INSURRECTION
FALLOUT
Jan. 6 panel makes case election fraud claims
were Trump vs. 'Team Normal'
The select committee aired video interviews from more
than half a dozen former Trump advisers who said they repeatedly told the
then-president his election fraud claims were wrong.
'Team
Normal': Trump officials describe pushing back on his election lies
By KYLE
CHENEY and NICHOLAS WU
06/13/2022
11:55 AM EDT
Updated:
06/13/2022 02:43 PM EDT
The Jan. 6
select committee’s case that former President Donald Trump stoked a violent
insurrection rests on a fundamental premise: Trump was endlessly told, over and
over, that his claims of election fraud were false. And he amplified them
anyway.
At Monday’s
public hearing, the panel unloaded a stream of evidence, most of it videotaped
interviews, that showed Trump’s own top advisers repeatedly told him his
elections claims were wrong. Time and again — no matter what detailed
corroboration they provided — advisers testified that Trump responded with
derision, ultimately pushing those aides aside in favor of the fringe lawyers
willing to echo the false allegations.
“I didn’t
mind being characterized as part of ‘Team Normal,’” Trump campaign manager Bill
Stepien told the select committee, in a newly aired clip of his testimony —
contrasting himself favorably to the attorneys who took up Trump’s crusade.
Stepien.
Attorney General Bill Barr. Campaign aides Matt Morgan and Alex Cannon. Barr’s
successor Jeff Rosen. Rosen’s deputy Richard Donoghue. White House advisers
Eric Herschmann and Derek Lyons. All delved into the fraud claims that gained
Trump’s favor, according to testimony aired Monday, and all told Trump there
was nothing to them.
But Trump
shunted Stepien and others aside in favor of Rudy Giuliani — who, while
“apparently inebriated” convinced Trump on Election Night to declare victory —
and Sidney Powell, the two attorneys who drove Trump’s fraud claims when others
would not.
Morgan, the
campaign counsel, described in another video how outside lawyers who had signed
up to help on Election Day “disengaged with the campaign,” in part because “law
firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making
publicly.”
Most of the
aides did not speak out publicly on their attempts to quell Trump’s efforts,
even as the lies grew more pronounced and were accepted by swaths of voters.
Instead, they privately told the then-president he was wrong and counseled him
to back off some of the more extreme claims. Those claims included: that a
suitcase of ballots seen on camera in Georgia’s State Farm Arena was evidence
of fraud, that thousands of dead people voted in multiple states and that
Dominion voting machines were shifting votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
The
committee also spun its debunking attempts forward to more recent
disinformation efforts, airing a lengthy clip of Barr dismantling the premise
of the recently released film “2,000 Mules,” which Trump touted as the long-elusive
evidence of 2020 election fraud.
“Before the
election it was possible to talk sense to the president. And while you
sometimes had to engage in a big wrestling match with him, it was possible to
keep things on track,” Barr recalled. “I felt that after the election … he
wasn’t listening to advice from me.”
Trump’s
aides characterized him as increasingly cloistered within a shrinking group of
advisers willing to push his claims, while he ostracized so-called Team Normal.
He elbowed aside his campaign legal team in favor of the Giuliani-Powell effort
after they refused to validate his fraud allegations. He sought to replace the
leadership of the Justice Department for the same reason — only to back down
amid a mass resignation threat.
Monday’s
hearing didn’t absolve his other aides of blame either, however, as lawmakers
showed that Trump campaign officials used fraud claims — that they apparently
called wrong in private — to raise more than $250 million in the weeks
following the Nov. 3, 2020 election. That included $100 million in the first
week, as fundraising emails urged donors to contribute to an “Election Defense
Fund.” No such fund existed, campaign aides told the select committee.
The select
committee also showed that even before the election, some of Trump’s top
political advisers had urged him to embrace mail-in voting — hopeful that a
proliferation of the practice amid the Covid-19 pandemic could benefit
Republicans, who had a strong ground game. Stepien and House GOP Leader Kevin
McCarthy met with Trump in the summer of 2020 to press him on that, according
to video testimony, with both Stepien and McCarthy urging Trump to support the
practice.
But Trump
refused, Stepien said, and instead worked to convince supporters that mail-in
voting was a bastion of fraud that would result in an illegitimate election.
Trump pushed that argument all the way through Election Day, and then used the
slow pace of counting mail-in ballots in certain states to claim he was being
cheated, the committee indicated.
Lawmakers
showed that Trump’s predilection for listening to Giuliani over his closest
advisers — and even family members like Jared Kushner who urged him to treat
the former New York City mayor with skepticism — began immediately after the
election.
“There were
suggestions by, I believe it was Mayor Giuilani, to go and declare victory and
say that we’d won it outright,” former Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a
video of his interview played by the select panel. Both Miller and Stepien told
the panel in testimony that Giuliani appeared intoxicated at the time.
“My
recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted. It’s too early
to tell, too early to call the race,” Stepien told the committee. But Trump
disagreed, instead delivering a combative statement that declared victory and
alleged widespread fraud. Those claims were later proven false.
“Frankly,
we did win this election,” Trump said on Nov. 4, 2020.
The Jan. 6
select committee used Monday’s second of six scheduled public hearings to
highlight the corrosive effect of Trump’s lie and his weeks promoting it with
the help of political allies. Those lies served as scaffolding to support every
other aspect of Trump’s effort to remain in power, from his push to get the
Justice Department to legitimize his false claims to the pressure he piled on
then-Vice President Mike Pence to derail the transition of power.
Eventually,
Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud masking his victory fueled the mob the
battered its way into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and the select committee
says it intends to show in the coming hearings that messages from Trump and his
allies may have helped radicalize rioters. The select committee aired videos of
rioters at the Capitol echoing some of Trump’s false claims of fraud.
The panel
also heard from Stepien’s attorney, Kevin Marino, who testified instead after
Stepien had a family emergency.
Barr: Trump
claimed election ‘fraud’ before ‘evidence’
Former Fox
News political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was fired in January 2021, gave
testimony as well. Fox drew Trump’s outrage after the network became the first
to call the battleground state of Arizona for Biden, a projection that
ultimately held true. Stirewalt has attributed his ouster to his decision to
defend that Arizona call, while the network has said his departure was part of
a digital restructuring.
The hearing
featured a second panel that included prominent GOP elections attorney Ben
Ginsberg, former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt and former U.S.
Attorney for North Georgia BJay Pak, who resigned amid Trump’s effort to
overturn the election results.
Pak
previously testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the pressure Trump
and his allies applied on him and other officials to get them to investigate
false claims of election fraud.
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