By LISA MASCARO and FARNOUSH AMIRI
WASHINGTON (AP) — Abruptly elevating the query of witness tampering, the Jan. 6 committee revealed Tuesday that Donald Trump had tried to contact an individual who was speaking to the panel about its investigation of the previous president and the 2021 assault on the Capitol.
“We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” mentioned Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. She mentioned the committee had notified the Justice Department.
The particular person Trump tried to contact declined to reply or reply to his name, Cheney mentioned. Instead the particular person alerted their lawyer who contacted the committee.
The disclosure by Cheney was not the primary time the panel has raised considerations about witnesses being contacted by Trump’s group in ways in which may replicate or at the least create the looks of inappropriate affect. It divulged examples final week of different instances witnesses have acquired outreach from Trump allies, some suggesting he was conscious they had been speaking to the committee, forward of testimony earlier than the panel.
A Trump spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The listening to Tuesday was the seventh for the Jan. 6 committee. Over the previous month, the panel has created a story of a defeated Trump “detached from reality,” clinging to false claims of voter fraud and dealing feverishly to reverse his election defeat. It all culminated with the assault on the Capitol, the committee says.
Tuesday’s session revealed particulars of an “unhinged” late night time assembly on the White House with Donald Trump’s exterior attorneys suggesting the army seize state voting machines in a last-ditch effort to pursue his false claims of voter fraud earlier than the defeated president summoned a mob to the U.S. Capitol.
The committee investigating final 12 months’s assault on the Capitol is working to indicate how far-right extremists answered Trump’s name to come back for a giant rally in Washington. As dozens of lawsuits and his claims of voter fraud fizzled, Trump met late into the night time of Dec. 18 with attorneys on the White House earlier than tweeting the rally invitation — “Be there, will be wild!” Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers teams at the moment are going through uncommon sedition costs over the siege.
“This tweet served as a call to action — and in some cases a call to arms.” mentioned one panel member, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.
The panel featured new video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House counsel, recalling the explosive assembly on the White House when Trump’s exterior authorized group introduced a draft govt order to grab states’ voting machines — a “terrible idea,” he mentioned.
“That’s not how we do things in the United States,” Cipollone testified.
Another aide referred to as the assembly “unhinged.”
Cipollone and different White House officers scrambled to intervene within the late-night assembly Trump was having with attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, retired nationwide safety aide Michael Flynn and the top of the web retail firm Overstock. It erupted in shouting and screaming, one other aide testified.
“Where is the evidence?” Cipollone demanded of the false claims of voter fraud.
“What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts,” testified one other White House official, Eric Herschmann.
But Trump was intrigued and primarily instructed his White House attorneys that at the least Powell and out of doors allies had been making an attempt to do one thing.
“You guys are not tough enough,” Giuliani in video testimony recalled the president telling the White House attorneys. “You guys are p—-,” he mentioned, utilizing crass language.
As night time turned to morning, Trump tweeted the decision for supporters to come back to Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress can be tallying the Electoral College outcomes. “Be there. Will be wild,” Trump wrote.
Immediately, the extremists reacted.
The panel confirmed graphic and violent textual content messages and performed movies of right-wing figures, together with Alex Jones, and others laying out that Jan. 6 can be the day they struggle for the president.
In vulgar and sometimes racist language the messages beaming throughout the far-right boards deliberate for the massive day that they mentioned Trump was asking for in Washington. It can be a “red wedding,” mentioned one, a reference to mass killing. “Bring handcuffs.”
Several members of the U.S. Capitol Police who fought the mob that day sat stone-faced within the entrance row of the committee room.
“The problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy,” mentioned Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., in opening remarks.
At the witness desk to testify in particular person was Jason Van Tatenhove, an ally of Oath Keepers chief Stewart Rhodes. Another witness was Stephen Ayres, who pleaded responsible final month to disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted constructing. He has mentioned that on Jan. 2, 2021, he posted a picture stating that Trump was “calling on us to come back to Washington on January 6th for a big protest.”
The committee is probing whether or not the extremist teams, together with the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon adherents who had rallied for Trump earlier than, coordinated with White House allies for Jan. 6. The Oath Keepers have denied there was any plan to storm the Capitol.
The committee started the second half of the listening to making connections between Trump allies Flynn and Roger Stone and the extremist teams who had been getting ready to come back to Washington.
It confirmed displaying an image of Rhodes, the Oath Keeper chief, strolling with Flynn, the previous nationwide safety aide to Trump, exterior the Capitol in some unspecified time in the future.
This was the one listening to this week, as new particulars emerge. An anticipated prime-time listening to Thursday has been shelved for now.
This week’s session comes after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson supplied gorgeous accounts beneath oath of an indignant Trump who knowingly despatched armed supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6 after which refused to shortly name them off as violence erupted, siding with the rioters as they searched menacingly for Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump has mentioned Cassidy’s account is just not true. But Cipollone at Friday’s non-public session didn’t contradict earlier testimony. Raskin mentioned the panel deliberate to make use of “a lot” of Cipollone’s testimony.
The Proud Boys have mentioned their membership grew after Trump, throughout his first debate with Biden, refused to outright condemn the group however as a substitute instructed them to “stand back and stand by.”
The Oath Keepers had additionally been organizing for Jan. 6 and established a “quick response force” at a close-by resort in Virginia, based on courtroom filings.
The panel additionally famous that lots of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol gave the impression to be QAnon believers. Federal authorities have explicitly linked at the least 38 rioters to the pro-Trump conspiracy principle, based on an Associated Press evaluate of courtroom information.
One of probably the most recognizable figures from the assault was a shirtless Arizona man who referred to as himself the “QAnon Shaman,” carried a spear and wore face paint and a Viking hat with fur and horns.
The panel has proven, over the course of fast-paced hearings and with eyewitness accounts from the previous president’s inside circle, that Trump was instructed “over and over,” as Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., mentioned, that he had misplaced the election and his claims of voter fraud had been simply not true. Nevertheless, Trump summoned his supporters to Washington after which despatched them to the Capitol in what panel Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has referred to as an “attempted coup.”
___ Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Michael Balsamo in Washington and Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland, contributed to this report.
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For full protection of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”