Consider This from NPR - What We Learned From This Week's Jan. 6 Hearing — And What Questions Still Remain

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

In a tweet sent on December 19, 2021, former President Trump issued what Democrats now say was a "clarion call" to his supporters. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th," he wrote. "Be there, will be wild!" This week, in a hearing of the House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol, we learned more about what happened in the days and weeks after the President sent that tweet — and the tense moments in the White House just hours before. Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the House committee investigating January 6th, tells NPR that next week's primetime hearing — the final scheduled hearing of the committee — will unravel minute-by-minute events at the Capitol and present an account of what President Trump was doing during that time. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu slash forward. Democrats on the House committee investigating January 6th say it was a clarion call. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there. We'll be wild. That was a tweet read by Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland and sent by former President Trump in the early morning hours of December 19th. This week, we learned more about what happened in the hours and days after. The time for games is over. The time for action is now.

Trump supporters, including members of right-wing extremist groups, were mobilized online. He wants the American people to march on Washington, D.C. Red Wedding is going to be a red wedding going down January 6th. If necessary, storming right into the Capitol. Those were some of the recordings of Trump supporters played in the House hearing on Tuesday. Congressman Jamie Raskin said many of them shared plans and violent threats. Threats that, according to testimony from others before the House committee, members of the president's inner circle later became aware of. The president continued to boost the event,

tweeting about it more than a dozen times in the lead-up to January the 6th. Consider this. This week, we didn't just learn more about what happened after the president called for a wild rally on January 6th. We also learned more about what happened in the days before. And one question that still remains is how some members of the mob seem to have marching orders in advance. From NPR, I'm Juana Summers. Send, spend, or receive money internationally,

and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. The January 6th House Committee hearings are not criminal proceedings. It's a congressional committee, not a court of law. Its goal is to establish facts and narratives, pull on threads, ones that federal or state prosecutors may also pull on later. For instance, after our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation,

a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That revelation from Republican Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the January 6th committee, came at the end of the hearing Tuesday. She said this unnamed witness didn't respond to the former president's attempt to contact them, but instead told their lawyer. Their lawyer alerted us, and this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. That's just one example of why the House committee hearings are not the end of the story when it comes to revelations and accountability about January 6th. But the committee's public hearings are expected to conclude next week. In a few moments, we'll talk to one of the committee members,

Jamie Raskin of Maryland, about what questions still remain to be answered. But first, let's talk more about what we learned this week. My recollection is the president said something like, well, we could get to the bottom, you know,, well, we could get to the bottom. Some people say we could get to the bottom of this if the department sees the machines. That was video testimony played Tuesday from former Attorney General Bill Barr speaking about voting machines. And I said, absolutely not. There's no probable cause and we're not going to seize any machines. And that was that.

It was a scheme also opposed by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, whose videotaped testimony was shared publicly this week for the first time. To have the federal government seize voting machines, it's a terrible idea for the country. That's not how we do things in the United States. There's no legal authority to do that. But the president kept pushing for action, and a group of informal outside advisors were pushing too. They included former General Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Rudy Giuliani. It all came to a head the night of December 18th, in a meeting that devolved into a screaming match between the outside group and White House staff, including Cipollone. The three of them were really sort of forcefully attacking me imperturbably.

And we were pushing back and we were asking one simple question. Where is the evidence? In the wee hours of the morning after that long meeting, President Trump sent his fateful tweet about January 6th. Be there. We'll be wild. And weeks later, some of the people who came to Washington, D.C. seemed to know what the president had planned. Here's how committee member Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy laid it out. This is a January 4th text message from a rally organizer to Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO. The organizer says, you know, this stays between us.

We're having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there slash the Capitol. It cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the National Park Service and all the agencies. But POTUS is going to just call for it, quote, unexpectedly. Trump, of course, did call for the crowd to march to the Capitol on January 6th, but how unexpected was it? According to White House phone logs released by the committee, the morning before the speech, the president had two brief conversations with his advisor and former campaign manager, Steve Bannon.

Here's what Bannon said on his radio show later that day. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging. And now we're on, as they say, the point of attack, right? The point of attack tomorrow. I'll tell you this. It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. Okay, it's going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is strap in. So who knew what and when about the president's plans for January 6th? That's one of the questions the House committee may address further in its final day of scheduled hearings next Thursday in primetime. I spoke about where the committee's work stands with Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee.

And one thing I asked him about was that statement by Steve Bannon. Could the committee be certain his prediction was connected to something he'd heard from the president? We're just trying to set forth the facts for the American people to decide for themselves. And certainly in terms of any criminal prosecution, it would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he either incited violence or conspired to interrupt a federal proceeding or he conspired to deprive America of an honest election or engaged intentionally in seditious conspiracy. But as a matter of common sense, the American people are perfectly entitled to draw any conclusion they want from this evidence. And the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that none of this would have happened without the will of Donald Trump. During one part of the hearing, we saw a sort of video montage of people who were in the room for this, by all accounts, explosive Oval Office meeting on the evening of December 18th.

And it was after that meeting that the president put out that call, that tweet for supporters to come to Washington and assemble on January 6th. As you build a case for the American people against the former president, what is the significance of what happened in that meeting? Well, prior to the December 18th meeting, every attempt that Donald Trump had made to overthrow Joe Biden's electoral college majority had failed. He went to state election officials like Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and tried to convince them just to find him 11,780 votes. He went to the state legislatures and told them, just void out the popular vote and install electors for me. When all of that failed, he went to the Department of Justice and he said,

please declare this to be a corrupt election. And when they refused to do it, now in desperation, we'll be wild. And that had an electrifying effect, a galvanizing effect on dangerous right-wing extremists across the country and on his own crowd of MAGA followers. At the conclusion of yesterday's hearing, Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming warned again against any sort of witness tampering. She did that in the last hearing as well. But this time when I heard her say that, she seemed to be attempting to send a message directly to the former president. She told the panel and the public that a witness whose testimony had not yet been made public so far had received a call in the last two weeks from former President Trump. The former president's communications director has pushed back on this narrative,

but I am wondering about the allegation that he was unsuccessful in making contact with this witness. If that's true, that he called but he did not get through, to your understanding, could the former president still be charged with witness tampering? You know, I don't know the answer to that question. And I got to tell you, I'm not too interested in that question. There's certainly bigger criminal charges that could be brought against Donald Trump. We're interested in preventing it in the first place. We're interested in stopping witness tampering. We do not think that anybody should be getting in touch with our

witnesses and trying to influence their testimony. And there is a pattern here which we are trying to break. Will we hear from that witness next week? But I can't announce that because we don't know. We haven't made final decisions. And I know it's just about a week away, but in these hearings, a week is an eternity because we have new witnesses coming forward all the time and new evidence that is surfacing on a daily basis. Let's talk about that next hearing. It will be the committee's eighth. It will be during primetime. And as members of the committee have told us, it will be focused on what the former president did and did not do on January 6th as the Capitol was under attack. What more could we learn? Well, you know, it's one thing to tell

the citizens of a democracy there's been an attempted coup. It's another thing to hear directly from the police officers who were bloodied and wounded. But the truth is, none of us, including the members of the committee, have seen on a minute-by-minute basis what was taking place in terms of the violence against our officers, in terms of the smashing of our windows, the storming of the building, the driving of the House and the Senate out of our respective chambers, the mob's attempt to get to Mike Pence. We heard the chants that day, hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence, but we didn't see what exactly Vice President Pence's movements were with his Secret Service agents, including the guy who was carrying the nuclear football.

We didn't see the military-style maneuvers of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the Three Presenters and the other domestic violent extremist groups, nor did any of us see what Donald Trump was doing during that time. And why did it seem to be such a delayed and lethargic response to this emergency? Whenever these hearings conclude, what do you hope that you and your colleagues have shown and presented to the American public? First of all, understand that these hearings are just the investigative portion of our work, and even they are just part of it. We still have to deliver a complete report to the American people explaining exactly what we think happened. We have to make recommendations about how to fortify

American constitutional democracy against coups, insurrections, political violence, and efforts to steal elections away from the people in the future. So we have work to do in terms of the Militia Act. We want to look at Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prevents people who have been engaged in insurrection and rebellion and had previously sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies from serving in office again. I mean, that is a provision of the Constitution that has not been relevant since the aftermath of the Civil War. But we have to look at what that provision of the Constitution means today. So there's a lot of things for us to examine. And our work is not done, even when we come to the end of our

investigative hearings. Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University drives discovery, innovation, and creative endeavors to solve some of society's greatest challenges. Groundbreaking investments in neuroscience, climate change, Alzheimer's research, and cybersecurity mean IU sets new standards to move the world forward, unlocking cures and solutions that lead to a better future for all. More at iu.edu forward.