riot that had not yet been released.

Edwards was asked by Committee Chair Bennie Thompson if she could describe a memory that stands out “most vividly” from the Jan. 6 attack. Edwards went on to describe what she likened to “a war scene,” saying she witnessed “carnage” and chaos.”

She told that committee, “I’m trained to detain a couple of subjects and handle a crowd, but I’m not combat trained.”

Edwards said there were “hours of hand-to-hand combat.” She added that there were also “hours of dealing with things that were way beyond what any law enforcement officer has ever trained for.”

During his opening statements, Quested told the committee that he was surprised at “the anger” he observed and described as “incredibly aggressive chanting.”

“We arrived at the mall and observed a large contingent of Proud Boys marching toward the Capitol,” he said. “I documented the crowd turn from protestors to rioters to insurrectionists. I was surprised at the size of the group, the anger and the profanity.”

Witnesses in upcoming hearings: CNN has learned that two people directly tied to former Vice President Mike Pence are among those who have received invitations to appear before the committee. Former Pence chief counsel Greg Jacob and former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig have received outreach from the committee about their possible testimony.

In addition, CNN has also learned former Pence chief of staff Marc Short is expected to be called to testify.

All three men have already been interviewed privately by committee investigators. In some cases, their testimony has already been used by the committee as part of court filings and subpoena requests of other potential witnesses in their investigation.

Members of the House select committee have been investigating what happened before, after and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — and now they are presenting what they discovered to the public.

The committee is holding another hearing Monday as they continue to roll out preliminary findings from its investigation in a series of presentations this month.

The committee is made up of 7 Democrats and 2 Republicans. It was formed after efforts to create an independent 9/11-style commission failed.

Rep. Liz Cheney is one of two Republicans on the panel appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled all five of his selections because Pelosi would not accept two of his picks. In July 2021, Pelosi invited GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to join the committee, making him the second GOP lawmaker to sit on the panel.

Here’s who is on the panel — and key things to know about them:

Democrats:

Republicans