Jan. 6 witness: Trump 'detached from reality' over election
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 voting fraud on election night, but the defeated president was becoming “detached from reality,” clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, several said.
Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien testified Monday before the House Jan. 6 committee that Trump was “growing increasingly unhappy” at the election results as the night wore on.
Son-in-law Jared Kushner tried to steer Trump away from attorney Rudy Giuliani and his far-flung theories of voter fraud that advisers believed were not true.
Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue recalls breaking down one claim after another — from a truckload of ballots in Pennsylvania to a missing suitcase of ballots in Georgia —- and telling Trump “much of the info you’re getting is false.”
“He was becoming detached from reality,” said former Attorney General William Barr, who resigned. “I didn’t want to be a part of it."
The witnesses appeared before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as the panel focused on the “big lie,” Trump's false claims of voter fraud that fueled the defeated Republican president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and provoked a mob of his supporters to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol.
Most of those appearing did so in previously recorded testimony from closed door interviews over the course of the panel's yearlong investigation. The committee has interviewed some 1,000 witnesses and compiled 140,000 documents, and some members say they have uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against the former president.
Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., opened Monday's hearing saying Trump “betrayed the trust of the American people” and “tried to remain in office when people had voted him out.”
Stepien was to be a key witness Monday, but abruptly backed out of appearing live because his wife went into labor. The ex-campaign manager is still close to Trump, and had been subpoenaed for to appear.
But the panel marched ahead after a morning scramble, showing previously recorded testimony from the ex-campaign manager and others close to the president as Trump latched on to repeated false claims about the election although those closest told him the theories of stolen ballots or rigged voting machines were not true.
Stepien described how the festive mood at the White House on election night turned as Fox News announced Trump had lost the state of Arizona to Joe Biden, and aides worked to counsel Trump on what to do next.
But he turned a deaf ear to them, choosing to listen instead to Giuliani, who was described as inebriated by several witnesses. Giuliani issued a general denial on Monday, rejecting “all falsehoods” he said were being said about him.
“My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, it’s too early to tell, too early to call the race,” Stepien said in the recorded testimony.
But Trump “thought I was wrong. He told me so.”
Kushner testified that he told Trump the approach Giuliani was taking was not one he would take. But the president pushed back and said he had confidence in the attorney.
And Barr, who had previously testified in last week's blockbuster hearing that he told Trump the allegations being raised were bull——, revealed in gripping detail how was “as mad as I'd ever seen him” when the attorney general explained that the Justice Department would not take sides in the election.
Monday's hearing also featured other live witnesses, including Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News Channel political editor who declared on Election Night that Arizona was being won by Biden.
Thompson, D-Miss., and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., were leading the hearing after last week's blockbuster session drew nearly 20 million Americans to see its prime-time findings.
For the past year, the committee has been investigating the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812 to ensure such an assault never happens again. Lawmakers hope to show that Trump's effort to overturn Joe Biden's election victory posed a grave threat to democracy.
A second group of witnesses testifying Monday was to be made up of election officials, investigators and experts who were likely to discuss Trump's responses to the election, including dozens of failed court challenges, and how his actions diverged from U.S. norms.
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