The next hearing will look at Trump’s « broader planning for January 6, including his plan to corrupt the Department of Justice, » Vice Chair Liz Cheney said.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot put former President Donald Trump’s false election-fraud claims front and center in the second public hearing detailing the probe’s initial findings. The narrowly focused hearing, which wrapped after just over two hours, sought to establish that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, but nevertheless worked to convince swaths of the public that the race had been stolen from him through widespread fraud. The panel showed extensive footage of Trump’s former aides and officials, especially ex-Attorney General William Barr, testifying to the committee about their conversations with Trump and those close to him. Numerous witnesses said that they told Trump at the time of the election that his claims of fraud were false. The committee also heard in-person testimony from former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg and others. Barr ripped ‘crazy’ election fraud claims, questioned Trump’s grip on reality
Barr, who served as U.S. attorney general until late December 2020, emerged as a main character in making the committee’s case that Trump had been repeatedly told there was no evidence for the claims of fraud that he was peddling. In his interviews with the committee’s investigators, the former head of Trump’s Department of Justice repeatedly slammed those election-fraud conspiracy theories as « bulls— » and « crazy », among other terms. He testified that he said as much to the then-president’s face. In one clip, Barr recounted an Oval Office meeting a few weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020, election, in which he had to tell Trump that the DOJ « is not an extension of your legal team » and can’t be used to « take sides in elections » by investigating fraud claims.
« We’ll look at something if it’s specific, credible, and could have affected the outcome of the election, and we’re doing that and it’s just not meritorious, they’re not panning out », Barr recalled saying to Trump. The former head of the DOJ also said he told Trump « that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bulls—. I mean, that the claims of fraud were bulls—. And he was indignant about that. »
« I reiterated that they’d wasted a whole month on these claims on these Dominion voting machines, and they were idiotic claims », Barr said. Barr said he found those claims, that Dominion voting machines were rigged to flip votes to Biden, « disturbing » in that « I saw absolutely zero basis » for them. But « they were obviously influencing a lot of members of the public » even though they were « complete nonsense », Barr said. He added: « I told him that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that and it was doing a grave disservice to the country. »
Barr said Trump gave him a copy of a report filled with election fraud claims. Trump said the report showed that he would get a second term, but « to be frank, it looked very amateurish to me », Barr said.
