Donald Trump
Obstruction now a major focus in Trump documents probe
The FBI investigation into top-secret government information discovered at Mar-a-Lago is zeroing in on the question of whether former President Donald Trump’s team criminally obstructed the probe. A new document alleges that government records had been concealed and removed and that law enforcement officials were misled about what was still there.
The allegation does not necessarily mean that Trump or anyone else will ultimately face charges. But it could pose the most direct legal threat to either Trump and those in his orbit, in part because the Justice Department has historically regarded obstruction as an aggravating factor that tilts in favor of bringing charges in investigations involving the mishandling of classified information.
“It goes to the heart of trying to suborn the very integrity of our criminal justice system,” said David Laufman, who once oversaw the same Justice Department counterintelligence section now responsible for the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
The latest Justice Department motion in the case is focused less on the removal last year of classified information from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and more on the events of this past spring. That’s when law enforcement officials tried — unsuccessfully — to get all documents back and were assured, falsely, that everything had been accounted for after a “diligent search.”
The Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena in May for the records, and officials visited Mar-a-Lago on June 3 to collect them. When they got there, Tuesday’s department document says, they were handed by a Trump lawyer a “single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape” containing documents.
A custodian for the records presented a sworn certification to the officials saying that “any and all responsive documents” to the subpoena had been located and produced. A Trump lawyer said that all records that had come from the White House had been held in one location — a storage room — and that there were none in any private space or other spot at the house.
But the FBI came to doubt the truth of those statements and obtained a search warrant to return on Aug. 8.
Officials had “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the new Justice Department filing says.
In their August search, agents found classified documents not only in the storage room but also in the former president’s office — including three classified documents in office desks, according to the Justice Department. In some instances, the agents and attorneys conducting the review of seized documents required additional clearances since the material was so highly classified.
“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former president’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter,” the document states.
In a court filing Wednesday night, lawyers for Trump decried the search as having taken place in “the midst of the standard give-and-take” between a former president and the National Archives and Records Administration over presidential records. It said the department had “gratuitously” made public certain information, including a photograph of classified documents seized from the home.
The Justice Department has stated in court filings that, besides investigating crimes related to the mishandling of national defense information and other documents, it is also looking into whether anyone committed obstruction. It is not clear from Tuesday’s filing how much of that inquiry might center on Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that his team was cooperative with the FBI, as opposed to any of his lawyers or representatives who were directly involved in making the representations to the department. It’s also unclear what role Trump himself had in those representations.
Obstruction matters because it’s one of the factors investigators look for in weighing whether to bring charges. For instance, in his July 2016 announcement that the FBI would not be recommending criminal charges against Hillary Clinton in an investigation involving handling of her emails, FBI Director James Comey cited the absence of obstruction as one of the reasons.
When the Justice Department charged former CIA Director David Petraeus in 2015 with sharing classified information with his biographer, it made a point of including in court documents details about false statements prosecutors said he made during an FBI interview.
It is not the first time that an obstruction investigation has surfaced in connection with Trump. Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated whether Trump had obstructed an inquiry into whether his 2016 presidential campaign had colluded with Russia, and though Mueller did not recommend charges against the then-sitting president, he also pointedly declined to exonerate him.
In the current case, federal investigators are likely evaluating why Trump representatives provided statements about the status of classified information at Mar-a-Lago that proved easily contradicted by the evidence, as well as which individuals were involved in removing boxes and why.
Sarah Krissoff, a New York lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said the detailed information in this week’s filing tells its own tale.
Read:Trump CFO’s plea deal could make him a prosecution witness
“Reading between the lines of what they were saying here, it suggests that they had very direct information from a source regarding the location of classified documents within Mar-a-Lago and essentially the concealment of, or lack of cooperation with, the prior efforts to recover those documents,” she said.
The purpose of the Tuesday night filing was to oppose a request from the Trump legal team for a special master to review the documents seized during this month’s search and to return to him certain seized property. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is to hear arguments on the matter Thursday.
Trump’s lawyers said in a Wednesday night filing that a special master was needed in the name of fairness, saying that “left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation.”
Cannon on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint such a person but also gave the Justice Department an opportunity to respond.
On Monday, the department said it had already completed its review of potentially privileged documents and identified a “limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information.” It said Tuesday that a special master was therefore unnecessary and that the presidential records that were taken from the home do not belong to Trump.
Feds cite efforts to obstruct probe of docs at Trump estate
The Justice Department said Tuesday it had uncovered efforts to obstruct its investigation into the discovery of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Florida estate, saying “government records were likely concealed and removed” from a storage room even after the former president’s representatives had assured officials that they’d thoroughly searched the property.
The FBI also seized 33 boxes containing more than 100 classified records during its Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and found three classified documents stashed in office drawers, according to a filing that lays out the most detailed chronology to date of stained interactions between Justice Department officials and Trump representatives over the discovery of government secrets.
Tuesday night’s filing included a photo showing the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders, and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time Magazine cover.
The filing offers yet another indication of the sheer volume of classified records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. It shows how investigators conducting a criminal probe have focused not just on why the records were improperly stored there, but also on the question of whether the Trump team intentionally misled them about the continued, and unlawful, presence of government secrets.
The document sheds new details on the events of this past May and June, when FBI and Justice Department officials issued a subpoena for the missing records and then visited a storage room at Mar-a-Lago that contained top-secret documents and other information.
During that June visit, the document says, Trump’s lawyers told investigators that all the records that had come from the White House were stored in one location — a Mar-a-Lago storage room — and that “there were no other records stored in any private office space or other location at the Premises and that all available boxes were searched.”
After that, though, the Justice Department “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
In their search earlier this month, agents found classified documents both in the storage room as well as in the former president’s office, including three classified documents found not in boxes, but in office desks.
The filing responds to a request from the Trump legal team for a special master to review the documents seized during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on the matter.
Trump’s lawyers last week asked for the appointment of a special master who’d be tasked with reviewing the records taken and setting aside documents protected by claims of legal privilege. Cannon on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint such a person but also gave the Justice Department an opportunity to respond.
On Monday, the department said it had already completed its review of potentially privileged documents and identified a “limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information.”
Read:Trump CFO’s plea deal could make him a prosecution witness
In a separate development, the Trump legal team has grown with the addition of another attorney. Chris Kise, Florida’s former solicitor general, has joined the team of lawyers representing Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss the move by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Kise did not return messages seeking comment.
Judge plans to appoint special master in Trump records case
A federal judge in Florida told the Justice Department on Saturday to provide her with more specific information about the classified records removed from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate and said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master in the case.
The two-page order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon signals that she’s inclined to grant a request from Trump’s lawyers, who this week asked for the appointment of an independent special master to oversee the review the records taken from Mar-a-Lago and identify any that may be protected by executive privilege, and to ensure the return of any documents outside the scope of the search warrant.
Read: FBI: Trump mixed top secret docs with magazines, other items
The judge scheduled a Thursday hearing to discuss the matter further, suggesting the Justice Department will have a chance to raise objections to the judge's intentions. In other recent high-profile cases in which a special master has been appointed, the person has been a former judge.
Cannon also directed the Justice Department to file under seal with her more detailed descriptions of the material taken from Trump’s estate “specifying all property seized.” The former president’s lawyers have complained that investigators did not disclose enough information to them about what specific documents were removed when agents executed a search warrant on Aug. 8 to look for classified documents.
The special master appointment, if it happens, is unlikely to significantly affect the direction of the Justice Department investigation, though it’s possible an outside review of the documents could slow the probe down.
Trump CFO’s plea deal could make him a prosecution witness
Donald Trump’s chief financial officer is expected to plead guilty to tax violations Thursday in a deal that would require him to testify about illicit business practices at the former president’s company, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
Allen Weisselberg is charged with taking more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation from the Trump Organization over several years, including untaxed perks like rent, car payments and school tuition.
The plea deal would require Weisselberg to speak in court Thursday about the company’s role in the alleged compensation arrangement and possibly serve as a witness when the Trump Organization goes on trial in October on related charges, the people said.
The two people were not authorized to speak publicly about the case and did so on condition of anonymity.
Also read: Trump’s bond with GOP deepens after primary wins, FBI search
Weisselberg, 75, is likely to receive a sentence of five months in jail, to be served at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island complex, and he could be required to pay about $2 million in restitution, including taxes, penalties and interest, the people said. If that punishment holds, Weisselberg would be eligible for release after about 100 days.
Messages seeking comment were left with the Manhattan district attorney’s office and lawyers for Weisselberg and the Trump Organization.
Weisselberg is the only person to face criminal charges so far in the Manhattan district attorney’s long-running investigation of the company’s business practices.
Seen as one of Trump’s most loyal business associates, Weisselberg was arrested in July 2021. His lawyers have argued the Democrat-led district attorney’s office was punishing him because he wouldn’t offer information that would damage Trump.
The district attorney has also been investigating whether Trump or his company lied to banks or the government about the value of its properties to obtain loans or reduce tax bills.
Former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who started the investigation, last year directed his deputies to present evidence to a grand jury and seek an indictment of Trump, according to former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who previously led the probe.
But after Vance left office, his successor, Alvin Bragg, allowed the grand jury to disband without charges. Both prosecutors are Democrats. Bragg has said the investigation is continuing.
The Trump Organization is not involved in Weisselberg’s expected guilty plea Thursday and is scheduled to be tried in the alleged compensation scheme in October.
Prosecutors alleged that the company gave untaxed fringe benefits to senior executives, including Weisselberg, for 15 years. Weisselberg alone was accused of defrauding the federal government, state and city out of more than $900,000 in unpaid taxes and undeserved tax refunds.
Under state law, punishment for the most serious charge against Weisselberg, grand larceny, could carry a penalty as high as 15 years in prison. But the charge carries no mandatory minimum, and most first-time offenders in tax-related cases never end up behind bars.
The tax fraud charges against the Trump Organization are punishable by a fine of double the amount of unpaid taxes, or $250,000, whichever is larger.
Trump has not been charged in the criminal probe. The Republican has decried the New York investigations as a “political witch hunt,” has said his company’s actions were standard practice in the real estate business and in no way a crime.
Last week, Trump sat for a deposition in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ parallel civil investigation into allegations Trump’s company misled lenders and tax authorities about asset values. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination more than 400 times.
GOP rallies around Trump following FBI search of his estate
For much of the year, small cracks in Donald Trump’s political support have been growing.
Dissatisfied Republican primary voters began to consider new presidential prospects. GOP donors grappled with damaging revelations uncovered by the Jan. 6 committee. S everal party leaders pondered challenging Trump for the party’s 2024 nomination.
But after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Florida estate, the Republican Party unified swiftly behind the former president.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who likely represents Trump’s strongest potential primary challenger, described the Biden administration as a “regime” and called Monday’s Mar-a-Lago search for improperly taken classified documents “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.”
The GOP push to portray Trump as the victim of a politicized Justice Department ignored the potential criminal misconduct that justified the search in the eyes of a federal judge. It overlooked Trump’s role in hiring now-vilified FBI Director Chris Wray, who also served as a high-ranking official in a Republican-led Justice Department. The Biden White House, meanwhile, said it had no prior knowledge of the search.
But the robust defense serves as a fresh reminder of the former president’s enduring grip on the GOP, driven by an ability to use a sense of grievance among many Republican voters toward government and other institutions. Trump tapped into that animosity to overcome two impeachments and the fallout from an insurrection. His allies said Tuesday that the FBI search would only strengthen his position again.
“The sooner he kicks off his campaign, the better,” Indiana GOP Rep. Jim Banks, the chair of the Republican Study Committee, said in an interview.
Banks was among about a dozen Republican lawmakers who spent several hours Tuesday evening with Trump at his summer home in Bedminster, New Jersey. During a meal that included steak, scallops, mashed potatoes, salad and a Trump cookie, the group talked about the upcoming midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race, Banks said.
The former president told the lawmakers “his mind is made up” about a 2024 campaign and “we’ll all be happy with his decision.”
The FBI search seemed to trigger a shift among Trump’s advisers, who had been privately urging him to wait until after the midterm elections to announce his intention to seek the presidency again. Suddenly, some of those same advisers were urging him to launch his campaign before the November elections.
Trump stoked such speculation in the hours after the search by posting a campaign-style video on social media. “The best is yet to come,” he said.
He followed up with a fundraising appeal, making it personal by declaring “it’s important that you know that it wasn’t just my home that was violated — it was the home of every patriotic American who I have been fighting for.”
In Columbia, South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham said he spoke with Trump and felt sure another campaign was coming.
“One thing I can tell you,” Graham said. “I believed he was going to run before. I’m stronger in my belief now.”
As Republicans rallied behind Trump, Democrats pushed back against GOP claims of political interference, without evidence. Some accused the GOP of a departure from its longstanding commitment to “law and order.”
“The FBI director was appointed by Donald Trump,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Asked if the raid might hurt Democrats in the November elections, she said: “You’re talking about if the Justice Department decides to have a warrant to go in because they suspect something is justified, it’s going to have an impact on the election? No, no, no, no, no.”
Some of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics still shied away from embracing the former president. And it was unclear how rank-and-file Republican voters and independents frustrated by Trump’s divisive leadership might be moved by the new developments.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor and one of many Republicans considering a 2024 presidential bid, noted Tuesday that a federal judge had to sign off on the warrant.
“The former president is presumed innocent,” Christie said in an interview. “On the other hand, we can’t immediately impugn the motives of the prosecutors just because they’re from another political party.”
“It’s an extraordinary action. And there better be some pretty extraordinary facts to underlie it. If there are, then they have every right to do it.”
And some other Republican officials seemed to express continued concerns about Trump by refusing to weigh in at all.
The relatively short list of those GOP leaders who remained silent Tuesday afternoon was led by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has privately encouraged his party to move past Trump. But the Kentucky Republican eventually weighed in, saying: “The country deserves a thorough and immediate explanation of what led to the events of Monday. Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately.”
The overwhelming majority — from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to DeSantis, accused the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Justice Department and ignored any potential wrongdoing by Trump.
“The GOP now fully embraces the notion that Trump should, indeed, be above the law, and that Trump 2.0 will be a bonfire of vengeance,” wrote Republican commentator Charlie Sykes, a frequent Trump critic.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is gearing up for a presidential run of his own, said he shared “the deep concerns of millions of Americans” over the search of Trump’s private residence.
He stopped short of attacking the FBI, however. Instead, he said Attorney General Merrick Garland should “give a full accounting to the American people as to why this action was taken and he must do so immediately.”
Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri aggressively condemned the Justice Department on Trump’s behalf.
Hawley called the search “an unprecedented assault on democratic norms and the rule of law.” He called for Garland’s resignation or impeachment and the removal of FBI Director Wray.
Cotton said Garland had “weaponized” the Justice Department against his political enemies. “There will be consequences for this,” he warned.
Also from Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, still another Republican weighing a 2024 run, called the search “unprecedented and alarming.” But like Pence, he added, “We must see the probable cause affidavit before making a judgment.”
The search intensified the months-long probe into how classified documents ended up in boxes of White House records located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. A separate grand jury is investigating efforts by Trump and allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In late June, long before the latest development, 48% of U.S. adults said that Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Views on Trump’s criminal liability broke down predictably along party lines, with 86% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans saying Trump should be charged. Still, the fact that nearly half the country believed he should be prosecuted represents a remarkable position for the former president, pointing to the difficulties he could face in another White House run.
Former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg said Monday’s FBI search would almost certainly strengthen Trump’s standing among Republican primary voters, especially those Republicans who had begun to lean toward DeSantis or another fresh face. But if Trump is ultimately indicted for a federal crime related to the search, as Nunberg said he expects, the former president’s ability to win over a broader group of voters in the 2024 general election could take a major hit.
“Despite the fantasies of everyone from Sean Hannity to Steve Bannon, I can promise you that someone under indictment isn’t going to get elected president of the United States,” Nunberg said.
But on Tuesday, at least, the Republican Party was squarely behind Trump, its undisputed leader.
One of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, almost seemed to thank the Justice Department for bringing her party together.
“I’ve talked a lot about the civil war in the GOP and I lean into it because America needs fearless & effective Republicans to finally put America First,” she tweeted. “Last night’s tyrannical FBI raid at MAR is unifying us in ways I haven’t seen.”
Jan. 6 panel deepens probe to Trump Cabinet, awaits Thomas
The House Jan. 6 committee said Sunday it will interview more former Cabinet secretaries and is prepared to subpoena conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who's married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as part of its investigation of the Capitol riot and Donald Trump's role.
Lawmakers said they are deepening their inquiry after a series of eight hearings in June and July culminating in a prime-time session Thursday, with plans to interview additional witnesses and reconvene in September to resume laying out their findings to the public.
“We anticipate talking to additional members of the president’s Cabinet,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee's vice chair. “We anticipate talking to additional members of his campaign. Certainly, we’re very focused as well on the Secret Service.”
Cheney, R-Wyo., did not identify the Trump administration officials who might come forward, but the committee has previously made clear its interest in speaking with those believed to have considered invoking a constitutional process in the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when hundreds of Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s election.
The committee has aired testimony from former Attorney General William Barr, who said he told Trump that widespread voter fraud claims were “bull——” and had “zero basis.” In last week’s hearing, the committee played testimony from then-Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who said he urged Trump to call a Cabinet meeting to discuss an orderly transition of power.
Other Cabinet members have indicated they may have important details to share.
Betsy DeVos, the education secretary at the time, previously told USA Today that she raised with Vice President Mike Pence the question of whether the Cabinet should consider invoking the 25th Amendment, which would have required the vice president and the majority of the Cabinet to agree that the president could no longer fulfill his duties.
Read: Capitol riot panel blames Trump for 1/6 'attempted coup'
DeVos, in her resignation letter on Jan. 7, 2021, blamed Trump for inciting the mob. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” she wrote.
On the same day, Elaine Chao quit as transportation secretary. Chao, who is married to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the attack had "deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”
Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state at the time who is considering a 2024 presidential run, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump's treasury secretary, also were reported to have discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment, according to Jonathan Karl of ABC News in his book “Betrayal.”
“The floodgates have opened,” said Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., regarding the next phase of its investigation.
Committee members also hope to learn more about Ginni Thomas’ own effort to keep Trump in office and the potential conflicts of interest for Clarence Thomas as a result on Jan. 6 cases that have come before the Supreme Court. The committee sent a letter to Ginni Thomas last month seeking an interview and hopes she will comply, Cheney said.
Thomas communicated with people in Trump’s orbit ahead of the 2021 attack and also on the day of the insurrection.
“We certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily,” Cheney said. “But the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not.”
Cheney also said that while the committee hasn’t decided whether to make a criminal referral regarding Trump to the Justice Department, “that’s absolutely something we’re looking at.”
Added Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.: “I certainly think there’s evidence of crimes and I think it goes all the way up to Donald Trump.”
While a possible Trump prosecution is a matter for the Justice Department, the committee has used its hearings to try to make a case about his political viability as he mulls running in 2024. Some of the most damning testimony aired by the committee has come from Trump’s own top Republican advisers, military leaders and confidants, who admitted to a loss of confidence in his judgment and dedication to the rule of law in the days leading up to and after the Jan. 6 attack.
The committee also wants to get to the bottom of missing Secret Service texts from Jan. 5-6, 2021, that could have shed further light on Trump’s actions during the insurrection, particularly after earlier testimony about his confrontation with security as he tried to join supporters at the Capitol.
Lawmakers also are interested in hearing from Steve Bannon, a Trump ally who was found guilty last week on criminal contempt of Congress charges for refusing to comply with the House committee’s subpoena.
Cheney spoke on CNN's “State of the Union” and “Fox News Sunday,” Kinzinger appeared on ABC's “This Week,” and Luria was on NBC's “Meet the Press."
Ivana Trump, first wife of former president, dies at 73
Ivana Trump, a skier-turned-businesswoman who formed half of a publicity power couple in the 1980s as the first wife of former President Donald Trump and mother of his oldest children, has died in New York City, her family announced Thursday. She was 73.
The former president posted on his social media app that she died at her Manhattan home.
“She was a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life,” he wrote on Truth Social. The couple shared three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.
“She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her,” he wrote. “Rest In Peace, Ivana!”
Read: Italian Premier Draghi's resignation is rebuffed , for now
Two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that police are investigating whether Ivana Trump fell down the stairs and believe her death was accidental.
She was found unconscious near a staircase in the home, the people said. The people could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. The medical examiner’s office will determine an official cause of death.
“It’s been a very sad day, a very sad day,” Eric Trump said as he left his mother’s home near Central Park.
In a statement, he and his siblings called her “an incredible woman — a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty and caring mother and friend.”
Jan. 6 probe: Trump sets rally after ‘unhinged’ WH meeting
In a heated, “unhinged” dispute, Donald Trump fought objections from his White House lawyers to a plan, eventually discarded, to seize states’ voting machines and then, in a last ditch effort to salvage his presidency, summoned supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol for what turned into the deadly riot, the House Jan. 6 committee revealed Tuesday.
In another disclosure, raising the question of witness tampering, the panel’s vice-chair said Trump himself had tried to contact a person who was talking to the committee about potential testimony. And still more new information revealed that Trump was so intent on making a showing at the Capitol that his aides secretly planned for a second rally stage there on the day of the attack.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chair, said it had notified the Justice Department that Trump had contacted the witness who has yet to appear in public.
“We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley declined to comment when asked if the department was investigating the call.
The hearing Tuesday was the seventh for the Jan. 6 committee, which is portraying the defeated Trump as “detached from reality,” clinging to false claims of voter fraud and working feverishly to reverse his election defeat. It all led to his “be there, will be wild” tweet summoning supporters to Washington.
The panel delved into a critical three weeks of secret planning in the run-up to the Capitol attack and heard remorseful testimony from an Ohio father who believed Trump’s election lies and answered the defeated president’s tweet to come to Washington. The panel also heard form a former spokesman for the extremist Oath Keepers who warned of the far-right group’s ability for violence.
Read: 1/6 panel: Told repeatedly he lost, Trump refused to go
“I think we need to quit mincing words about just talk. ... What it was going to be was an armed revolution,” said Jason Van Tatenhove. “I mean, people died that day.”
Tuesday’s session focused in part on December 2020, a time when many Republicans were moving on from the November election Trump lost to Joe Biden. Testimony brought out details of a late night Dec. 18 meeting at the White House with Trump’s private lawyers suggesting he order the U.S. military to seize state voting machines in an unprecedented effort to pursue his false claims of voter fraud .
The panel featured new video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel at the time, recalling the explosive meeting when Trump’s outside legal team brought a draft executive order to seize the states’ voting machines — a “terrible idea,” Cipollone said.
“That’s not how we do things in the United States,” he testified.
Another former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, called the meeting “unhinged” in separate video testimony.
Cipollone and other White House officials scrambled to intervene as Trump met late into the night with attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, retired national security aide Michael Flynn and the former head of the online retail company Overstock. It erupted in shouting and screaming, another aide testified.
“Where is the evidence?” Cipollone demanded of the claims of voter fraud.
“What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts,” testified another official, Eric Herschmann.
But Trump was intrigued and essentially told his White House lawyers that at least Powell and outside allies were trying to do something.
As night turned to morning, Trump tweeted his call for supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress would be tallying the Electoral College results. “Be there. Will be wild,” Trump wrote.
Instantly, the extremists reacted.
The panel showed graphic and violent text messages and played videos of right-wing figures, including Alex Jones, and others vowing that Jan. 6 would be the day they would fight for the president.
Messages beaming across the far-right forums laid out plans for the big day that they said Trump was asking for in Washington. It would be a “red wedding,” said one, a reference to a mass killing in “Game of Thrones.” “Bring handcuffs.”
Several members of the U.S. Capitol Police who fought the mob that day sat stone-faced in the front row of the committee room.
Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups are now facing rare sedition charges over the siege. Nine people died the day of the attack and in its aftermath.
“This tweet served as a call to action -- and in some cases a call to arms,” said one panel member, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.
The committee revealed new details about what happened next, as planning was underway for Trump’s big rally on the Ellipse outside the White House, and aides scrambled to secretly set up a second stage outside the Capitol complex across the street from the Supreme Court.
In a Jan. 4 text message from rally organizer Kylie Kremer to Trump ally Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, Kremer explains: “This stays only between us, we are having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the Ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol.”
Kremer warns that if the information gets out, others will try to sabotage the plans and the organizer “will be in trouble” with the National Park Service and other federal agencies.
”But POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly,’” Kremer wrote.
On the morning of Jan. 5, Trump ally Ali Alexander sent a similar text to a conservative journalist saying: “Ellipse then US capitol. Trump is supposed to order us to capitol at the end of his speech but we will see.”
And the panel showed a draft tweet from Trump, which was obtained from the National Archives and never sent, calling on supporters to arrive early for the rally and expect crowds.
“March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!” the draft Trump tweet said.
Committee member Murphy said, “This was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy.”
Tuesday’s was the only hearing this week, as new details emerge. An expected prime-time hearing has been rescheduled for July 21.
Cheney said the Trump team is shifting its strategy in dealings with the committee, and is now trying to shield the former president from blame, suggesting he received bad advice from “crazy” advisers or was otherwise “incapable” of understanding some of the details of the situation.
Trump is “not an impressionable child,” Cheney said. “Just like everyone else in our country he is responsible for his own actions.”
The panel also heard from a sorrowful Stephen Ayres, the Ohio father who said he got caught up in social media after the election, but has since lost his job and his house after joining the mob at the Capitol. He pleaded guilty last month to disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building.
When Trump summoned supporters to Washington, “I felt like I needed to be down here,” he testified.
Ayers hugged and apologized to the police officers after the hearing.
“The problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
1/6 panel probes Trump pressure on Pence to reject election
The 1/6 committee is set to plunge into Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to salvage the 2020 election by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral count — a highly unusual and potentially illegal strategy that was set in motion in the run-up to the U.S. Capitol riot.
With two live witnesses Thursday, the House panel intends to show how Trump’s false claims of a fraudulent election left him grasping for alternatives as courts turned back dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote.
Trump latched onto conservative law professor John Eastman’s obscure plan and launched a public and private pressure campaign on Pence days before the vice president was to preside over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election victory. A federal judge has said it is “more likely than not” Trump committed crimes over the scheme.
“The illegality of the plan was obvious,” the Jan. 6 panel said in a court filing against Eastman.
The committee will hear from Greg Jacob, the vice president’s counsel who fended off Eastman’s ideas for Pence to carry out the plan; and retired federal judge Michael Luttig, who called the plan from Eastman, his former law clerk, “incorrect at every turn.”
Thursday’s session is also expected to divulge new evidence about the danger Pence faced that day as the mob stormed the Capitol shouting “hang Mike Pence!” with a gallows on the Capitol grounds as the vice president fled with senators into hiding. Nine people died in the riot and its aftermath.
The session is expected to show how Trump’s pressure on Pence “directly contributed” to the attack on the Capitol and how the Eastman strategy posed a “grave, grave threat” to democracy, according to a committee aide who insisted on anonymity to discuss the upcoming hearing.
Ahead of the hearing, Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, said his boss was determined to stay at the Capitol that night and finish the job, despite the threats.
“He knew his job was to stay at his post,” Short said on CNN on Wednesday.
Short said Pence didn’t want the world seeing the vice president leaving the Capitol when “a hallmark of democracy” was under siege.
Read: 1/6 panel: Told repeatedly he lost, Trump refused to go
“He thought it was important that he stay there and make sure the work of the American people was completed that night,” said Short, who testified under subpoena to the committee for eight hours, but has not yet appeared as a live witness.
The panel is reconvening for a third hearing this month after a blockbuster prime-time start last week, followed by logistical setbacks in recent days. Monday’s key witness, former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, abruptly declined to appear in person because his wife was in labor with their child. Wednesday’s scheduled hearing with witnesses from the Justice Department who tried to convince Trump that his claims of voter fraud were just not true was postponed.
Nevertheless, the panel’s yearlong investigation is portraying a publicly gripping account of Trump’s final weeks in office as the defeated president clung to “the big lie” of a rigged election even as those around him — his family, his top aides, officials at the highest levels of government — were telling him he simply lost the election.
Former Attorney General William Barr, who resigned at the end of 2020 rather than be part of Trump’s plans, testified earlier that the president was becoming “detached from reality” if he believed the lies. He said he told the president his claims of voter fraud were “bull-—.”
With 1,000 interviews and reams of 140,000 documents, the committee is connecting the dots, showing how Trump’s false claims of election fraud became a battle cry as he summoned thousands of Americans to Washington for a Jan. 6 rally and then sent them to Capitol Hill to “fight like hell” for his presidency.
More than 800 people have been arrested in the Capitol siege, and the panel is considering whether to send a referral for criminal charges against Trump to the Justice Department. No president or former president has ever been indicted by the Justice Department, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he and his team are following the proceedings in Congress.
For now, the panel is pressing ahead with its hearings, with more scheduled for next week.
Thursday’s will unpack the Eastman plan to have the states send alternative slates of electors from the five or seven states Trump was disputing, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With competing slates for Trump or Biden, Pence would be forced to reject them, returning them to the states to sort it out, under the plan.
Read: Capitol riot panel blames Trump for 1/6 'attempted coup'
Pence refused the plan, believing the founding fathers would not have left it to one person, the vice president, to decide the outcome, Jacob told the panel in previous testimony. Jacob said the idea was utterly against some 130 years of precedent in American history, “entirely made up.”
The committee in hearings ahead will be delving into the roles of extremist groups and others who heeded Trump’s call to Washington. Leaders and others from the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys face rare sedition charges over their roles in the Capitol attack.
Several members of Congress are also under scrutiny, including Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., whom the committee has asked for an interview to discuss a Capitol tour he gave that included basement tunnels to a group of people the day before the attack.
The panel is also probing several candidates for elected office, including the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, who were among the rioters.
The panel, which is expected to deliver a final report on its findings later this year, intends for its work to be a record for history of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. Unlike other national traumas that have pulled the country together, the Jan. 6 Capitol attack appears to have left many Americans divided. Congress splintered over forming the committee, which most Republicans opposed.
The panel’s two Republicans, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, have been shunned by the GOP for their work with Democrats leading the investigation into Trump and his role in the Capitol attack.
Capitol riot panel blames Trump for 1/6 'attempted coup'
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol laid the blame firmly on Donald Trump Thursday night, saying the assault was hardly spontaneous but an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president's effort to overturn the 2020 election.
With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and startling testimony from Trump's most inner circle, the 1/6 committee provided gripping detail in contending that Trump’s repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden's victory led to the attack and imperiled American democracy
“Democracy remains in danger,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the panel, during the hearing, timed for prime time to reach as many Americans as possible.
"Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” Thompson said. "The violence was no accident.”
Also read: Trump set to undergo questioning in July in NY civil probe
The hearings may not change Americans' views on the Capitol attack, but the panel's investigation is intended to stand as its public record. Ahead of this fall's midterm elections, and with Trump considering another White House run, the committee's final report aims to account for the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814, and to ensure such an attack never happens again.
Testimony showed Thursday how Trump desperately clung to his own false claims of election fraud, beckoning supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6 when Congress would certify the results, despite those around him insisting Biden had won the election.
In a previously unseen video clip, the panel played a quip from former Attorney General Bill Barr who testified that he told Trump the claims of a rigged election were “bull——.”
In another, the former president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified to the committee that she respected Barr's view that there was no election fraud. “I accepted what he said.”
Others showed leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys preparing to storm the Capitol to stand up for Trump. One rioter after another told the committee they came to the Capitol because Trump asked them to.
“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel's vice chair who took the lead for much of the hearing. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we're in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”
There was an audible gasp in the hearing room when Cheney read an account that said when Trump was told the Capitol mob was chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged for refusing to block the election results. Trump responded that maybe they were right, that he “deserves it.”
At another point it was disclosed that Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a leader of efforts to object to the election results, had sought a pardon from Trump, which would protect him from prosecution.
When asked about the White House lawyers threatening to resign over what was happening in the administration, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner scoffed they were “whining.”
Police officers who had fought off the mob consoled one another as they sat in the committee room reliving the violence they faced on Jan. 6. Officer Harry Dunn teared up as bodycam footage showed rioters bludgeoning his colleagues with flagpoles and baseball bats.
In wrenching testimony U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards told the panel that she slipped in other people’s blood as rioters pushed past her into the Capitol. She suffered brain injuries in the melee.
“It was carnage. It was chaos,” she said.
Also read: Capitol rioters' social media posts influencing sentencings
The riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of pro-Trump rioters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the Capitol. At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.
Biden, in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas, said many viewers were “going to be seeing for the first time a lot of the detail that occurred.”
Trump, unapologetic, dismissed the investigation anew — and even declared on social media that Jan. 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.”
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: “All. Old. News.”
Emotions are still raw at the Capitol, and security was tight. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.
Against this backdrop, the committee was speaking to a divided America. Most TV networks carried the hearing live, but Fox News Channel did not.
The committee chairman, civil rights leader Thompson, opened the hearing with the sweep of American history. saying he heard in those denying the stark reality of Jan. 6 his own experience growing up in a time and place “where people justified the action of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching.”
Republican Rep. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, outlined what the committee has learned about the events leading up to that brisk January day when Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency.
Among those testifying was documentary maker Nick Quested, who filmed the Proud Boys storming the Capitol — along with a pivotal meeting between the group's then-chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, the night before in nearby parking garage. Quested said the Proud Boys later went to get tacos.
Court documents show that members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were discussing as early as November a need to fight to keep Trump in office. Leaders both groups and some members have since been indicted on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.
In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.
The panel faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the Jan. 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.
Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ushered the creation of the 1/6 panel through Congress and rejected Republican-appointed lawmakers who had voted on Jan. 6 against certifying the election results, eventually naming seven Democrats and two Republicans.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has been caught up in the probe and has defied the committee's subpoena for an interview, called the panel a “scam.”
In the audience were several lawmakers who were trapped together in the House gallery during the attack.
“We want to remind people, we were there, we saw what happened,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn. ”We know how close we came to the first non-peaceful transition of power in this country.”
The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 people for the violence that day, the biggest dragnet in its history.