WASHINGTON — The January 6th Committee met Monday morning for the second of a series of planned hearings to lay out their evidence against former President Donald Trump.
On Monday, testimony focused on showing Trump knew he lost the election and that there was no evidence of any fraud that would have changed that result. To show that, the committee scheduled five witnesses:
- William Stepien, former Trump campaign manager
- Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News political editor
- Benjamin Ginsberg, election attorney
- BJay Pak, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia
- Al Schmidt, former City Commissioner of Philadelphia
Before the hearing began, Chairman Bennie Thompson (R-MS) said Stepien had to withdraw because his wife had gone into labor. But, the public heard from Stepien through his video depositions and a statement from his attorney.
'Team Normal' and Team Giuliani
Stepien, who was hired to run Trump's campaign with roughly four months to go, said when he came on he found it "structurally and fiscally deficient." He also found it badly factionalized into his team — "Team Normal" — and a group run by Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
In video depositions, Stepien and others said Trump repeatedly chose to listen to Giuliani, despite their advice to the contrary. That included on election night when, according to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) trump decided to ignore his advisers and listen to "an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani," who told him to declare victory.
The influence of Giuliani, who has since had his law license suspended in New York and D.C. — where he's also facing an ethics investigation — was apparent throughout the morning. Giuliani was one of the main driving forces of many of the election fraud claims the campaign was making — claims former White House lawyer Erich Herschmann said he found "nuts."
Those claims included, among many others, one promoted heavily by Giuliani that a "suitcase of ballots" had been pulled out from under a table at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, Georgia. BJay Pak, who was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia at the time, testified that he investigated that claim and found it was meritless.
Richard Donoghue, who was acting deputy attorney general at the time, said he also warned Trump off Giuliani's suitcase claim.
"I told him flat out that much of the information he was getting was false or not support by the evidence," Donoghue said in a video deposition.
Pak eventually resigned after allegedly learning Trump was planning on firing him amid a push to get the DOJ to more actively investigate his claims.
Like Playing 'Whack-A-Mole'
Stepien's testimony was perhaps the most highly anticipated of the day, but it's Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr, who is becoming the committee's key witness in absentia. Although Barr is not testifying in person, he sat for hours of questioning in a deposition — large portions of which the committee has relied on to show Trump was being told by his closest advisers that there was no basis for his election fraud claims.
Barr, in his deposition, said after the election there was an "avalanche" of election fraud claims and he felt like he was playing "whack-a-mole." He quickly came to believe, he said, that the claims were "completely bogus."
Among the many fraud claims Trump honed in on was one, also false, about a truckload of ballots being brought down from New York to Pennsylvania. That claim, and others, fell to Al Schmidt and the two other members of the Philadelphia City Commissioners to investigate. Schmidt, the only Republican member of the commission at the time, said they took all claims of election fraud seriously and investigated them, no matter how absurd.
Schmidt eventually became a target of Trump after going on CNN to talk about the false claims. Just minutes after his appearance, Trump tweeted that Schmidt had refused to "look at the mountain of corruption and dishonesty." After that, Schmidt said, he began getting "disturbing threats."
"After calling me out by name, which [Trump] did, the threats became much more specific. Much more graphic," Schmidt said. Those threats included the names of family members, references to his home, and other personal details. One threat, Schmidt said, told him, "You're what the 2nd Amendment is for."
Barr said he eventually felt like he had to make a public statement, and on Dec. 1, 2020, he told the Associated Press the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election. After that, Barr said, he assumed he would be fired. The president called him into his office and told him he must "hate Trump."
But Barr wasn't fired, he said. Rather, Trump would continue giving him new claims about election fraud — claims, Barr said, he told the president were "bulls***." At one point, Trump gave Barr an "amateurish" report about election fraud and allegedly told him, "This means I'm going to have a second term."
"I was kind of demoralized, because I thought, if he really believes this stuff he's become detached from reality," Barr said.
Election Night and Fox's Arizona Call
In a memorable moment, committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney said on election night, Trump rejected the advice of his advisers and instead listened to an "apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani" — who advised him to just declare victory anyway.
Giuliani's alleged intoxication was backed up by a video deposition from Jason Miller, who was the Trump Campaign's spokesman in 2016 and was a senior adviser in 2020.
"The mayor was definitely intoxicated," Miller said in the deposition.
More importantly, though, Miller said the mood in the room changed significantly when Fox News became the first network to call the critical swing state of Arizona for Joe Biden.
To explain that call, the committee brought in former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was on the network's Decision Desk on election night 2020.
Stirewalt began by explaining a decades-old electoral phenomenon known as the "red mirage." In short, in presidential elections, Republicans typically appear to have large and early leads — until the results of absentee and mail-in ballots are tallied. Stirewalt said the "red mirage" is totally normal and expected. He also said Fox knew Trump was likely to try to use the phenomenon to try to mislead his voters, so the network took repeated pains throughout the night to explain what viewers were seeing was not necessarily indicative of the final tally.
When Fox became the first network to declare Arizona for Biden, Stirewalt said they knew it would be a "consequential" call. He said they didn't announce it on air until everyone in the room agreed.
Stirewalt, who was a regular on-air presence on Fox News until being fired two months after Jan. 6, also said he knew Trump's crusade to overturn the election via recount was doomed to fail — saying his chances of winning were "zero."
"You're better off playing the Powerball at that point," Stirewalt said.
'The Big Lie Was Also a Big Rip-off'
Rounding out the day's testimony was Benjamin Ginsberg, who the committee introduced as the most preeminent Republican election lawyer in the country. Noting that Trump's campaign had lost more than 60 times in court after the election, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) asked Ginsberg if he was aware of even a single time a court had found one of Trump's fraud claims credible?
"No... the simple fact is, the Trump Campaign did not make its case," Ginsberg said.
After an explanation by Ginsberg on how post-election legal challenges normally proceed, Lofgren said they normally end after the December 8 "safe harbor" date. At that point, states are required to have certified their votes. But, the Trump Campaign's lawsuits didn't stop. Lofgren said that was intentional: It allowed Trump to continue raising millions of dollars through fundraising emails — sent out at a rate of as many as 25 a day after the election.
In audio played by the committee, two Trump Campaign staffers told investigators the "Election Defense Fund" — the subject of many of those fundraising emails — didn't actually exist, but was just a marketing tactic. In a pre-recorded video, a committee investigator said the campaign raised $250 million after the election. The money went instead to Trump properties and to Trump's "Save America PAC."
Coming Up Next
The committee has two more hearings scheduled for this week: Wednesday at 10 a.m. and Thursday at 1 p.m.
In her closing remarks, committee Vice Chair Rep. Cheney said the public should expect the next round of testimony to focus on Trump's efforts to "corrupt the Department of Justice" and his planning with attorney John Eastman, who wrote a six-point plan to overturn the election. In a March order, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter wrote that Trump and Eastman's plan was a "coup in search of a legal theory" and that the evidence showed they more than likely corruptly conspired to disrupt the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
On Thursday, the committee will also call former Vice President Mike Pence's general counsel, Greg Jacob. Jacob is expected to testify about Trump's "ruthless" campaign to convince Pence to participate in the Eastman plan. Pence himself has not spoken to the committee, which has said it is still determining whether to seek testimony from him.
