Among them are clips being informed that Trump’s claims were bogus – as evidenced by a January 6 committee.
One of the biggest questions facing the January 6 committee is whether it can prove that President Donald Trump knew better.
It is possible that Trump committed a crime without even knowing that what his critics call a “big lie” was actually a lie. But the offense the committee has highlighted – obstruction of official proceedings – requires acting “in a corrupt manner”. Showing that Trump was told his claims were false, or that he understood it and proceeded with an attempt to overturn democracy, would be extremely important.
At the start of Thursday’s first public January 6 hearing, the committee set out to make that case. It did so by giving us our first glimpse of the testimony of people close to Trump, including his daughter.
But how compelling were those glimpses – and what does that reveal about how much better those around Trump knew? What we have seen so far is worth analyzing.
Ivanka Trump told the Jan. 6th Committee that she accepted former Attorney General William Barr’s statement saying there was no fraud sufficient to overturn the election https://t.co/YjEvScXAAd pic.twitter.com/KxQyFkAosS
— Bloomberg (@business) June 10, 2022
The first clip played was of former Attorney General William P. Barr. He’s been on record before, labeling Trump’s claims “nonsense” in real-time, and confirmed in a clip played Thursday that he resigned in part because of it. He also called suggestions from Trump and his allies that voting machines made the votes “complete nonsense” – adding that he rejected them out of hand.
“I told them it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on it,” Barr said, “and it was doing a great, serious harm to the country.”
It is unclear when the remarks were made, but Barr described three conversations, the latest of which was December 14 – the date Trump announced Barr’s impending resignation. And the very next day, Trump reportedly urged incoming acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to appoint a special counsel to investigate cases including voting machine conspiracy theories. A few days later, Trump would meet with aides who discussed confiscating voting machines.
Trump’s eldest daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump soon made an appearance via video clip. In it, she recalled when Barr publicly stated on December 1 that there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome of the election.
When asked how it affected him, he replied, “It affected my outlook. I respect Attorney General Barr. So I listened to him.”
Representative Liz Cheney (R-Vy.)’s inaugural statement sums it up effectively as Ivanka Trump saying she agrees with Barr, though Trump’s words in the excerpt—that Barr’s opinion bolstered her view—” impressed” and he “accepted what he was saying””—not so straightforward. She certainly indicated that she found Barr’s approach compelling.
Donald Trump responded by saying that his daughter was just “trying to respect Bill Barr” and did not study the election results himself.
(Peter Baker of The New York Times reported this week that she and her husband, Jared Kushner, never believed the election had been stolen.)
Similarly, the committee played a clip of Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon. He said he was tasked with reviewing claims of voter fraud and, by mid-November, had largely fallen vacant. He said he sent a similar message to Barr – that it was not enough to change the outcome – to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
When asked how Meadows reacted, Cannon said, “I believe the words he used were, ‘So there’s no one there.
Again, it’s worth knowing more. The way Canon describes it, Meadows could have been summarizing information that had just been provided to him – or perhaps asking a question. It is very important that a Trump lawyer was conveying this message; It’s not clear that Meadows necessarily agrees.
The last clip on this front is from Jason Miller, Trump’s longtime campaign aide. He testified about information provided to Trump by internal data expert Matt Oczkowski shortly after the election:
MILLER: I remember he very bluntly told the president that he was going to lose.
Q: And that, Mr. Miller, was based on the county-by-county, state-by-state results as assessed by Matt and the data team?
Miller: Right.
Miller reacted to the clip being played on Twitter Thursday night, suggesting it was the missing reference. He said he testified right afterward that Trump rejected the decision, and that Okczkowski was focused on vote totals and not necessarily legal challenges involving “election integrity.”
which is commendable. This was shortly after the November 3 election, and President Biden was not declared the winner until November 7.
The question, then, is whether to show that many and many people internally agreed that there was nothing to these election claims – and that they repeatedly shared it with Trump – or just that. that people were inquiring and for some time, some of them admitted that there was not enough. It’s clear there was never enough, but showing that people understood it would be huge for the committee.
Trump kept hearing that his fraud claims were false – but those he trusted kept saying they weren’t
The clip that the committee played Thursday night was set to suggest that even Trump’s own children and chief of staff knew better. But so far, the evidence is piecemeal, with Barr’s testimony being the most compelling, and the committee will have to build on it.
ARTICLE BY- Aaron Blake
SOURCES- https://www.washingtonpost.com