Jan. 6 committee holds seventh hearing

Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy said that former President Donald Trump made “last-minute edits” to his Jan. 6, 2021 speech from the Ellipse while listening to a rally attended by far-right extremists held near the White House on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021.

“Based on documents we have received from the National Archives, including multiple draft of the Presidents’ speech, as well as from witness testimony, we understand how that speech devolved into a call to action and call to fight,” Murphy said.

Murphy said that Trump edited his speech to include language that he later tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, including, “we don’t want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore. We also added, together we will stop the steal.”

Murphy said that Trump continued edits to his speech early into the morning of Jan. 6, 2021 and held a 25-minutes phone call with this chief speech writer and senior adviser Stephen Miller.

She said, “These last-minute edits by President Trump to his speech were part of the President’s pressure campaign against his own vice president.”

Murphy said that Miller removed the lines about Pence after having a conversation with White House lawyer Eric Herschmann who objected to the President’s edits, according to testimony from Miller.

Miller recalled Hershmann saying “something to the effect of thinking that it would be counterproductive, I think he thought, to – to discuss the matter publicly.”

Murphy said that the speech writers were advised to add the Pence lines back into the speech after a “heated” phone call Trump had with Pence at 11:20 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Murphy said.

Trump speechwriter Vincent Haley also recalled in committee deposition that a “tough sentence about the Vice President” was added. When Trump gave the speech, it included several more references to Pence, according to the committee’s presentation.

“I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOS and the stupid people that he’s listening to,” Trump said in one of the ad-libbed lines played by the committee.

In another improvised line, Trump called on his supporters to give “weak” Republicans “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

The committee also played dueling testimonies showcasing differing accounts of Ivanka Trump’s decision to attend the rally at the ellipse.

In her deposition, as played during the hearing, Ivanka Trump denied that she attended the rally in the hopes of cooling down her father because he was still overheated from his call with Pence.

However, Julie Radford, an aide to Ivanka Trump, told the committee that Ivanka “felt like she might be able to help calm the situation down, at least before he went onto stage.”

“She shared that he had called the Vice President a not — an expletive word,” Radford told the committee. “I think that bothered her. And I think she could tell based on the conversations and what was going on in the office that he was angry and upset and people were providing misinformation.”

CNN’s Tierney Sne contributed to this report.

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, described the group as a “dangerous militia.”

Van Tatenhove, who spent several years with the group, said rather than use words, the best representative of “what the Oath Keepers are happened Jan. 6” during the insurrection at the US Capitol and the way they used a “stacked military formation going up the stairs.”

He said he noticed the group getting more radical over time, drifting “further and further right — into the alt-right world, into White nationalists and even straight-up racists and it came to a point where I could no longer continue to work for them.”

“The Oath Keepers are a dangerous militia,” Van Tatenhove said, adding people get swept up in the lies and rhetoric of the group and its leader, Stewart Rhodes.

He said the moment when he decided to leave the group was when he heard members talking about how the Holocaust was not real at a grocery store.

“That was for me something I could not abide,” he said.

Jan. 6 rioter Stephen Ayres told the committee that after illegally entering the Capitol he decided to leave “basically when President Trump put his tweet out” asking his supporters to go home.

“We literally left right after that come out,” Ayres said. He added, “To me, if he would have done that earlier in the day … maybe we wouldn’t have been in that bad of a situation.”

Ayres said earlier in his testimony that he believed that Trump would be marching to the Capitol with his supporters.

“I think everybody thought he would be coming down. He said in his speech…it was kind of like he was going to be there with us… I believed it,” he said.

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale texted Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson on Jan. 6, 2021, that the former president was “asking for civil war,” according to text messages obtained by the Jan. 6 committee.

During today’s hearing, Rep. Stephanie Murphy read excerpts from the text exchange between Parscale and Pierson.

Parscale wrote: “this is about trump’s pushing for uncertainty…A sitting president asking for civil war…This week I feel guilty for helping him win.” 

Pierson responded, “you did what you felt right at the time. And therefore it was right.”

Parscale responded, “yeah, but a woman is dead” and “yeah, if I was trump and I knew my rhetoric killed someone.”

Pierson replied: “it wasn’t rhetoric.” 

Parscale wrote back, “Katrina. Yes it was.”

Several of former President Donald Trump’s aides described to the committee how former President Trump gathered his staff in the Oval Office on Jan. 5, 2021, to listen to his supporters rallying near the White House, according to video depositions the committee played on Tuesday.

The description marks the second insider account in Tuesday’s hearing of a troubling Oval Office meeting between the former president and his aides. The hearing also revealed new details about the now infamous Dec. 18 meeting where Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn floated wild suggestions about overturning the election.

Shealah Craighead, Trump’s chief White House photographer, told the committee Trump was talking about going to the Capitol. It’s not clear whether it was a reference to Jan. 6, though his supporters were gathered at Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington the evening of Jan. 5.

“The President was making notes, talking then about, ‘We should go up to the Capitol. What’s the best route to go to the Capitol?’” Craighead said in a deposition.

The aides said that Trump was in a good mood on the evening of Jan. 5 and excited for what was to come the next day. “He was in a very good mood. And I say that because he had not been in a good mood for weeks up to that. And then it seemed like he was in a fantastic mood that evening,” Matthews said.

Judd Deere, another Trump press aide, told the panel that Trump said of the crowd: “They were fired up. They were angry. They feel like the election’s been stolen, that the election was rigged.”

“He continued to reference being able to hear them outside,” Deere added.

A former Twitter employee who worked on the team responsible for platform and content moderation policies said he tried to warn more people at the company of the potential violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

They said the night before the insurrection on Jan. 5, 2021, they said they were on “pins and needles.”

He said he realized that no intervention from the company was coming and former President Trump went unchecked.

“We were at the whims and the mercy of a violent crowd that was locked and loaded,” they said.

Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone praised former Vice President Mike Pence for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and for resisting the pressure campaign by Trump allies seeking to enlist him in their effort to overturn the election results.

In one video clip shown by the committee, Cipollone said, “I think the vice president did the right thing. I think he did the courageous thing. I have a great deal of respect for Vice President Pence.”

In a separate video clip, Cipollone said that, in his view, Pence “didn’t have the legal authority to do anything except what he did,” during the joint session of Congress convened to count and confirm the electoral votes.

Cipollone even went so far as to say that he believed the vice president deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“I think he did a great service to this country. And I think I suggested to somebody that he should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his actions,” Cipollone told the committee.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor a civilian can receive, for special contributions to the culture or security of the United States or world peace.

Allies of former President Donald Trump, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, worked and communicated with leaders of far-right extremist groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said during Tuesday’s hearing.

“In the weeks leading up to the attack, leaders in both The Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers worked with Trump allies. One such ally was Lt. General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and one of the participants in the unhinged meeting at the White House on Dec. 18,” Raskin said.

Raskin noted that Flynn had connections to the Oath Keepers, and showed a Dec. 12, 2020 picture of Flynn with fellow Trump ally and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne being guarded by indicted Oath Keeper Roberto Minuta. “Another view of this scene shows Oath Keepers’ leader Stewart Rhodes in the picture as well,” he said.

Raskin also zeroed in on Stone’s connections to the far-right organizations.

“Another central figure with ties to this network of extremist groups was Roger Stone, a political consultant and longtime confidant of President Trump,” he said.

According to the committee, Stone also used encrypted chats to communicate with the leaders of both groups.

In a chat highlighted by the committee, entitled “Friends of Stone,” Stone communicated with Rhodes, Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander about various pro-Trump rallies. Two of the rallies discussed in the “Friends of Stone” chat – on Dec. 12 and Jan. 6 – broke out in violence at the hands of extremists.

Both Flynn and Stone were pardoned by Trump in the weeks between the election on Nov. 3, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, Raskin added.

An attorney for Stone insisted that the Trump political adviser never participated in the group chat with Rhodes, Tarrio and Alexander.

“Mr. Stone was included in the group chat by whoever established it at the time,” said Grant Smith, an attorney for Stone. “Mr. Stone did not participate in any discussions in the chat and has no recollection of ever posting anything in the chat. If there had been postings by Mr. Stone, the Committee would have included them in the evidence presented. Mr. Stone engaged in only legally protected, First Amendment activities.” 

Stone has insisted he did nothing wrong in the run-up to Jan. 6. However, when he was subpoenaed by the House select committee, he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Oath Keepers counsel Kellye SoRelle, who was also a volunteer lawyer for the Trump campaign, told the Jan. 6 committee that Stone, Alexander and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones brought extremists “of different stripes and views together” as they tried to organize “stop the steal” rallies.

“Those are the ones that became the center point for everything,” she said.

CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.

On Jan. 2, 2021, Katrina Pierson, former spokesperson for Trump’s 2016 campaign who helped organize the rally on Jan. 6, texted former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about the upcoming rally, telling him that “things have gotten crazy.”

Meadows called her back a few minutes later, and Pierson told the Jan. 6 House select committee that she told him “there were a bunch of entities coming in,” adding “some were very suspect.”

When asked what she meant specifically by “suspect,” she said:

Alexander and Jones helped plan a “Stop the Steal” rally at the Georgia state capitol.

Jan. 2 was also the day that Meadows had told former aide Cassidy Hutchinson that the rally “might get real, real bad,” according to Hutchinson’s testimony.

Pierson, who helped organize the rally on Jan. 6, told another organizer that Trump “likes the crazies” as she expressed concerns about potential speakers, according to text messages obtained by the House select committee.

Pierson, who sent the text on Dec. 30, 2020, confirmed to the committee in a deposition that she was talking about Trump. 

“Yes, I was talking about President Trump. He loved people who viciously defended him in public,” Pierson said, according to the video deposition played during Tuesday’s hearing.

Before recording a Jan. 5 podcast in which he predicted that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon spoke to Trump, according to White House phone logs obtained by the Jan. 6 committee. The logs also show that Bannon and Trump spoke again that evening.

The first Jan. 5 call started at 8:57 a.m. from Bannon’s cell phone and lasted 11 minutes, according to the committee’s presentation.  

Bannon also told his podcast listeners that day that it was “all converging” on a “point of attack tomorrow.” 

After recording the evening episode, Bannon had a six-minute phone call with Trump that started at 9:46 p.m., according to the phone logs featured at Tuesday’s hearing.