Politics

One by one, several of Donald Trump’s former top advisers have told a special House committee investigating his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection that they didn’t believe his lies about the 2020 election, and that the former president knew he lost to Joe Biden.

But instead of convincing Trump’s most stalwart supporters, testimony from former attorney general Bill Barr and Trump’s daughter Ivanka about the election and the attack on the U.S. Capitol is prompting many of them to simply reassert their views that the former president was correct in his false claim of victory.

Barr’s testimony that Trump was repeatedly told there was no election fraud? He was paid off by a voting machine company, according to one false claim that went viral this week. Ivanka Trump saying she didn’t believe Trump either? It’s all part of Trump’s grand plan to confuse his enemies and save America.

The claims again demonstrate how deeply rooted Trump’s false narrative about the election has become.

“It’s cognitive dissonance,” said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a Syracuse University professor who has studied how Trump used social media and advertising to mobilize his base. “If you believe what Trump says, and now Bill Barr and Trump’s own daughter are saying these other things, it creates a crack, and people have to fill it.”

The lawmakers leading the hearings into the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol said one of their goals is to show how Trump repeatedly lied to his supporters in an effort to hold onto power and subvert American democracy.

“President Trump invested millions of dollars of campaign funds purposely spreading false information, running ads he knew were false, and convincing millions of Americans that the election was corrupt and he was the true president,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s vice chair. “As you will see, this misinformation campaign provoked the violence on January 6th.”

For those who accept Trump’s baseless claims, Barr’s testimony was especially jarring. In his interview with investigators, he detailed Trump’s many absurd allegations about the election 2020, calling them “bogus” and “idiotic.”

Barr told the committee when he talked with Trump, “there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”

“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” Barr said.

Following his testimony, many Trump supporters using sites like Reddit, GETTR and Telegram blasted Barr as a turncoat and noted that he’s disputed Trump’s election claims before.

But many others began grasping for alternative explanations for this testimony.

“I’m still hoping Barr is playing a role,” one poster said on a Telegram channel popular with Trump supporters.

One post that spread widely this week suggested Barr was paid by Dominion Voting Systems, a company targeted by Trump and his supporters with baseless claims of vote rigging. “From 2009 to 2018, DOMINION PAID BARR $1.2 million in cash and granted him another $1.1 million in stock awards, according to SEC filings. (No wonder Barr can’t find any voter fraud!),” the post read.

Wrong Dominion. Barr was paid by Dominion Energy, a publicly traded company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, that provides power and heat to customers in several mid-Atlantic states.

Unlike Barr, Ivanka Trump has remained intensely popular with many Trump supporters and is seen by many as her father’s potential successor. That may be why so many had to find an an alternative explanation for why she told Congress she didn’t accept her father’s claims.

Jordan Sather, a leading proponent of the QAnon theory, claims both Barr and Ivanka Trump lied during their testimony on Trump’s orders, part of an elaborate scheme to defeat Trump’s enemies by confusing Congress and the American public.

“I can just imagine Donald Trump telling Ivanka: ’Hey, go to this hearing, say these things. Screw with their heads,’” Sather said last week on his online show.

Some Trump supporters dismissed Ivanka Trump’s testimony entirely by questioning whether any of it was real. That’s another common refrain seen on far-right message boards. Many posters say they don’t even believe the hearings are happening, but are a Hollywood production starring stand-ins for the former president’s daughter and others.

“She looks different in a big way,” one poster asked on Telegram. “CGI?”

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By David Morgan and Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The day after the latest U.S. congressional hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, the former president criticized Mike Pence’s actions that day, saying that his vice president had lacked courage.

The hearings have detailed the ways in which Trump urged his supporters to turn on Pence for refusing his requests to reject the November 2020 election results, before they stormed the Capitol, fighting with police as some chanted “hang Mike Pence!”

“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic,” Trump told an audience of Christian conservatives in Nashville on Friday.

“Mike, and I say it sadly because I like him, but Mike did not have the courage to act,” Trump added.

Republican Trump repeated his false claims that his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud, assertions that were rejected by multiple courts, state election officials and members of his own administration.

Multiple Trump allies including his daughter Ivanka, former attorney general William Barr and other officials have testified to the committee that they did not believe Trump’s false claims.

Pence’s staff were not immediately available for comment.

Pence defended his actions, however, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Friday.

“Ultimately, I believe that most Americans understand that we did our duty that day under the Constitution and the laws of this country,” the newspaper quoted Pence as saying.

Trump attacked the bipartisan nine-member Jan. 6 select committee, which has held three hearings in little more than a week and is building a case that Trump acted illegally by trying to overturn his election loss.

“Let’s be clear, this is not a congressional investigation, this horrible situation that’s wasting everyone’s time. This is a theatrical production of partisan political fiction. That’s getting these terrible, terrible ratings and they’re going crazy,” Trump said.

On Thursday, former Pence aides told the committee that Trump pressed Pence to overturn the election results in Congress, after being told repeatedly that it was illegal to do so. Democrats on the panel said Trump kept up the pressure even though he knew a violent mob of his supporters was threatening the Capitol, where Pence and lawmakers worked to certify the election results.

Trump has protested that the hearings lack “equal representation.” Democrats initially pressed for a balanced bicameral investigation, but Republicans rejected the plan.

The committee’s proceedings are taking place in the runup to congressional elections in November, which will determine the balance of power in the Senate and House of Representatives ahead of the 2024 general election.

Trump continues to flirt publicly with the idea of running for president again in 2024.

But for now, the former president is concentrating on a revenge election campaign this year against his perceived enemies, including 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Capitol attack, among them Representative Liz Cheney, who is vice chair of the investigating committee.

(Reporting by David Morgan, Doina Chiacu and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Scott Malone; editing by Grant McCool)

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By Tim Reid

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A Republican-controlled county commission in New Mexico that refused to recognize election returns this month after citing unfounded conspiracy theories about voting machines bowed to legal pressure on Friday and certified the results.

Otero County commissioners voted 2-1 to certify the county’s June 7 primary election results, but only after the New Mexico Supreme Court ordered them to do so and after threats of legal action by the state’s Democratic attorney general.

The commissioner who still voted against certifying the results, Couy Griffin, did so hours after being sentenced for breaching the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

Griffin, an election-fraud conspiracist and founder of “Cowboys for Trump,” avoided jail time, was fined $3,000 and given one year supervised release with the requirement that he complete 60 hours of community service.

Former Republican President Donald Trump has continued to push falsehoods that Democratic President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. Many Republicans believe Trump even after revelations in a congressional hearing this month that the former president’s own daughter and other close allies rejected them.

There are fears of more election turmoil ahead because of the hold unfounded conspiracy theories about voting machines and vote counts now have on many Republican lawmakers and grassroots Republican voters.

Otero’s initial move not to certify comes ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of the U.S. Congress, with both chambers now narrowly held by Democrats, as well as the 2024 presidential election, in which former President Donald Trump has indicated he could seek a second White House term.

U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of 10 House of Representatives Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 attack, said Otero’s initial refusal to certify was a worrying harbinger of election turmoil ahead.

“Wake up America and GOP, this will destroy us,” Kinzinger, a member of the congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 attack, tweeted on Wednesday.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who had previously said the county commission was acting “illegally,” expressed relief that the elections results had been certified.

“The voters of Otero County and the candidates who duly won their primaries can now rest assured that their voices have been heard and the General Election can proceed as planned,” Toulouse Oliver said in a statement.

(Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico county certifies June primary results, ending standoff with state over unproven election security claims.

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By David Shepardson and Echo Wang

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Republican senators on Friday asked TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew about reports the social media site had allowed Russian state-approved media content but barred other videos.

“Recent reports indicate TikTok… has allowed Russian state media to flood the platform with dangerous pro-war propaganda. No company should find itself in the position of amplifying the Kremlin’s lies, which fuel public support for Russia’s war of choice in Ukraine,” said the letter, led by Steve Daines and signed by John Cornyn, Roger Wicker, John Barrasso, James Lankford and Cynthia Lummis.

The senators wrote they were “deeply concerned” that TikTok “is enabling the spread of pro-war propaganda to the Russian public, which risks adding to an already devastating human toll for both Ukrainians and Russians.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. TikTok said in a statement to Reuters that the company was looking forward to continuing to engage with members on these issues and answer their questions.

Reuters reported in March the Chinese-owned video app said it would suspend live-streaming and the uploading of videos to its platform in Russia as it reviewed the implications of a new media law signed by President Vladimir Putin.

The senators said TikTok has failed “to equally enforce this

policy” and cited a news report that said it “appears TikTok belatedly closed this loophole on March 25.”

The letter added the “misleading, pro-regime content that flooded the service has not been taken down, creating an easily-accessible archive of pro-war propaganda” and asked TikTok to answer a series of questions.

TikTok, owned by Beijing-based internet technology company ByteDance, has been under mounting U.S. scrutiny over the personal data it handles. At a U.S. congressional hearing last October, the company faced tough questions from U.S. lawmakers.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, the panel’s top Republican, said she was concerned about TikTok’s data collection, including audio and a user’s location, and the potential for the Chinese government to gain access to the information. Blackburn questioned TikTok on whether the company could resist giving data to China’s government if material were to be demanded.

TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media apps, with more than 1 billion active users globally.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Echo Wang; Editing by David Gregorio)

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By Michael Martina and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A duo of U.S. senators introduced a bill on Thursday to significantly enhance support for Taiwan, including provisions for billions of dollars in U.S. security assistance and changes to the decades old law undergirding Washington’s unofficial ties with the Chinese-claimed democratic island.

The United States, which accuses China of ramping up military coercion toward Taiwan, is its main supporter and arms supplier, a point of increasing friction between Washington and Beijing, whose relations are already at their lowest point in decades.

The senators’ Taiwan Policy Act of 2022 threatens severe sanctions against China for any aggression against Taiwan, and would provide $4.5 billion in foreign military financing over the next four years, as well as designate Taiwan a “major non-NATO ally,” according to the text.

The sponsors, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Menendez, a Democrat, and Republican Lindsey Graham, said it would be the most comprehensive restructuring of U.S. policy toward Taiwan since the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 – the bedrock of U.S. engagement with the island since Washington opened up relations with China that year.

“As Beijing continues to seek to coerce and isolate Taiwan there should be no doubt or ambiguity about the depth and strength of our determination to stand with the people of Taiwan and their democracy,” Menendez said in a statement.

He said the bill sent a clear message that China should not make the same mistakes Russia made in invading Ukraine.

“The danger will only grow worse if we show weakness in the face of Chinese threats and aggression toward Taiwan,” Graham said. Senate aides said the pair hoped to have the committee vote to send the bill to the Senate floor as early as next week.

Washington and Beijing have stood firm on their opposing views about Taiwan’s right to rule itself.

“If the U.S. insists on taking actions that will harm China’s interests, we are compelled to take resolute countermeasures,” Liu Pengyu, spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, said in response to a question about the bill.

UNEASY

One U.S. official familiar with the bill said some of its elements made President Joe Biden’s administration and the State Department uneasy given concerns it could antagonize China.

Any legislation would also have to pass the House of Representatives, and another expansive bill intended to boost U.S. competitiveness with China has been languishing in Congress for months.

The White House and State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Should it become law as currently written, the bill would “prioritize and expedite” arms sales to Taiwan until Congress determines the threat to the island has significantly abated, as well as direct the Secretary of Defense to establish a training program to increase Taiwan and U.S. armed forces interoperability.

The U.S. president would be required to impose sanctions on Chinese officials, including its president, in response to “significant escalation in hostile action in or against Taiwan”, such as undermining or overthrowing Taiwan’s government or occupying the island.

It would amend parts of the Taiwan Relations Act, including by adding that U.S. arms provisions to Taiwan be “conducive to deterring acts of aggression” by China.

It would also push the State Department to seek negotiations to rename Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington to the Taiwan Representative Office, and would elevate the role of Washington’s top official in Taiwan by requiring Senate confirmation for the post.

Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, and Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe last week said China’s military “would have no choice but to fight at any cost and crush any attempt of Taiwan independence.”

(Reporting by Michael Martina and Patricia Zengerle; editing by Grant McCool, William Maclean)

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NASHVILLE (AP) — As religious conservatives gathered this week at a sprawling resort near the Grand Ole Opry House, Nikki Haley pressed the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” crowd to look to the future.

“It’s up to us to deliver a new birth of patriotism,” said Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump. “And together with you, and with trust in God, I pledge to answer that call and inspire our country once again.”

Such comments are typical of a party that’s out of power and in search of its next leader. But what’s unusual: The party’s last leader is plotting his own comeback.

Trump is showing up on the same stage Friday, his first public appearance since the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection began to lay bare his desperate attempts to remain in power by challenging American democracy. But, at least for now, the harrowing footage and searing testimony in the panel’s hearings, including accounts from Trump’s close associates and members of his family, appear to have done little to dampen his interest in another campaign.

Indeed, Trump is actively weighing when he might formally launch a third presidential run, according to people familiar with the discussions. The debate, according to aides and allies who insist Trump has yet to make a final decision, centers on whether to announce a campaign in the coming months or, in accordance with tradition, wait until after the November midterm elections.

Trump has spent the past year and a half holding rallies, delivering speeches and using his endorsements to exact revenge and further shape the party in his image. But some say the former president, who has decamped from his Florida Mar-a-Lago club to Bedminster, New Jersey, for the summer, is also growing impatient.

While he has relished his role as a party kingmaker — with candidates all but begging his endorsement and racking up large tabs at fundraisers in his ballrooms — Trump also misses the days when he was actually king, particularly as he watches Democratic President Joe Biden struggling with low approval ratings and soaring inflation.

“I think a lot of Trump’s future plans are directly based on Biden, and I think the more Biden continues to stumble on the world stage and on the domestic stage, people forget about the downside, the dark side of Trump’s presidency,” said Bryan Lanza, a GOP strategist and former Trump campaign official.

An announcement in the near future could complicate efforts by other ambitious Republicans to mount campaigns. Haley, for instance, has said she wouldn’t run against Trump.

But there also are concerns that a near-term announcement could hurt Republicans going into the final stretch of a midterm congressional campaign that appears increasingly favorable to the party. A Trump candidacy could unite otherwise despondent Democratic voters, reviving the energy that lifted the party in the 2018 and 2020 campaigns.

And, regardless of his decision, the aura of inevitability that Trump sought to create from the moment he left the White House has been punctured. Some Republicans and their aides have tried to make clear in recent months that a Trump candidacy would have little influence on their own decisions.

They include Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, who has been hailed by the Jan. 6 committee as someone who put the national interest ahead of his own political considerations. Eyeing a White House bid, Pence is maintaining a brisk political schedule focused on drawing attention to Democratic vulnerabilities.

Others including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have also indicated their decisions do not rest on Trump’s. And they and others have become increasingly brazen in their willingness to cross the former president, including endorsing candidates running against his and even campaigning with Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who survived Trump’s efforts to defeat him in the state’s GOP primary last month.

Some of these could-be candidates, including Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, were appearing alongside the former president as he headlines the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s gathering in Nashville.

The field could include a long list of others, including Rep. Liz Cheney, the lead Republican on the Jan. 6 panel and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan — both Trump critics. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, is seen by many loyal Trump supporters as the future of his movement.

Indeed, many of those attending the conference in Nashville — the resort is near the Opry House, where the longtime “Grand Ole Opry” country music radio show is broadcast — weren’t sold on a third Trump run.

“I don’t know. The jury’s still out with me,” said Jonathan Goodwin, a minister who works as a Faith and Freedom organizer in South Carolina. “I like him, but I think he shot himself in the foot too many times”

While Goodwin said he “definitely” had his own concerns about the 2020 election, he said he didn’t support how Trump had handled the situation. “I think he should have bowed out gracefully,” he said, “whether it was rigged or not.”

Illinois conservative Pam Roehl, who arrived at the conference Friday wearing a red Trump baseball cap and “Trump 2020” necklace, said she still supports the former president, but was increasingly finding herself in the minority among like-minded friends, whom she said had moved on, discarding their bumper stickers, and embracing DeSantis.

“They’re like kind of, ’Get with the program. Why aren’t you backing DeSantis?‘” she said.

Though it’s increasingly clear that Trump wouldn’t march to the GOP nomination unchallenged, a large field of candidates could still work to his advantage. The dynamic is beginning to resemble the 2016 campaign, when Trump faced a large and unwieldy group of candidates that split the anti-Trump vote.

In a crowded field, even if Trump only captures around 30% of GOP primary voters — as his endorsed candidates have in several races — he would sail to the Republican nomination.

Aides say Trump has been peppering those around him for their thoughts.

Some in his orbit, like former campaign adviser Jason Miller, have urged Trump to jump in sooner rather than later, to get a head start on building out a campaign, try to freeze out competition and keep attention on himself.

An early strategy would also allow Trump to cast his mounting legal vulnerabilities as merely political attacks. An Atlanta district attorney has impaneled a special grand jury to probe his meddling in the 2020 presidential election. And in New York, Trump and two of his children have agreed to sit for depositions next month in the state attorney general’s civil investigation into his business practices.

Others are urging Trump to wait until after the midterms, so he can run on Republicans’ November victories. They note that his frequent teasing of his plans — Trump often muses he’ll “do it again” — earns him applause and media attention and warn that formally declaring his candidacy would trigger campaign finance laws that set limits on how much donors can give. It also would change his relationship with his Save America PAC, which has more than $100 million in the bank — more than both national party organizations combined — and currently funds his campaign travel.

Either way, many voters say, he will need to win them over.

Jake Thomson, 19, who goes to school in Alabama and will be a first-time presidential voter in 2024, said he thought Trump was a great president, but was also interested in alternatives.

“It just kind of depends on how things play out,” he said.

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Republican President Donald Trump’s adviser Peter Navarro pleaded not guilty on Friday to two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress, after he refused to provide testimony or documents to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee investigating the January 2021 attack at the Capitol.

Navarro, who appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for his arraignment on Friday, previously wrote a book after he left the White House in which he talked about a plan to delay Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory known as “Green Bay Sweep.”

He described the plan as the “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”

The U.S. House Select Committee, which held its third hearing on Thursday afternoon to reveal some of the findings from its investigation, subpoenaed Navarro in February seeking both documents and testimony.

However, he failed to appear for his deposition or communicate in any way with the panel after receiving the subpoena, the indictment against him alleges.

He later told the committee he was unable to comply with its demands, saying Trump had invoked executive privilege, a legal doctrine that shields certain White House communications from disclosure, and that this privilege “is not mine to waive.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The lead Republican negotiator in U.S. Senate efforts to craft a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, raising questions about whether lawmakers will vote on the legislation before leaving for a two-week July 4 recess.

“It’s fish or cut bait,” Senator John Cornyn said after hours of negotiations that included his fellow Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senators Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema.

“I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking,” Cornyn said.

However, Tillis and Murphy later said the talks were close to reaching agreement and added that legislative text for a bill could emerge in coming days. Murphy said in a statement late Thursday he believed the bill could be voted on next week.

The bipartisan group has been working on a deal to curb gun violence since a gunman killed 19 school children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, less than two weeks after a racist shooting in Buffalo, New York left 10 dead. Talks have bogged down in recent days.

“To land a deal like this is difficult. It comes with a lot of emotions. It comes with political risk to both sides. But we’re close enough that we should be able to get there,” said Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator.

Time to pass major legislation is running short as the Nov. 8 midterm elections, when Republicans are looking to win back control of Congress, draw nearer.

Murphy and Tillis each told reporters that staff have begun drafting legislative text for the majority of provisions that lawmakers have agreed on. Tillis suggested that text could be available as early as Friday.

Tillis, saying he expected a deal, declined to speak in detail about the negotiations: “We’re too close and down to the final stages.”

The group announced a framework on measures to curb gun violence on Sunday. It did not go as far as Democrats including President Joe Biden had sought, but would still be the most significant action to combat gun violence to emerge from Congress in years if passed.

Disagreements remained over two main provisions: how to provide incentives to states to create ‘red flag’ laws, in which guns can be temporarily taken away from people who are deemed dangerous; and the ‘boyfriend loophole,’ which allows authorities to block abusive spouses from buying firearms but does not cover “intimate partners” who are not married.

Cornyn, whose home state of Texas does not have a red flag law and is seen as unlikely to enact one, wants the funding for that provision to cover other efforts for people with mental illness, such as “crisis intervention programs.”

Tillis said the negotiators were working out a mechanism that would allow federal funding for states that want to adopt red flag laws and states that favor other intervention programs, with parity the ultimate goal.

He also said the lawmakers were looking to existing state laws as models for the boyfriend loophole provision.

(Reporting by David Morgan, writing by Makini Brice and David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Rosalba O’Brien)

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By Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn his 2020 election defeat despite being told repeatedly it was illegal to do so, aides to Pence told the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.

Members of the Democratic-led House of Representatives select committee said Trump continued his pressure campaign even though he knew a violent mob of his supporters was threatening the Capitol as Pence and lawmakers met to formally certify President Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.

The nine-member committee has used the first three of at least six public hearings this month to build a case that Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat amounted to illegal conduct, far beyond normal politics.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, while repeating his false accusations that he lost the election only because of widespread fraud that benefited Democrat Biden. Trump and his supporters – including many Republican members of Congress – dismiss the Jan. 6 panel as a political witchhunt.

The certification vote on Jan. 6 had become a focus for Trump, who saw it as a last-ditch chance to retain the presidency despite his loss at the polls.

Marc Short, who was Pence’s chief of staff, said in videotaped testimony that Pence told Trump “many times” that he did not have the authority to stop the vote certification in Congress as the Republican president sought.

Gregory Jacob, an attorney for Pence, said the main proponent of that theory, attorney John Eastman, admitted in front of the president two days before the attack that his plan to have Pence halt the procedure would violate the law.

Eastman had argued that Pence could reject results from certain states if he thought they were illegitimate, giving Republicans in those states an opportunity to declare Trump the victor despite the actual vote count.

Advisers to Pence told the committee that idea had no basis in law.

“It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let alone entertained by the president of the United States,” former U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, an informal Pence adviser, said.

Trump is widely expected to run for president again in 2024, and committee members and witnesses warned that he would not accept defeat no matter the actual outcome.

“Today almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still, Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said.

The committee showed an email Eastman sent to Trump’s attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, asking for a presidential pardon. Eastman never received one.

‘HANG MIKE PENCE’

The hearing featured several chilling clips of some of the thousands of Trump supporters who descended on the Capitol after a rally in which Trump repeatedly criticized Pence, chanting for Pence to be pulled out of the building or hanged.

Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m., while the attack was going on, that Pence did not have the “courage” to stop the count.

“It felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that,” Sarah Matthews, a Trump White House staffer, said in video testimony.

Representative Pete Aguilar said a witness had told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the Proud Boys, one of the right-wing groups participating in the Capitol attack, said the group would have killed Pence if they been able to get to him.

Committee members said Trump’s comments against Pence incited the crowd.

The committee displayed photos of Pence sheltering in place during the riot. Jacob, who was with Pence during the attack, said he refused to leave and that he did not want to give the demonstrators the satisfaction of forcing him from the building. “The vice president did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the U.S. Capitol,” he said.

The attack on the Capitol delayed certification of the election for hours, injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths.

Even after police had suppressed the attack and reclaimed the Capitol, Eastman continued to press Pence’s team to overturn the vote.

“I implore you one last time, can the Vice President, please do what we’ve been asking him to do these last two days – suspend the Joint Session, send it back to the States,” Eastman wrote to Jacob at 11:44 p.m. in an email released by the committee.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Richard Cowan and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Katherine Jackson; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Alistair Bell)

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