www.nbcnews.com
Takeaways from Day 7 of the Jan. 6 panel: Trump can't be 'willfully blind' in defending assembling the mob
As they build a case that Donald Trump plotted a coup, the House Jan. 6 committee is painstakingly seeking to undercut his argument that the 2020 election was stolen.
Politics
As it builds a case that Donald Trump plotted a coup, the House Jan. 6 committee is painstakingly seeking to undercut his argument that the 2020 election was stolen.
No “rational or sane man” could possibly reach that conclusion given the dearth of evidence and the abundance of top White House advisers who believed that he lost and needed to concede, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the panel’s top Republican, said at the hearing Tuesday.
Trump “cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind,” she added.
Cheney’s argument seemed to be directed as much toward federal prosecutors as to the television audience watching the panel’s seventh public hearing; she has publicly said she thinks the evidence exists to charge Trump with a crime. One potential defense Trump could offer if he were to face charges is that he was genuinely convinced that he had won a second term and was simply trying to respect the will of the voters. Cheney argued otherwise, and the committee spent a sizable chunk of Tuesday’s hearing detailing all the aides and advisers who told him as much.
The latest star witness to rebut Trump’s claim of a stolen election is Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, who didn’t appear in person Tuesday. He gave an eight-hour videotaped deposition last week, parts of which were played at the hearing.
In his testimony, Cipollone said he, too, believed there was no widespread fraud sufficient to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. What’s more, Cipollone said that in private conversations, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Trump would eventually depart the White House gracefully.
That didn’t happen.
Takeaways from the hearing:
Cipollone agreed with Pence that he had no power to overturn the results
Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the electoral vote count on Jan. 6, 2021, was under great pressure from Trump not to certify Biden’s win. He refused to comply, telling Trump the Constitution didn’t give him such sweeping powers. That act of defiance angered Trump.
Testimony on Tuesday revealed that Trump was advised not to single out Pence in his Jan. 6 speech. But he ignored the advice.
As the mob breached the Capitol that day, Trump tweeted that Pence lacked the “courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and the Constitution.”