Jan. 6 committee holds second hearing

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House select committee, center, Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair, right, as well as Rep. Zoe Lofgren, left, and Rep. Stephanie Murphy, third from left, arrive during the second hearing on Monday, June 13.

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.

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.

A general view shows the House Select Committee hearing in session on Monday.

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. 

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. Zoe Lofgren, left, sits beside Rep. Bennie Thompson as they listen to testimony during the hearing on Monday in Washington, DC.

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.

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.

A video of Bill Stepien is played on a screen above members of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol on Monday.

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. 

Kimberly Guilfoyle speaks at the rally held before the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

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.

US Rep. Bennie Thompson delivers opening remarks during a hearing on the January 6th investigation on Monday in Washington, DC.

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:

A video plays at the hearing on Monday in Washington, DC.

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.