Jan. 6 panel: Trump played premeditated role in conspiracy to overturn election

WASHINGTON — The Jan. 6 Committee marshaled new and old evidence Thursday in a bid to show that former President Donald Trump played a premeditated and central role in the conspiracy and violence to overturn the 2020 election.

To underscore the assertion, the nine members of the special House committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump to testify before the panel to answer questions about what they said their wide-ranging investigation has uncovered.

“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6, so we want to hear from him,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the committee, which includes seven Democrats and two Republicans ousted by their party for opposing Trump.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who recently lost her primary, said: “The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of January 6th was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it.”

The 2½-hour hearing, expected to be the committee’s last this year, featured new video clips of interviews of Trump insiders along with emails, recordings and other electronic records from the Secret Service about threats before and on Jan. 6.

Here are some highlights from the hearing:

Congress calls for help

After airing testimony by White House aides that Trump sat watching Fox News coverage of the Capitol riot and refused to call off his followers, the committee showed new video clips of Congressional leaders running to safety, calling for help and working to finish the job of certifying Biden’s election.

One video showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisting on the phone as she headed to safety, “We have to get … finish the proceedings or else they will have a complete victory.”

Another clip showed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Pelosi talking on the phone with former Acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

“They’re obviously ransacking our offices,” Pelosi said, expressing concern about lawmakers and their aides. “The concern we have is about personal safety — it just transcends everything.”

Schumer prodded Rosen to get Trump to appeal to his followers to end the siege: “Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility?”

Stone foretold violence

In a video clip recorded by a Danish filmmaker the day before the election, longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone and his guards from the right wing group Oath Keepers discussed what would happen on election night if Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. 

“I really do suspect it will still be up in the air," Stone says. "When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won.”

After an unintelligible comment from an unidentified guard, Stone says, “I said, [expletive] the voting, let's get right to the violence.”

The guard responded, “That's what I'm … saying. [laughter] There's no point.”

Stone said, “We'll have to start smashing pumpkins, if you know what I mean.”

A loser, and embarrassed

In an effort to make the case that Trump lied about winning the election, the committee cited several former White House aides who said Trump grew enraged by his loss to Biden, which he only acknowledged quietly behind the scenes.

Cassidy Hutchinson, top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, recalled that after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn the election, she and Meadows crossed paths with Trump at the White House.

“He had said something to the effect of, ‘I don't want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out,’ ” Hutchinson testified.

Former White House aide Alyssa Farah testified that as Trump later watched Biden in the Oval Office on television, he said, "Can you believe I lost to this [expletive] guy?”

Secret Service secrets

The committee warned of more probes of secrets kept by the Secret Service, particularly after the agency erased all the texts on phones of its personnel from Jan. 5 and 6 despite requests from the committee for those messages.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) raised questions about the credibility of previous White House and other testimony that downplayed threats before Jan. 6 after the committee obtained nearly a million emails and other records showing groups arming and threatening violence.

And Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said the committee will re-interview witnesses about Hutchinson's story of Trump lunging at his driver when he refused to take him to the Capitol based on that voluminous new material.

“And I will also note this,” Aguilar said. “The committee is reviewing testimony regarding potential obstruction on this issue, including testimony about advice given not to tell the committee about this specific topic.”