Hearings focus on 'lies' spread by president in lead up to Capitol attack
The Guardian|June 14, 2022
The House select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection yesterday scrutinised the conspiracy theories that led a group of Donald Trump's supporters to attack the US Capitol and produced damning testimony for the former president.
Joan E Greve
Hearings focus on 'lies' spread by president in lead up to Capitol attack

Over the course of the two-hour hearing, committee members meticulously documented how several of Trump's senior advisers urged him not to declare victory on election night, as votes were still being counted.

When Trump began spreading lies about widespread fraud in the election, some of his top aides - including the former attorney general and one-time Trump loyalist William Barr - repeatedly told him that the claims were baseless.

"We'll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election and, as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy," the Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, said.

The committee had hoped that Bill Stepien, Trump's former campaign manager, would testify in person yesterday, but he was unable to attend because his wife had gone into labour. Stepien's attorney, Kevin Marino, appeared on his behalf.

The committee relied on previously recorded testimony from Stepien and other Trump allies including his eldest daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, and his campaign attorney, Rudy Giuliani - to show that the former president was told repeatedly on election night that he did not have the numbers to win.

This story is from the June 14, 2022 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the June 14, 2022 edition of The Guardian.

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