The MeidasTouch Podcast - The January 6th Hearings Day 7 (Full Hearing): Trump WITNESS TAMPERING, UNHINGED Oval Office Meetings and more!

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Today, we are bringing you a special edition of the MeidasTouch Podcast — the entire replay of our live broadcast of Day 7 of the January 6th Insurrection Hearings. Hosted by Tony Michaels and Gabe Sanchez, this podcast features commentary from your favorite Meidas Media Network superstars, including Michael Cohen, Texas Paul, Michael Popok, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Jessica Denson as well as David Bender, Ron Reagan, PA Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, and others. Tony and Gabe also bring in Ben and Brett to get their analysis. You can watch this broadcast on our YouTube channel, here. Subscribe to the Tony Michaels Podcast on YouTube, here. Follow the Tony Michaels Podcast on audio, here. Get 10% OFF Meidas Merch at store.meidastouch.com using code 'JUSTICE' at checkout! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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but it looks like we're going to hear from former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Von Tattenhoven and a January 6th writer who has pled guilty, Stephen Arires, I think is his name, an Ohio man. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Midas Touch Network. I am Tony Michaels, your host for today's hearing. We are going to have a special panel, just like we always do, an hour before the hearing, here in just under an hour. The committee will gavel down as we continue the hearing coverage of the January 6th Select Committee. We have a great panel for you today. We have the legal AF staff, Michael Popock, Karen Ann Nippolo, KFA. We also should have the Mizellus brothers joining us, the Trump NDA killer, Jessica Denson,

Midas' mighty favorite, Texas Paul. Also, Ron Reagan and political strategist David Bender should be joining us in the first hour here. Again, as always, when we have a break, we will bring in the panel that is available to give their commentary, whether it be political or legal commentary on what has happened during the hearing at the break. And then following the hearing, we will be doing more coverage after the hearing with our great panel. I think Michael Cohen will be joining us and a few others and the backside of the panel. So stay tuned for that.

You can stay here and watch all day long. This hearing is probably going to be a little longer than some of the others because also we have news that we will probably see some of the deposition that was given by Pat Cipollone, the White House legal counsel, who was a very big feature in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson. We've also heard several of the January 6th select members that Pat Cipollone did not refute any of the testimony that was given by Cassidy Hutchinson in public. So as we start our coverage today, spread this around. Spread this link around to your family, your friends. Give them the opportunity to watch this coverage.

This is some of the most tuned-in coverage that has happened. No matter what the right wing wants to say on their trader TV networks or on the Tweety Tweets and the Trendy Trends, this is very, very, very highly watched coverage. We have, it's groundbreaking here today that we are here at day seven, looking at possibly a day eight, maybe a day nine or day 10. I don't know if they're going to keep doing these hearings or today's the last day. We're very unaware of what they're going to do. They're keeping this close to the chest. The main thing is that this idea that no one's watching this coverage is absolutely ridiculous. has brought you from day one to day seven, every single hearing in its full, from gavel to gavel, with commentary. And we have over a million views so far.

So thank you for joining us, and thank you coming back to the coverage here on the Midas Touch Network. Make sure, make sure you go down and subscribe to the Midas Touch Network channel here on YouTube, so that way you do not miss any additional hearings and any additional coverage of the hearings. You have noticed that we have put out video after video of news that has been coming out. The great Jordy Maizelas has been commentating a lot of that, and we have other great commentators. Texas Paul is one of them. He will join us today. And I have two of the great commentators here for their legal analysis.

From Legal AF, I have Karen Agnipolo, KFA, and Michael Popak. Welcome, welcome, welcome, you two. Thank you for joining us here on the Midas Touch Network. Day seven. We are at day seven. We thought we were only going to get six of these, right? And we're at seven. So what a surprise, I guess. It's like M&M peanuts. You just can't stop eating them. Right. That could be. That could be. So, Karen, I want to start with you. What is your take of some of these witnesses today? It almost appears that they're going to be

a character type witness of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and even the Capitol rioters, because we see a former Oath Keepers spokesperson. Now, they've been keeping it close to the chest because of security reasons is what they've been saying. But also we see an actual January 6th rioter who has pled guilty in court. So what do you make of these witnesses? What do you think they're going to tell us that we haven't heard already? So thanks for having us on. You know, these hearings have been a roadmap for prosecution. And I think this particular hearing is no different. It's really showing who the people are that the siren calls from Donald Trump to come to the Capitol on January 6th. And, you know, you're going to see that these were people who, especially the leaders of many of these organizations,

they had been to the White House. They have met with Donald Trump in person. I mean, they had total access to, you know, to the power people in the White House. And so when Donald Trump calls them to to the Capitol on January 6th, I mean, they I think they're going to talk about about what about what that means and and what it is. And are you having problems with my mic? Yeah, I think I think I think the mic is a little, something's going on with the mic.

Let's go to Popak. Why don't you move to Popak and I'll try to sort out my technical issues. Sounds good, sounds good. Popak, so what is your take on today's hearing, but really kind of an overview of the testimony, because we also are supposed to hear today some of the deposition that was from Pat Cipollone as well that we have not heard yet. So what do you mean? This is going to be an action-packed hearing. First of all, it's chaired by Jamie Raskin, who is the constitutional scholar on the Jan 6th committee and co-chaired today, anyway, co-hosted by Stephanie Murphy, a Democrat out of Florida,

who's very impressive, a soror on the Sunday morning shows, talking about it. And there's a number of segments to today's presentation by the Jan 6 Committee. They're going to focus on the far-right extremists, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and specifically, not just hearing about what they did, heard that ad nauseum, but connecting them as a coordinated effort by Roger Stone and General, former General Michael Flynn, connecting the dot to Meadows, which connects back to Trump. So you got Trump, Meadows, Flynn, Stone, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, all in a coordinated effort on the Jan 6th attack. I think that's one angle for today. They're going to focus on the December 8th, the now famous or infamous December 19th tweet, in which in the beginning, Trump says that Peter Navarro came out with some big election fraud analysis, and thank you, Peter. But that ends it with the now infamous be there will be wild.

What we didn't know when we saw that tweet back at the time is that there was a meeting the night before. A meeting that was we're going to hear about it today in the testimony. between Team Crazy, which is Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, representing Team Crazy, and Flynn in the White House, being moderated by Pat Cipollone and Eric Hirschman, the two lawyers who are Team Normal, and Trump. And there were discussions we're going to hear about, I believe, today. There were discussions at that time about seizing voting equipment, about appointing Sidney Powell, some sort of election fraud czar. Fortunately, Cipollone, who I'm sure we'll see testimony from today, will talk about how they talked the president out of doing that. What they didn't talk the president out of doing was tweeting the next day as the fifth or sixth leg in the conspiracy to attack the Capitol on Jan.

Sixth, we're going to hear about the Willard Hotel and the war room at the Willard Hotel on Jan. Five and Jan. Six, where in one room you had Bannon. Julian. And in another room, you had Stone and Flynn again, and Meadows, as Cassidy Hutchinson testified, planning to go there to help coordinate the effort. So if you hear Stone and Flynn, think Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. If you hear Giuliani and Eastman, think the pressure on Mike Pence and the fake elector scandal. If you hear Bannon, he's just general evil. And then I think you're also going to hear more about the pressure on Pence. And all of this is going to tie back to the blowing off of the roof by Cassidy Hutchinson and corroborating Cassidy

Hutchinson through Pat Cipollone on key points that he was a witness to history for. So that's all going to get crammed into some versions of that with live witnesses and otherwise into today. And what they don't catch today, they're going to pick up in the eighth and final session, which is announced for later. Well, thank you, Bopak for your, your great analysis there, Karen. I think you get your mic ready there. Is that better? Yes, it's much better.

Do I sound any better? Much better. Okay, sorry about that. No, go ahead. Yeah, so I think all of the things that Popak just said are really to connect the dots all towards going to what was Donald Trump's intent and what was he doing. His defense here, because, because don't forget, this is a roadmap for prosecution, right? This is, this is the, the House Select Committee saying to the Department of Justice, who's clearly watching these, this is the evidence,

and this is what's out there. We've interviewed thousands of people, and this is the combination of opening statement and summation of, you know, what is the evidence and what who are the witnesses that you could call and what are the crimes you could prove? And so much of this has to go towards Donald Trump's intent. And much of these witnesses are going towards what his intention is, because, you know, in violent crimes, the intention of somebody, you know, the difference between a crime and an accident is what was your intention? You know, if you hit someone with a car on purpose, that's a crime. If it's an accident, it's not a crime, right? It goes towards what was your intention. But in crimes like the ones that we're looking at here, you know, a lot of the evidence has to do with meetings that occurred between people or phone calls that were made.

Things that aren't on their face, obviously criminals. So they have to prove that he had a criminal intent and that it wasn't that he just believed in good faith that he actually won the election and that he really thought that it was stolen from him and that he was doing these things in good faith, you know, because that's what his defense is going to be is, look, I thought I won. I thought this was okay. I thought it was lawful to do these things, you know, having a speech, having meetings, making phone calls, none of that's unlawful on their face. So this is a painstaking kind of methodical presentation of all the little facts that when you tie them together, the way Popak was saying, you know, just how a meeting between this person and that person equals, you know, whatever it equals, you know, that's why these things are so compelling and why they are so significant. And it's what needs to be proven in order to bring a criminal case against Donald Trump. So I do think that today is going to make that case even

stronger. And hopefully the Department of Justice will really start interviewing the thousands of people that the January 6th committee, at least the ones that they have pointed out, are the ones that need to be interviewed now that we know that the evidence is potentially so strong. I mean, you know, look, obviously this is a hearing, so these witnesses haven't been cross-examined, but they are under oath. And that's a big difference. You know, you see sort of when somebody testifies under oath, what they will say, it's much different than what they're saying, kind of tweeting or, you know, and when it comes to being put under oath, they are going to say the things that need to be said that they might not say otherwise. And so I think this is,

you know, I do think this is going to further provide the intent and show the willful blindness of Donald Trump, because he was told over and over and over and over again, not only that the election was stolen, but that these people, you know, were, first of all, he knew they were violent because he knows who they are. You know, he knows who the various white supremacist groups are that will be testifying, you know, today or testifying about today. A, he called them to the Capitol. He was specifically told to get rid of the magnetometers. Right. He was told they were armed. He was told that he said, I don't care. Get rid of the magnetometers. When they said, you know, hang Mike Pence, he said he deserves it.

You know, I mean, and then and then his those are all his acts. But he's also guilty because of his omissions. You know, at the time, you know, he was told that the police had lost control and that the Capitol had been breached. And be investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Hey, Tony, let me mention one thing about Cassidy Hutchinson. The one good thing about many good things about Cassidy Hutchinson. The New York Times did some very good reporting the last day or so that said the Department of Justice has really seen Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony as giving them license to investigate not the crime of the conspiracy leading up to Jan 6, but all the things that Karen just identified that happened on Jan 6, Trump knowing about the armed and dangerous mob, fomenting that mob and pointing it at the Capitol, knowing that they were armed. We always said in our own jargon that he was taking a armed mob and pointing them as a weapon at the Capitol.

But now we know that was actually true. And and her testimony may be the thing that finally brings the Department of Justice to bring a criminal case against Trump for the things that Karen just identified. I agree with you. I think I think that's where this is headed. And I think the evidence is just piling up against one person in particular. And his name is Donald Trump. I usually refer to him as the Cheeto Dust Mobster, but here on the Mindus Touch Network today,

we'll refer to him as former President Donald Trump, I guess. So thank you very much. Everyone, check out Legal AF. You'll find Karen Agnivelo and Michael Popak on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Don't forget to subscribe to the Mindest Touch Network to catch Legal AF and go download on all your favorite podcast directories. So thank you very much, Popak.

Thank you very much, Karen, for joining us. Thank you very much. So I want to move on to another podcast that we have here on the Mindest Touch Network. We have with us the Mizellus brothers, Brett Mizellus, and we also have Ben Mizellus. How are you, fellas? Doing good. Thanks for having us on, Tony. Great to be here, Tony. It's a pleasure.

Well, you heard some legal analysis, and Ben, I know you probably have some legal analysis, but I want to go to more of the politics of it. Brett's been following this all morning. We're trying to figure out who these witnesses are and what the significance is. But I want to show you a couple freakouts here that we have this morning from the former President Donald Trump. He is definitely freaking out this morning on his fraudulent social media network, True Social. Very stable genius. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, this is what a person who is not guilty does,

is go actually try to torch the testimony that is about to... He knows what's going to be said against him because he did it, right? Like, he knows this. Here's the one, and he's got another one here as well. Of course, it's always back to Russia, Russia, Russia. This guy can't help but invoke Putin in absolutely everything. So we have the freakout from the president. But what do you think, Brett?

What do you think? Is that significant that he's freaking out? Or you think it's the Pat Cipollone testimony that we see that he's really scared of? What is he scared of here? I think his back's against the wall. I genuinely think his back is against the wall. I think the people who are closest to him are speaking out. I think Pat Cipollone, as the former White House counsel for Donald Trump, was in the room, knows where all the

bodies are buried, knows everything that happened, and actually had spoke out against Trump and this entire plan and advised against it. So I think the testimony is going to be quite damning. So we just see the same bullshit, the same lies, the same gaslighting from Donald Trump every single time. It's discredit, discredit. I don't know that person. Low level intern. Everybody hated her. Everybody wanted to fire her. Nobody even knows who that is. She's the coffee boy, the coffee girl. I mean, it's the same garbage every single time. And I almost at this point, I don't, I don't, but I almost feel bad for the Trump supporters who just buy this bullshit every single day because you need to take every single position on the map in order to be a Trump

supporter. You cannot be consistent whatsoever. And you need to just love being lied to and love being shoveled bullshit. These people just love being shoveled bullshit. And what we're learning every single day now is that this was a very violent insurrection, not only violent with flagpoles and chairs and mace and all the things that we saw on TV, but we now know that there were explosives and weapons, military grade weapons, and that these people were there for war. And today we're going to learn about these militia groups some more. And I hate that people call them militia groups, but they really are our domestic terror groups,

which take cover as militia groups. But we'll learn about the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys, and we'll get inside the mindsets of these groups and really begin to understand more that these are not just some fringe groups out there that have assembled to help the cause. These are people who were summoned by Donald Trump himself, by the people around Donald Trump, by the Roger Stones, by the Steve Bannons, by everybody. I mean, they were in on it. They were in on the whole thing. And I think that's going to be a key part of the testimony that we hear today. I think you're right. And I brought the tweet up that I think is going to be a big feature today in the hearing. Jamie Raskin

actually tweeted it out, I think yesterday or this morning. Ben, what do you think this tweet, you know, the legal ramifications here are of this? Because it seems to me that they're claiming that this was the call to action for these these militia groups or the terrorism, the domestic terrorist groups, as Brett referred to them. It really it really does seem like that's what they're that's really the focus and the aim that they're going to uh to have here is that donald trump summoned these people to because he was in the room he was in the room with the terrorists when he wrote the tweet tony that's why it's not a hard connection to make literally the evening he wrote that tweet at like 1 30 in the morning right after he got a visit from Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, the CEO of Overstock, a bunch of those people came in and told him specifically what was being planned. I mean, duh, that's what happened. And so he goes, oh, that's pretty wild what's going to happen.

Let me tweet to all my people that January 6th is going to be crazy. But he knew that all of these Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and terrorists were going to descend on the Capitol on that day. And how do you know that? Because the people came in that that day and they told them all of the people right now who, you know, some of them are like Mike Flynn are pleading the fifth and some of them like Sidney Powell are talking about cracking and are so incoherent that you have no clue what they're saying. But what this also speaks to, Tony, is that the January 6th committee hearings are working. That's what I see when I see those Trump rants. And they're working in terms of giving truthful and accurate information and getting the attention of Americans to watch this. And you have to hand it to the committee. They've done a masterful job in how they've coordinated and planned the hearings. And so it's not a foregone conclusion that Cassidy Hutchinson comes forward the day she does, and Pat Cipollone's all of a

sudden going to come forward. You know, this committee studied the psychiatry, the psychology of people and the way people think and how groups think to make sure people were comfortable to come forward, right? That's why you had the order of the filmmaker and the Capitol police officer first. And then you kind of ascended with, you know, some of the lawyers for Pence, and then you had the judge, and then you put Cassidy Hutchinson where you do to give the testimony to create a movement of people. And you have to kind of create that on its own. And so when I see those Trump tweets recently and him going crazy and especially his unhinged nature, his more unhinged nature at the rallies, you know, this is hitting him where it hurts. And as Brett

said, there will always be a group. It's shocking to me, shocking to everybody of 25 to 30% of people who will look at anything he says and just be like, hey, defraud me, steal me. Everybody in the world is wrong. Experts are wrong and doctors are wrong and our top scholars. The only person who has all the answers is the guy who lies about literally everything. He's the only one who, there'll be 25% of that, but it's really speaking to American and saying, wake up Americans, wake up. This is the America who won World War II, wake up. We're the ones who fight for democracy. And there is a bunch of people

who I think the January 6th committee is waking up. I want to bring in someone who's actually went against Trump. We refer to her here as the Trump NDA killer, Jessica Denson. She has actual experience here on her own to actually fight against the trump the trump campaign and the trump apparatus and you know it's it is a huge miss and disinformation uh apparatus and

at the head of it is i call him the cheeto dust mobster but the former president donald trump himself and he's doing this this morning and i'm not going to read the the post on whatever the hell it's called over there true social whatever it is um because it really it's'm not going to read the the post on whatever the hell it's called over there true social whatever it is um because it's really it's it's hard to read number one but you can go over and you can look at it and we have put them up here on screen but jessica tell us a little bit about what you see in the hearing today were you not only the last testimony we've seen of cassie hutchinson but now we're going to watch pat Cipollone really corroborate and back up what she said after we heard for days and days, how much she's a liar.

And even this morning he's, he's posting again that she's a liar. This, this is, this is typical Trump chaos, right? Right, Jessica. Yeah. I think we have, we have so much to look forward to today. First of all, Pat Bologna, as Popak was was giving us the introduction. He, if you don't remember, was was Trump's, quote unquote, defense attorney in impeachment one, which was a very questionable, questionable position. I don't think Ben could probably answer this, he would have been allowed to be Trump's defense attorney in an actual court of law because he was a witness in impeachment one, the extortion of Ukraine. But just keep that in mind, thinking of how defensive and closely intertwined with Donald

Trump and loyal he has been up until this point. He was actually introduced to Donald Trump by Laura Ingraham in 2016. When I was on the campaign, I remember Trump would go off to Bedminster from Trump Tower to have these debate prep sessions with a very small group of advisors. And Patrick Maloney was in that small group of advisors. So he's been very intrinsic in Trump's defense and legal protection up until this point. And as you noted, the committee members of Loughborough on Friday have already signaled that he not only corroborated the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, but gave new information. So that's some really important things. Those are some very important things to look forward to today. Also, we're talking about these militia groups better described as terrorists. I describe them as the American jihad, part of a larger group of extremists led by Donald Trump and really fueled and energized by Donald Trump, given legitimacy, where in the past they would absolutely not have this, to have an actual sitting president summoning them, giving them

license to act. One really important thing that I think you can't lose sight of as we're discussing is the potential and intention for violence and the preparation for violence. I'm from the D.C. area. Arlington, Virginia is right outside D.C. There's this comfort inn I've driven past a million times. Every time I drive past it now, you know what I think of? I think of the Oath Keepers and the stockpiles of weapons, the weapons cash that they brought into that comfort inn in Arlington, Virginia, just a couple minutes down from Key Bridge, which takes you right into Washington, D.C., in preparation for violence. Today, you are going to hear the link from that December 19th, this will be wild tweet, to the planned violence on January 6th. Donald Trump knew about

it. He was expecting it and he wanted it. It was part of his plan to overthrow American democracy. Last thing I want to mention, some really, really interesting witnesses. Jason Van Tatenhope was actually an embed. He could describe himself as kind of an embed journalist for the Oatkeepers for a long time before he reformed and came out. And to this day, he runs a newsy blog, not super different from what the brothers do. Just really, you know, news of all kinds. But before this, he was in bed with the Oat Keepers. And he is going to really describe what he saw. He has come clean. He has come out of this sort of militia cult that he was part of for a long time. And Stephen Ayers, Stephen Ayers, as we've described him, a defendant

in the January 6th insurrection. Very interesting point here. One of his co-defendants, a guy named Matthew Perna, committed suicide after pleading guilty. I just want to remind everybody what a death cult the MAGA movement is. We know about Brian Sicknick. We know about the other Capitol Police officers and Metropolitan Police officers that committed suicide in the fallout. It is so tragic and just unfathomable what they had to go through on that day. But never forget that this is a death cult for Donald Trump's own supporters as well. How many of his own supporters did he send to death that day? Ashley Babbitt, Roseanne Boylan, Kevin Greason, Benjamin Phillips, this gentleman, Matthew Perna, committed suicide after pleading

guilty. This is what following Donald Trump, who will use anyone and everything to his own advantage for nobody else's good, it will do to you. So we're going to see all of these links, and I'm really looking forward to it. Well, I appreciate your insight there. A great breakdown of the witnesses and some of the connections there. Ben, what do you make of some of those? Actually, you know, before I go there, there i want to point out because there was some debate last night about your hat that you had on um on on the podcast do we have a screenshot yeah well i don't have a screenshot i wish i did i did post a screenshot onto it where did you get that hat where did you get that hat on last night it's a sombrero i got

it in cuckoo la mexico near guadal, okay, okay, because there was some debate. I called it a cowboy hat. Jessica here corrected me in that it's not a cowboy hat. I'm from, you know, the country, and to me it looked much like a cowboy hat. We're going to have another cowboy hat here really soon. But before I also – I'm getting someone begging me to mention the pro-democracy, unapologetically pro-democracy enamel pens Union made in the USA. Go to store.mindastush.com for 10% off. Just use the promo code justice for 10% off the brand new, new release, pro-democracy, unapologetically pro-democracy, union-made pens. I hope that satisfies them.

Yeah, those are fresh. Those are fresh. Are they fresh? And whenever we put out the new pens, they sell like that. So if you want one of those pro-democracy pens, go and get them now. I know Jordy wanted me to push that. Well, he's the marketing guy. He's got to push for the marketing.

I know. He's not here today, so I figured we'd at least give him his pens. Why isn't he here today? I have no idea. Does he work over there besides coming up with new pen ideas or what's going on? One thing I want to point out, Tony, though, too, though, is about Pat Cipollone and the attorney-client privilege issue that Jessica raised. If he's going to be testifying as a fact witness and the things that he observed that are outside the scope of his attorney-client privilege. So the deal he cut is that he wasn't going to reveal things that were truly in

connection with legal advice in anticipation of litigation, but that what he would do is, hey, I was in the room and I saw all these other things happen and things were said because the attorney-client privilege is a very sacred privilege between person and attorney. So if other people are in the room and it's not for legal advice, the attorney-client privilege does not apply. And those are the types of questions that Cipollone was going to agree. It was, by the way, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Cipollone was even going to testify to that. Remember that Liz Cheney had called him out in an earlier hearing and said we need to hear from pat cipollone it took cassidy hutchinson's bravery for cipollone to basically stop obstructing it took the prosecution of bannon and seeing what was happening to how serious the doj was

for people like cipollone to testify and just finally finally, Tony, going to the one tweet that Donald Trump wrote about, this is going to be wild. I want people listening to think just what a criminal act this was, what a dereliction of duty. Imagine if you knew and you got word and you could go back in time, like right before the Oklahoma City bomb, right? You know, Timothy McVeigh and his group of terrorists was going to be at a location.

And you as the president of Bill Clinton said, hey, everybody, let's go hang out here. Things are going to get wild. OK, it's really no different than that. He knew that a group that was being watched by the FBI, by the government for engaging in terroristic acts was going to be at a location and put people's lives in jeopardy. And the president of the United States says it's going to be wild. I mean, how sick and disgusting can you possibly be? And how sick and disgusting can you be as a person to support somebody like that? Well, Brett, we've seen that the former president continued to do this stuff in his little rally that he had in Alaska over the weekend. He kept trying to stoke this type of terrorism that isn't state-funded or state-related.

It's only, hey, well, you know, it's kind of the if if you punch him, I'll pay your legal fees type stuff, you know, that we've seen from the 2016 campaign. It's kind of the same stuff over and over and over again from Trump. He's all in. He's all in at this point. I mean, what's he going to do? All of a sudden, at this point in the game, he's going to say, oh, I was wrong. Election was actually all good. Sorry about that. Sorry for the confusion.

Now he's got to double down and triple down, and he's got to keep this fantasy alive because his base loves this fantasy. They love this cosplay of Trump is still our president. And it was all a lie. I know everything like Ben was saying. In fact, everything we're being told is a lie. In fact, what the news tells us is a lie. What the doctors tell us is a lie. Everything except this magical man with orange hair. This is the man who knows all. And this is what happens. And they're just regurgitated this propaganda on a daily basis, which I know Jessica knows about because she's been on both sides of this as being somebody who took in this propaganda and accepted it as fact from the Fox News of the world to then being disparaged by the Fox News of the world to then being disparaged by the

Fox News of the world and seeing them for what they are. But it's truly very, it's twisted and it's very Soviet and North Korea. And we just never really seen anything like this in the United States of America. And it's just so blatant and in your face that it's almost comical to a point if 25 to 30 percent of Americans weren't believing it. Like if you saw the coverage last night, they were talking about the Sri Lankan government and everything happening over there. And they blame the collapse on the Sri Lankan government on the Green New Deal, which isn't even a thing, not even something that was passed here and would have no impact there because they just really don't want us to have environmental policy. Well, I'm sure Hunter Biden's laptop will release a statement soon on what happened in Sri Lanka.

I'm sure that we'll get some. I'm sure we will. They'll figure out a way. It'll be like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They'll bring in the laptop. They'll bring in all these little things that they make up and they'll throw them all together. But you got that. You got them.

They had Pete Buttigieg humiliate them on their own network. And then you have Laura Ingraham refusing to actually play that clip, but instead completely changes the words of what he said and said, Pete Buttigieg called for violence against the Supreme Court when he said the complete opposite. But this is what 25% to 30% of Americans are being fed on a daily basis. So the work of the January 6th committee is so important, but we don't even have to reach those people at the end of the day. They are cultists. We're just not going to get through to them right now. The people on that side who want to break through, ultimately they will break through if the conditions are right. But we're focusing on the other portion of Americans. And we even just saw since the last poll that came out,

I think there's been a 7% increase in Republicans who view Donald Trump as responsible for the January 6th attack, Republicans. So don't tell me the January 6th committee is not working and is not having an effect. And I also want to remind everybody that people do have very short attention spans and it's not always a bad thing. I mean, we have a lot going on in our lives. We have a lot of personal issues. There's a lot going on in the world to deal with. There's a million different problems we're facing every single day. But to some people, the January 6th insurrection was distant and far away. And when things get distant and far away, you start to change them in your mind. And especially if you're consuming a media who is not presenting them as you should, as this was a domestic terrorist attack and we need justice now, then you could

gaslight yourself almost into thinking, oh yeah, it wasn't that bad. So being able to see these images, being able to relive it, being able to hear directly from the people in the room, the Pat Cipollone's, all these people, this is why it's so important. The truth is coming out. Donald Trump knows he can't stop it. Steve Bannon thought he could stop it. He was laughed out of court yesterday, humiliated. Steve Bannon got a pardon from Trump. He will probably most likely end up in prison anyway. I mean, how big of a schmuck can you be at the end of the day? How horrible of a human being. Well, yeah, I know Jessica can talk about Steve Bannon for hours and hours.

And Jessica, you have to come on my show to talk about, again, the Tony Michaels podcast, to talk about Steve Bannon because you have like just hours and hours of content. But I just want to point out the hat has appeared. Yeah, I just barely got over last night's Tex-Mex version of the Midas Touch podcast. Here we are.

Here we are. Well, thank you for joining us. Ben, stick around because my next guest, thank you, Brett. Thank you, Jessica, for joining us. Ben, stick around for just one second because I have someone that I think will have fun with you. Here we have Texas Paul. And now we have the hat brothers here. Texas Paul, if you unmute, we have a texas paul and now we have the uh the the the hat brothers here uh texas paul

if you unmute we can we can talk there uh texas paul unmute there he's he's still he's still on mute he's still on mute there you go oh maybe maybe this is this is what happens i'm telling you you know ben comes down we get together we have a few'm telling you, you know, Ben comes down. We get together. We have a few drinks. And next thing you know, the sun's coming up and Ben's got a cowboy hat. It's not a cowboy hat. I was corrected.

I was corrected on Twitter. It is not a cowboy hat. Texas Paul, I was corrected, too. It is a sombrero. It is not a cowboy hat, apparently. Well, I'll correct you right there, sir, again, because this It is a sombrero. It is not a cowboy hat, apparently. Well, I'll correct you right there, sir, again, because this is actually a sombrero. Cowboy hats come from vaqueros in Mexico.

That's the original. This is the copy. Ah, I see, I see. That's the real deal cowboy hat right there. We are getting hat facts today. Ben, thanks for joining us and giving us that, again, the Tex-mex i like it you look good man you look good we'll talk to you soon we'll talk to you soon uh texas paul um give us your take real quick on hearing from the oath keepers i got some more guests i want to bring here but give us your your take on hearing from the oath

keepers and this january 6 rioter. What do you think these witnesses are going to tell us today? Well, the witness from the Oath Keepers is originally, he actually left the Oath Keepers, I believe, back in 2017. He's going to be quite open about this. He wasn't involved in January 6th. He is, you know, broken off from the cult. He is. And he's going to be pretty straightforward. Cipollone I worry about because, you know, this whole attorney-client privilege deal he worked out, I don't know how forthcoming he's going to be. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he does what's right for the country. I am, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I would like to add though,

everybody's hit it all the way from Karen to Michael to Brett, all talking about these groups, the Oath Keepers. I follow these groups very closely. I do. And I will tell you, the Oath Keepers are clowns. They are. They're very, very dangerous clowns. It's a bunch of wannabes, a bunch of, you know, gravy seals, fat asses, get out in the woods and like, you know, want to play soldier bullshit. Every time I see Elmer

Stewart Rhodes, I think about that movie, The Christmas Story with Ralphie. You'll shoot your eye out. You know what I mean? He is not a serious man to me. A name that you're going to start hearing in these hearings, I guarantee you, is Robert Patrick Lewis. Robert Patrick Lewis founded the 1A Praetorian Guard. These are serious people. These are not jokes. These are not Enrique Cario, the

beach hoodlum from Miami. This guy is special forces. These people are and they recruit from SWAT and special forces. These people are, and they recruit from SWAT and special forces. They provide security at QAnon rallies, and they're crazy as hell. They are

nuts. They are straight up QAnon nuts. In fact, on January 5th, there's a rally you don't hear about much that was in D.C. the day before that was at the Freedom Plaza where Lewis was speaking and just blabbering all this crazy QAnon bullshit. But I guarantee you, operationally, tactically, and we even have some testimony

from communications picked up by the FBI that the Praetorian Guard had a sniper in position to protect the Oath Keepers that had their stashes of weapons. The QRF. He was in overwatch protecting them. And I know that stack is probably going to be important today. The stack being how they entered the building uh where the qrf the the stash of weapons was stored i know there's going to be big features today but also i think these witnesses are going to tell us texas paul um the witness are going to tell us what initiated that and i believe these witnesses are going to tell us that this tweet here initiated some of this planning that took place to make sure that

that January 6th went over smoothly for the Cheeto dust mobster. I'll give you one more one more minute here to end and then I've got to go to my next guest. What Brett was talking about, what I believe the reason that you're hearing this from Trump today and the tweets that you keep putting up that are just 100 percent perfect is it's a cult. Right. It's a cult. And the cult always has to hear everybody lies to you but me. I'm the truth. I'm the one. And what's scary is I've done several videos on this. The entire Republican Party is morphing into this Christo-fascist cult. And it's really, really scary stuff being run out of our churches.

And that's what this is all about. He is keeping his cult tight. No matter what we say today, and like Brett says, we keep peeling some off, but that core is going to believe now everything they hear today is a lie, because their anointed by God leader has told them this is a lie. Well, thank you, Texas Paul. I appreciate you joining us. I want to bring in someone who has some experience with the Christian right, as it were. Ron Reagan. And I also want to bring in David Bender as well. Ron, how are you?

How are you, Ron? Ciao from Italy. Yes, yes, yes, yes. How's the wood cutting going? I know we talked about that. A quarter of wood. A quarter of wood. Well, that's a lot of wood.

That's a lot of wood. David, how are you today? I'm just throwing my hat in the ring. Yeah, I see everyone's got their hats on today. This is not a sombrero. Okay, good. It's a trilby hat. Oh, okay. Just to be clear, it goes back to the old world.

Did you forget to wash your hair today? You know, it's been that kind of day. I never wash my hair so long as Donald Trump's name is spoken aloud. So it's been a long time. So, Ron, Ron, Ron, what do you make of what Texas Paul was talking about here? Because the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, they're not really part of the Christian nationalist movement as much as they've adopted it to try to, you know, stoke violence in the country, it seems. I think a lot of the things that he was saying are very important.

And that in particular, there is a whole now Christian white nationalist dominionist movement, which is being absorbed into the larger Republican Party, which is anti-democratic. And you listen to Doug Mastroianni in Pennsylvania and a bunch of others now, and they're openly talking about not only violence, but really the fact that white Christian nationalists are the only people who should be in charge of anything in our country. And everybody else who doesn't buy into their cult has no place in our government, no place in our media, no place running businesses. And they're going to work hard to make sure that that comes true. And they're not against using violence, as he pointed out. Yes, you know, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, these people who dress up as bumblebees and stuff. Yeah, they're wannabes and they're clowns. Not that

they're not dangerous, but they're clowns. But he mentioned the Praetorian Guard, and there are others like them who are serious people who've got real military training, and they mean to put it to use. And some of those people are still in the military and still in law enforcement. And they're not leaving. They're going to be embedded there. And these people pose a real danger to our country. Well, you know, another group named Atomwaffen, we saw that name appear several months ago when the Department of Justice was really tracking down some of the threats that were made on nuclear power plants, some electrical plants around the country. That's another neo-Nazi type group that is, you know, totally in line with Trumpism, as it were.

So, David, give us your take. I actually have a question for Ron because this is something that's concerned me for a while now. We're seeing that possibly Tony Amorato, a member of the Secret Service who became a political appointee in the Trump White House, is now back with the Secret Service. Is it possible you experienced the secret service i i this is something that has concerned me with active duty military active duty law enforcement and even worse and more dangerously active duty secret service that may buy into some of this how does one address that how do you how do you find out what people are thinking in these active duty roles that they play? That's a very good question. And this is a very difficult thing to do. You don't want to be in the position necessarily of purging people from government because you think they may disagree

with you politically. That's the sort of thing that Donald Trump would do. On the other hand, I can say that if you're in the Secret Service or any other branch of government and you are a Trumpist, if you are a stop the steal person, you are not a fan of our democracy anymore. You are not defending the Constitution. And as such, as a person like that, you ought not to be in those positions anymore. If I was the head of the Secret Service, I would begin quietly inquiring about people who were with the PDD, the Presidential Protective Detail, who Trump, what I've heard is, selected because they were loyalists to him, not the office of the president. And I would begin moving them out, or at least moving them out to distant posts, maybe in Alaska. Which is where Honorato is now. He's moved out. He's not been disengaged. But I think this is something that going forward and and i i commend to everyone and i put it up in our chat here but to everyone listening there's a piece that greg sargent has in the washington post about how uh this violent movement that we're going to

be talking about today the hearings will be showing is a an early warning sign around the world when you begin to see democracies falling. What Sergeant's piece does is, through experts, Rachel Kleinfeller, I think, has written a book about it, talks about exactly that. The people who are in government, the people who are outside of it, but who are willing to use violent tactics and this is the fear that the violence hasn't stopped at all with january 6th it's going to be going on and obviously some of the things that we just saw the supreme court do has has been more uh incendiary uh than anything in my memory to polarize the nation so uh it is it's a concern at so many levels how do you ron you're absolutely right you can't do purity tests but i do think

and and we heard this the oath that you take is to the constitution not to a person. When James Comey walked into that office and was asked or sat down and said, I expect loyalty from you, he meant to a person, not the office, not the Constitution. So this is, we saw this play out, but we haven't seen it over. It's not over at all. Donald Trump is now the symptom. He is not the disease.

No, that's right. And you mentioned Mr. Cipollone, which is as close as I can come to the actual Italian pronunciation. Pasquale. Pasquale is his actual name. Mr. Cipollone is no cure here. Mr. Cipollone is a bad guy. He has seen it in his own best interest, I suspect, because he doesn't want to lose his law license to cooperate to some extent with the committee. Mr. Cipollone claiming attorney-client privilege, who was his client? Not Mr. Trump, the White House, the executive branch, and that means us. So he's got that all wrong. And I'm surprised they let him get away with that. But I judiciary branch is already gone. It is now utterly corrupt and without any legitimacy. Six religious fanatics on the Supreme Court are going to do whatever they want to do there. They've pretty much announced that.

The legislative branch, the Senate, of course, is profoundly undemocratic, the way it's constituted, and can get nothing done. If Democrats lose the House in November, and the entire legislative branch then is effectively under the control of Republicans, well, that just leaves the executive. And what happens in 2024 if that falls to the Republicans too? The people that we're worried about here, the people who have enabled violence, let's say, will now be in charge of our government. And our government, as we like to think of it, as a Republican democracy, small R Republican democracy, will cease to exist. Can I, can I, I was going to say, I think,

I think you make a good point there that there's a lot at stake with these hearings. As we watch the hearing room here, the witnesses have not come in yet. David, I'll give you a chance. I want to bring in my executive producer and co-host, Gabe Sanchez. Hey, Gabe. Hey there, Gabe. So the only ray of sunshine I like to I like to do that. You know, Rachel used to call me Pollyanna. But, you know, there is a chance, Ron, if on the flip side of this, if the Senate expands outside of the Manchin cinema blockade and you get enough votes to overturn the filibuster, see it, but Roe and these hearings affect Democratic turnout on a level that may be unprecedented because people are genuinely angry about what's happening. It's not simmering down at all, and it won't by October, November. We hold the House. We have a filibuster-proof Senate.

The bill, number one, is to make the court what it was when it became nine justices. That was in parallel to the number of circuit courts we had 150 years ago. There were nine circuit courts, nine Supreme Court justices. And how many we have now? Wait for it 13 uh counting the federal court of appeals 13 appellate uh courts which allows for four more justices that is a game changer and that is not packing the court that is making the court equal to the workload and the burden uh that is what brought it to nine when it was changed. So that's me being Pollyanna. I am. We all know that. But it's important to say that there is some hope

and there's a reason for people to not give up and to be prepared to vote in numbers like no one has ever seen before in October and November. You know, one other thing that strikes me about this, and I felt the same way about the Mueller report, you know, when it came out and before it came out, is we all know what happened here on January 6th and before and after. We know what the story is. It's great that they're laying it out for an American public that doesn't maybe pay quite as much attention as we do. It's great that they're laying that out for the Justice Department in case they really want to pursue legal cases against everybody, including Mr. Trump. But we all know what happened here. A sitting president tried to interfere with the peaceful

transfer of power, tried to overthrow the government, basically. This has never happened before. And it's an extraordinary event. And there it is. It's right in front of us. There's no question about this anymore. And there never was. But we have to ask ourselves now, what are we really about this as an American public? Why did we let this man get into the White House in the first place? Well, the public didn't because, of course, they voted by three million votes. They gave it to Hillary Clinton, but we have an electoral college.

What are we going to do about that then? What is wrong with us and what is wrong with the media that allowed that to happen, that didn't report honestly on who Donald Trump was from the very beginning and point out to the public that it's unacceptable that somebody like this should end up in the White House? How are they going to handle these hearings? Are they going to tell us honestly, tell the public honestly what the danger really is and how severe it is and how imminent that danger is. I hope so. Some are doing a good job of stirring with the big paddle as usual. Well, you know, a lot of people gave a lot of criticism to a certain someone who is on NBC on Sundays. Sundays when he made the statement about that it would be bad for the country if Donald Trump would face prosecution, which I think a big majority of the country did not appreciate that statement,

because I think to what you guys are saying about the Supreme Court, all the branches of government, how we have elections in this country, I believe actually a prosecution of Donald Trump is exactly what our country needs at this point. And I think that prosecution of Donald Trump is exactly what our country needs at this point. And I think that's what the January 6th Select Committee is trying to do in the in the court of public opinion, because there is going to be criminal courts here. We've seen the criminal courts, but the court of public opinion is the one that I think that they're operating in with the January 6th Select Committee. Gabe, do you have a question for our guest here? No, I just wanted to add on to what Ron was saying.

I think that you make a very good point. It's, I mean, like you look at kind of what's happening, right? We have a coup in plain sight. We literally watched this happen in real time, like the shit hitting the fan. You know, with the Mueller report, it was more behind the scenes. And then there was kind of, you know, it wasn't until the report was released and kind of what their findings were. And then at that point, people could dismiss and say, oh, this wasn't really a thing or, you know, it was fake news or it was a hoax.

This is different, right? And also, we are literally watching this again in real time with the findings to say, we have people coming forward. We have depositions, witnesses testifying under oath. We've got documentation, evidence from here to kingdom come kind of right now, because it keeps coming. And thanks to people like Cassidy Hutchinson, it allows us to see more people willing to come forward and do what more or less their kind of their right is or just the responsibility as someone who is part of the administration who at that time kind of let it happen. But now, whether through peer pressure or having an epiphany or what have you, are now willing to say, OK, we can't let something like this happen again. And I at least want to be someone who puts themselves forward in history as, you know, as a person who is willing to, you know, defend democracy, defend the Constitution, at least be known as someone who is willing to say something,

as opposed to someone who was going to be, you know, dragged through the mud of history as someone who just stood by as complacent, right? That's what's at stake here. Our country is at stake here. The Republicans cannot be allowed to take power again. They cannot be allowed to do that. And we're the only people that can stop that from happening. If they take power again, we don't have a democracy anymore. And they've made that very plain. Exactly. They're not hiding that fact anymore. So like Maya Angelou, I think it was, said, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them. Well, they're telling us who they are.

Believe them. And at the moment, I think the committee is about to tell us who they are. Believe it. And at the moment, I think the committee is about to tell us who they are. Am I correct? Yeah, it looks like they're taking the stage here, so I'll go to you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. We'll get back to our guest soon. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, David. Thanks, Gabe. You bet. Thanks. It appears that the committee will investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol will be in order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the Committee in recess at any point.

Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the deposition material presented during today's hearing. Good afternoon. When I think about the most basic way to explain the importance of elections in the United States, there's a phrase that always comes to mind. It may sound straightforward, but it's meaningful. We settle our differences at the ballot box. Sometimes my choice prevails, sometimes yours does, but it's that simple. We cast our votes, we count the votes. If something seems off with the results, we can challenge them in court, and then we accept the results. When you're on the losing side, that doesn't mean you have to be happy about it. And in the United States, there's plenty you can do and say so. You can

protest. You can organize. You can get ready for the next election to try to make sure your side has a better chance the next time the people sell their differences at the ballot box. But you can't turn violent. You can't try to achieve your desired outcome through force or harassment or intimidation. Any real leader who sees their supporters going down that path, approaching that line has a responsibility to say, stop. We gave it our best. We came up short. We try again next time because we settled our differences at the ballot box. On December 14th, 2020, the presidential election was officially over. The Electoral

College had cast its vote. Joe Biden was the president-elect of the United States. By that point, many of Donald Trump's supporters were already convinced that the election had been stolen because that's what Donald Trump had been telling them. So what Donald Trump was required to do in that moment, what would have been required of any American leader was to say, we did our best and we came up short. He went the opposite way. He seized on the anger he had already stoked among his most loyal supporters, and as they approached the line, he didn't wave them off, he urged them on. Today, the committee will explain how, as a part of his last-ditch effort to overturn the election and block the transfer of power, Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington,

D.C., and ultimately spurred that mob to wage a violent attack on our democracy. Our colleagues, Ms. Murphy of Florida and Mr. Raskin of Maryland, will lay out this story. First, I'm pleased to recognize our distinguished Vice Chair, Ms. Chaney of Wyoming, for any opening comments she'd care to offer. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Our committee did not conduct a hearing last week, but we did conduct an on-the-record interview of President Trump's former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone. If you've watched these hearings, you've heard us call for Mr. Cipollone to come forward to testify.

He did, and Mr. Cipollone's testimony met our expectations. We will save for our next hearing President Trump's behavior during the violence of January 6th. Today's hearing will take us from December 14, 2020, when the Electoral College met and certified the results of the 2020 presidential election, up through the morning of January 6. You will see certain segments of Pat Cipollone's testimony today. We will also see today how President Trump summoned a mob to Washington and how the president's

stolen election lies provoked that mob to Washington and how the president's stolen election lies provoked that mob to attack the Capitol. And we will hear from a man who was induced by President Trump's lies to come to Washington and join the mob and how that decision has changed his life. Today's hearing is our seventh. We have covered significant ground over the past several weeks and we have also seen a change in how witnesses and lawyers in the Trump orbit approach this committee. Initially their strategy in some cases appeared to be to deny and delay. Today there appears to be a general recognition that the committee has established key facts, including that virtually everyone close to President Trump,

his Justice Department officials, his White House advisors, his White House counsel, his campaign, all told him the 2020 election was not stolen. This appears to have changed the strategy for defending Donald Trump. Now the argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by others outside the administration, that he was persuaded to ignore his closest advisors, and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong. This new strategy is to try to blame only John Eastman or Sidney Powell or Congressman Scott Perry or others and not President Trump. In this version, the president was, quote, poorly served by these outside advisors. The strategy is to blame people his advisors called, quote, the crazies for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else

in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American, and he was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind. Nor can any argument of any kind excuse President Trump's behavior during the violent attack on January 6th. As you watch our hearing today, I would urge you to keep your eye on two specific points. First, you will see evidence that Trump's legal

team, led by Rudy Giuliani, knew that they lacked actual evidence of widespread fraud sufficient to prove that the election was actually stolen. They knew it, but they went ahead with January 6th anyway. And second, consider how millions of Americans were persuaded to believe what Donald Trump's closest advisors in his administration did not. These Americans did not have access to the truth like Donald Trump did. They put their faith and their trust in Donald Trump. They wanted to believe in him. They wanted to fight for their country, and he deceived them. For millions of Americans, that may be painful to accept, but it is true. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I yield back. Without objection, the chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Ms. Murphy, and the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, for opening statements. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that then-President Donald Trump lost in a free and fair election. And yet, President Trump insisted that his loss was due to fraud in the election process, rather than to the democratic will of the voters. The president continued to make this claim despite being told again and again by the courts, by the Justice Department, by his campaign officials, and by some of his closest advisors that the evidence did not support this assertion.

This was the big lie and millions of Americans were deceived by it. Too many of our fellow citizens still believe it to this day. It's corrosive to our country and damaging to our democracy. As our committee has shown in prior hearings, following the election, President Trump relentlessly pursued multiple interlocking lines of effort, all with a single goal to remain in power despite having lost. The lines of effort were aimed at his loyal Vice President Mike Pence, at state election and elected officials, and at the US Department of Justice. The president

pressured the vice president to obstruct the process to certify the election result. He demanded that state officials find him enough votes to overturn the election outcome in that state, and he pressed the Department of Justice to find widespread evidence of fraud. When justice officials told the president that such evidence did not exist, the president urged them to simply declare that the election was corrupt. On December 14th, the Electoral College met to officially confirm that Joe Biden would be the next president.

The evidence shows that once this occurred, President Trump and those who were willing to aid and abet him turned their attention to the joint session of Congress scheduled for January 6th, at which the Vice President would preside. In their warped view, this ceremonial event was the next, and perhaps the last, inflection point that could be used to reverse the outcome of the election before Mr. Biden's inauguration. As President Trump put it, the Vice President and enough members of Congress simply needed to summon the courage to act. To help them find that courage, the president called for backup. Early in the morning

of December 19th, the president sent out a tweet urging his followers to travel to Washington, D.C. for January 6th. Be there, we'll be wild, the president wrote. As my colleague, Mr. Raskin, will describe in detail, this tweet served as a call to action, and in some cases, as a call to arms for many of President Trump's most loyal supporters. It's clear the president intended the assembled crowd on January 6th to serve his goal. And as you've already seen, and as you will see again today,

some of those who were coming had specific plans. The president's goal was to stay in power for a second term despite losing the election. The assembled crowd was one of the tools to achieve that goal. And in today's hearing, we will focus on events that took place in the final weeks leading up to January 6th, starting in mid-December, and we'll add color and context to evidence you've already heard about, and we'll also provide additional new evidence. For example, you'll hear about meetings in which the president entertained extreme measures designed to help him stay in power, like the seizure of voting machines. We will show some of the coordination that occurred between the White House and members of Congress as it relates to January 6th.

And some of these members of Congress would later seek pardons. We will also examine some of the planning for the January 6th protests, placing special emphasis on one rally planner's concerns about the potential violence. And we will describe some of the president's key actions on the evening of January 5th and the morning of January 6 including how the president edited and ad-libbed his speech that morning at the Ellipse directed the crowd to march to the Capitol and spoke off script in a way that further inflamed an already angry crowd I yield

to the gentleman from Maryland mr Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Ms. Murphy, Mr. Chairman, Madam Vice Chair. Four days after the electors met across the country and made Joe Biden the president-elect, Donald Trump was still trying to find a way to hang on to the presidency. On Friday, December 18th, his team of outside advisors paid him a surprise visit in the White House that would quickly become the stuff of legend. The meeting has been called unhinged, not normal, in the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency. The outside lawyers who had been involved in dozens of failed lawsuits had lots of theories supporting the big lie, but no evidence to support it. As we will see, however, they brought to the White House a draft executive order that they had prepared for President Trump to further his ends. Specifically,

they proposed the immediate mass seizure of state election machines by the U.S. military. The meeting ended after midnight with apparent rejection of that idea. In the wee hours of December 19th, dissatisfied with his options, Donald Trump decided to call for a large and wild crowd on Wednesday, January 6th, the day when Congress would meet to certify the electoral votes. Never before in American history had a president called for a crowd to come contest the counting of electoral votes by Congress or engaged in any effort designed to influence, delay, or obstruct the joint session of Congress in doing its work required by our Constitution and the Electoral Count Act. As we'll see, Donald Trump's 1.42 a.m. tweet electrified and galvanized his supporters, especially the dangerous extremists

and the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other racist and white nationalist groups spoiling for a fight against the government. Three rings of interwoven attack were now operating towards January 6th. On the inside ring, Trump continued trying to work to overturn the election by getting Mike Pence to abandon his oath of office as vice president and assert the unilateral power to reject electoral votes. This would have been a fundamental and unprecedented breach of the Constitution that would promise Trump multiple ways of staying in office. Meanwhile, in the middle ring, members of domestic violent extremist groups created an alliance, both online and in person, to coordinate a massive effort to storm, invade,

and occupy the Capitol. By placing a target on the joint session of Congress, Trump had mobilized these groups around a common goal, emboldening them, strengthening their working relationships, and helping build their numbers. Finally, in the outer ring on January 6th, there assembled a large and angry crowd, the political force that Trump considered both the touchstone and the measure of his political power. Here were thousands of enraged Trump followers thoroughly convinced by the big lie who traveled from across the country to join Trump's wild rally to stop the steal. With the proper incitement by political leaders and the proper instigation from the extremists, many members of this crowd could be led to storm the Capitol, confront the vice president in Congress, and try to overturn the 2020 election results.

All of these efforts would converge and explode on January the 6th. Mr. Chairman, as you know better than any other member of this committee from the wrenching struggle for voting rights in your beloved Mississippi, the problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy in America. Abraham Lincoln knew it too. In 1837, a racist mob in Alton, Illinois broke into the offices of an abolitionist newspaper and killed its editor, Elijah Lovejoy. Lincoln wrote a speech in which he said that no transatlantic military giant could ever crush us as a nation even with all of

the fortunes in the world but if downfall ever comes to America he said we ourselves would be its author and finisher. If racist mobs are encouraged by politicians to rampage and terrorize, Lincoln said, they will violate the rights of other citizens and quickly destroy the bonds of social trust necessary for democracy to work. Mobs and demagogues will put us on a path to political tyranny, Lincoln said. As we'll see today, this very old problem has returned with new ferocity today as a president who lost an election deployed a mob which included dangerous extremists to attack the constitutional system of election and the peaceful transfer of power. And as we'll see, the creation of the internet and social media has given today's tyrants tools of propaganda and

disinformation that yesterday's despots could only have dreamed of. I yield back to the gentle lady from Florida, Ms. Murphy. Article 2 of the United States Constitution establishes the Electoral College. Each state's laws provide that electors are to be chosen by a popular vote, and on December 14, 2020, electors met in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their votes. Joseph Biden won by a margin of 306 to 232. The election was over. Mr. Biden was the president-elect. Before the Electoral College met, Donald Trump and his allies filed dozens of legal challenges to the election. But they lost over and over again, including in front of multiple judges President Trump had nominated to the bench. In many of these cases, the judges were highly critical of the arguments put forward,

explaining that no genuine evidence of widespread fraud had been presented. For example, a federal judge in Pennsylvania said, this court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. On December 15th, after the Electoral College certified the outcome, the Republican majority leader in the Senate acknowledged Mr. Biden's victory. Yesterday, electors met in all 50 states. So, as of this morning, our country has officially a president-elect and a vice president-elect.

Many millions of us had hoped the presidential election would yield a different result. But our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January the 20th. The Electoral College has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. Even members of President Trump's cabinet and his White House staff understood the significance of his losses in the courts in the absence of evidence of fraud. They also respected the constitutional certification by the Electoral College. Many of them told President Trump that it was time to concede and accept the prevailed in the election.

But I communicated to the president that when that legal process is exhausted and when the electors have voted, that that's the point at which that outcome needs to be expected. I told him that I did believe, yes, that once those legal processes were run, if fraud had not been established, it had affected the outcome of the election. And unfortunately, I believe that what had to be done was concede the outcome. As you've seen in prior hearings, President Trump's Justice Department, his White House staff, and his campaign officials were repeatedly telling him that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the election. And last week, we conducted an

eight-hour interview with President Trump's White House counsel, Pat Cipollone. You'll see a number of excerpts of that interview today and even more in our next hearing. Mr. Cipollone. You'll see a number of excerpts of that interview today and even more in our next hearing. Mr. Cipollone told us that he agreed with the testimony that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn the election. I'm going to start by asking if you agree, Mr. Cipollone, with the conclusions of Matt Morgan and Bill Barr, of all of the individuals who evaluate those claims, that there is no evidence of election fraud sufficient to undermine the outcome in particular. Yes, I agree with that. And Mr. Cipollone also specifically testified that he believed that Donald Trump should have

conceded the election. Did you believe, Mr. Cipcolini, that the President should concede? Once you made the determination based on the investigations that you credited, DOJ did, did you in your mind form a belief that the President should concede the election loss at a certain point after the election? Well, again, I was the White House counsel. Some of those decisions are political so to the extent that but but if your question is that I believe he should concede the election at one time yes I did I believe leader McConnell went onto the floor of

the Senate I believe in mid-december, and basically said, you know, the process is done. That would be in line with my thinking on these things. As Attorney General Bill Barr testified, December 14th should have been the end of the matter. December 14th was the day that the state certified their votes and sent them to Congress. And in my view, that was the end of the matter. I didn't see, you know, I thought that this would lead inexorably to a new administration. Mr. Cipollone also testified that the president's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said he shared this view. As early as that November 23rd meeting, we understand that there was discussion about the president possibly conceding the election.

And specifically, we understand that Mark Meadows assured both you and Attorney General Barr that the President would eventually agree to a graceful exit. Do you remember, Mr. Meadows, making any such representation? Are you saying as part of that meeting or separately? Again, without getting into that meeting, I would say that that is a statement and a sentiment that I heard from Mark Meadows. I see. And again, do you know if it was on November 23rd or some point? Again, it was probably around that time and it was probably subsequent to that time.

It wasn't a long time. See? Mr. Meadows has refused to testify and the committee is in litigation with him. But many other White House officials shared the view that once the litigation ended and the Electoral College met, the election was over. And here's President Trump's former press secretary.

I wanted to clarify, Ms. McEnany, so back to my previous question, it was your view then, or was it your view, that the efforts to overturn the election should have stopped once the litigation was complete? In my view, upon the conclusion of litigation was when I began to plan for life after the administration. And this is what Ivanka Trump told us. December 14th was the day on which the Electoral College met when these electors around the country met and cast the electoral votes consistent with the popular vote in each state. And it was obviously a public proceeding or a series of proceedings that President Biden had obtained the requisite number of electors.

Was that an important day for you? Did that affect sort of your planning or your realization as to whether or not there was going to be an end of this administration? I think so. I think it was my sentiment probably prior as well. Judd Deere was a White House deputy press secretary. This was his testimony about what he told President Trump. I told him that my personal viewpoint was that the Electoral College had met, which is the system that our country is set under to elect a president and vice president. And I believed at that point that the means for him to pursue litigation was probably closed. And you recall what his response, if any, was?

He disagreed. We've also seen this testimony from Attorney General Barr reflecting a view of the White House staff in late November 2020. And then at that point, I left. And as I walked out of the Oval Office, Jared was there with Dan Scavino, who ran the president's social media and who I thought was a reasonable guy and believe is a reasonable guy.

And I said, how long is he going to carry on with this stolen election stuff? Where is this going to go? And by that time, Meadows had caught up with me and leaving the office and caught up with me and said that, he said, look, I think that he's becoming more realistic and knows that there's a limit to how far he can take this. And then Jared said, you know, yeah, we're working on this. We're working on it. Likewise, in this testimony, Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, described her conversations with President Trump's director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman. He had expressed to me that he was concerned that it could spiral out of control and potentially be dangerous, either for our democracy or the way that things were going for the six.

Of course, underlying all of this is the fundamental principle that the President of the United States cannot simply disregard the rulings of state and federal courts, which are empowered to address specific election-related claims. The President cannot simply pretend that the courts had not ruled. By that time, the president or his associates had lost 60 out of 61 cases that they had brought to challenge different aspects of the election in a number of states. They lost 60 out of 61 of those cases.

So by the time we get to January 3rd, that's been clear. I assume, Pat, that you would agree the president is obligated to abide by the rulings of the courts. Of course. And I assume you also... Everybody is obligated to abide by rules, of course. And I assume you also would agree the president has a particular obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is one of the president's obligations, correct. Yet President Trump disregarded these court rulings and the counsel from his closest

advisors and continued his efforts to cling to power. In our prior hearings, you have heard considerable testimony about President Trump's attempts to corruptly pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count electoral votes, to corrupt the Department of Justice, to pressure state officials and state legislatures, and to create and submit a series of fake electoral slates. Now we will show you what other actions President Trump was taking between December 14, 2020, and January 6. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Ms. Murphy.

Throughout our hearings, you've heard how President Trump made baseless claims that voting machines were being manipulated by foreign powers in the 2020 election. You've also heard Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr, describe such claims as complete nonsense, which he told the president. Let's review that testimony. I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn't count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense. And it was being laid out there. And I told them that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that. And it was doing a great, grave disservice to the country.

We've learned that President Trump's White House counsel agreed with the Department of Justice about this. Attorney General Barr made a public announcement on December 1st, less than a month after the election, that he had seen no suspended fraud sufficient. Is it fair to say that by December 1st, you had reached the same conclusion? It's fair to say that I agreed with Attorney General Barr's conclusion on December 1st.

Yes, I did, and I supported that conclusion. However, the strong rejection of the Attorney General and the White House counsel of these claims did not stop the president from trying to press them in public. But that's not all he did. Indeed, as you'll see in this clip, the president asked Attorney General Bill Barr to have the Department of Justice seize voting machines in the states. My recollection is the president said something like, well, we could get to the bottom. Some people say we could get to the bottom of this if if the department sees the machines. It was a typical way of raising a point. And I said, absolutely not. There's no probable cause, and we're not going to seize any machines.

And that was that. Yeah. But this wasn't the end of the matter. On the evening of December 18, 2020, Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn, and others entered the White House for an unplanned meeting with the president, the meeting that would last multiple hours and become hot-blooded and contentious. The executive order behind me on the screen was drafted on December the 16th, just two days after the Electoral College vote, by several of the president's outside advisors over a luncheon at the Trump International Hotel. As you can see here, this proposed order directs the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines,

quote, effective immediately. But it goes even further than that. Under the order, President Trump would appoint a special counsel with the power to seize machines and then charge people with crimes with all resources necessary to carry out her duties. The specific plan was to name Sidney Powell as special counsel, the Trump lawyer who had spent the post-election period making outlandish claims about Venezuelan and Chinese interference in the election, among others. Here's what White House counsel Pat Cipollone had to say about Sidney Powell's qualifications to take on such expansive authority.

I don't think Sidney Powell would say that I thought it was a good idea to appoint her special counsel. I was being a little, I didn't think she should have been appointed to anything. Sidney Powell told the president that these steps were justified because of her evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election. However, as we've seen, Trump's allies had no such evidence and of course, no legal authority for the federal government to seize state voting machines here's mr cipollone again denouncing sydney powell's terrible idea there was a real question in my mind and a real concern you know particularly after the attorney

general had reached the conclusion that there wasn't sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election. When other people kept suggesting that there was, the answer is, what is it? And at some point, you have to put up or shut up. That was my view. Why was this, on a broader scale, a bad idea for the country?

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. And there is a way to contest elections, you know, that happens all the time. But the idea that the federal government could come in and seize election machines, I don't understand why we even have to tell you why that's a bad idea. It's a terrible idea. For all of its absurdity, the December 18th meeting was critically important because President Trump got to watch up close for several hours

as his White House counsel and other White House lawyers destroyed the baseless factual claims and ridiculous legal arguments being offered by Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, and others. President Trump now knew all these claims were nonsense, not just from his able White House lawyers, but also from his own Department of Justice officials and indeed his own campaign officials. As White House counsel Pat Cipollone told us, with respect to the whole election fraud issue, that to me is sort of if you're going to make those kind of claims and people were open to them early on because people were making all

sorts of claims and the real question is show the evidence okay it wasn't just the justice department the trump campaign in the trump white house lawyers who who knew it, even Rudy Giuliani's own legal team admitted that they did not have any real evidence of fraud sufficient to change the election result. Here's an email from Rudy Giuliani's lead investigator, Bernie Kerik, on December 28, 2020, to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Mr. Carrick did not mince any words. We can do all the investigations we want later, but if the president plans on winning, it's the legislators that have to be moved,

and this will do just that. Mr. Carrick wanted the president to win. What he didn't say in this email was what he would later tell the select committee in a letter that his lawyer wrote to us in November. The letter said, quote, It was impossible for Mr. Carrick and his team to determine conclusively whether there was widespread fraud or whether that widespread fraud would have altered the outcome of the election.

In other words, even Rudy Giuliani's own legal team knew before January 6th that they hadn't collected enough actual evidence to support any of their stolen election claims. Here's what Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller told the committee about some of the so-called evidence of fraud that the campaign had seen from the Giuliani team. So do you know what the examples of fraud numbers, names, and supporting evidence was that you sent to Mo Brooks's office? And when I say you, I mean you or the campaign? There are some very, very general documents as far as say for example, here are the handful of dead people in several different states. Here are explanations on a couple of the legal challenges as far as saying that the rules were changed in an unconstitutional manner.

To say that it was thin is probably an understatement. Here's how President Trump's deputy campaign manager described the evidence of fraud that the campaign had seen. You never came to learn or understand that Mayor Giuliani had produced evidence of election fraud. Is that fair? That's fair. And here's testimony that we received from the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers, about an exchange that he had with Rudy Giuliani after the election.

At some point, did one of them make a comment that they didn't have evidence, but they had a lot of theories? That was Mr. Giuliani. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told people that he thought Trump should concede around the time the Electoral College certified the result. But nonetheless, he later worked to try to facilitate President Trump's wishes. Here's what Cassidy Hutchinson told us. During this period, I perceived his goal with all this to keep Trump in office. Um, you know, he had very seriously and deeply considered the allegations of voter fraud. But when he began acknowledging that maybe there wasn't enough voter fraud

to overturn the election, you know, I've witnessed him start to explore potential constitutional loopholes more extensively, which I then connected with John Eastman's theories. The startling conclusion is this. Even an agreed upon complete lack of evidence could not stop President Trump, Mark Meadows, and their allies from trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election. So let's return to that meeting at the White House on the evening of December 18. That night, a group showed up at the White House, including Sidney Powell, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

After gaining access to the building from a junior White House staffer, the group made their way to the Oval Office. They were able to speak with the president by himself for some time until White House officials learned of the meeting. What ensued was a heated and profane clash between this group and President Trump's White House advisers, who traded personal insults, accusations of disloyalty to the president, and even challenges to physically fight. The meeting would last over six hours, beginning here in the Oval Office, moving around the West Wing, and many hours later, ending up in the president's

private residence. The select committee has spoken with six of the participants, as well as staffers who could hear the screaming from outside the Oval Office. What took place next is best told in their own words, as you will see from this video. Did you believe that it was going to work, that you were going to be able to get to see the president without an appointment? I had no idea. In fact, you did get to see the president

without an appointment. We did. How much time did you have alone with the president? And I say alone, you had other people with you, but from his aides before the crowd came running? Probably no more than 10 or 15 minutes. Was in that... I bet Pat Cipollone set a new land speed record.

I got a call either from Molly or Richmond that I need to get to the local office. So that was the first point that I had recognized. Okay, there was nobody in there from the White House. Mark's gone. What's going on right now? I opened the door and I walked in. I saw General Flynn.

I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. I was not happy to see the people in the Oval Office. Who's Flynn? Well, again, I don't think they were providing... Well, first of all, the overstock person, I've never met this guy, was. Actually, the first thing I did,

I walked in, I looked at him, and I said, who are you? And he told me. I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. And... So I didn't understand how they had gotten in. In the short period of time that you had with the president, did he seem receptive to the presentation that you were making? in hearing particularly about the FISA funding and the terms of 13848 that apparently nobody else had bothered to inform him of. I was asking, like, are you claiming the Democrats were working with Hugo Schaas, Venezuelans, Wayland and whomever else. And at one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly

showed IP addresses all over the world and who was communicating with whom via the machines and some comment about like Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet. So it's been reported that during this meeting, Ms. Powell talked about Dominion voting machines and made various election fraud claims that involve foreign countries such as Venezuela, Iran, and China. Is that accurate? Was the meeting tense? Oh, yeah. It was not a casual meeting.

Explain. I mean, at times there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other. It wasn't just sort of people sitting around on the couch like chit-chatting. Do you recall whether he raised to Ms. Powell the fact that she and the campaign had lost all of the 60 cases that they had brought in litigation? Yes, he raised that. And what was the response? I don't remember what she said. I don't think it was a good response. Cipollone and Hirschman and whoever the other guy was showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the president.

The three of them were really sort of forcefully attacking me verbally. Eric, Derek, and we were pushing back and we were asking one simple question as a general matter. Where is the evidence? So what response did you get when you asked his panel and her colleagues where's the... A variety of responses based on my current recollection, including, you know, I can't believe you would say something, you know, things like this, like, what do you mean, where's the evidence, you should know, you know, things like that, or, you know, a disregard, I would say, a general disregard for the importance of actually backing up what they say with facts. And, you know, then there was discussion of, well, you know, we don't have it now, but we will have it, or whatever.

I mean, if it had been me sitting in his chair, I would have fired all of them that night and had them escorted out of the building. It's Derek and I both challenged what she was saying. And she says, well, the judges are corrupt. And I was like, everyone, every single case that you've done in the country, you guys lost every one of them is corrupt, even the ones we appointed. And I'm being nice. I was much more harsh to her so one of the other things that's been reported that was said during this meeting was that president trump told white house lawyers mr herschman and mr cipollone that they weren't offering him any solutions but miss powell and others were so why not try uh what miss powell and others were proposing do you remember anything along those lines being said by president trump

i do that sounds right i think that it got to the point where the screaming was completely completely out there i mean you got people walk in, it was late at night. It had been a long day. And what they were proposing, I thought was nuts. I'm going to categorically describe it as, you guys are not tough enough. Or maybe I put it another way, you're a bunch of pussies. Excuse the expression, but I'm almost certain the word was used. Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter and everything.

He kept on standing up and turning around and screaming at me. And at a certain point, I had it with him. So I yelled back, rather come over or sit your effing ass back down. The president and the White House team went upstairs to the residence, but to the public part of the residence, you know, the big the big parlor where you can have meetings in the conference room. They call it the yellow oval. Yes, exactly. The yellow oval office.

I always called it the upper. And I'm not exactly sure where the Sydney group went. I think maybe the Roosevelt room. And I stayed in the cabinet room, which is kind of cool. I really like that. All by myself. At the end of the day, we landed

where we started the meeting, at least from a structural standpoint, which was Sidney Powell was fighting. Mike Flynn was fighting. They were looking for avenues that would enable, that would result in President Trump remaining President Trump for a second term? The meeting finally ended after midnight. Here are text messages sent by Cassidy Hutchinson during and after the meeting. As you can see, Ms. Hutchinson reported that the meeting in the West Wing was unhinged. The meeting finally broke up after midnight during the early morning of December 19. Cassidy Hutchinson captured the moment of Mark Meadows escorting Rudy Giuliani off the White House grounds to, quote,

make sure he didn't wander back into the mansion. Certain accounts of this meeting indicate that President Trump actually granted Ms. Powell security clearance and appointed her to a somewhat ill-defined position of special counsel. He asked Pat Cipollone if he had the authority to name me special counsel, and he said yes. And then he asked him if he had the authority to give me whatever security clearance I needed, and Pat Cipollone said yes. And then the president said, okay, you know, I'm naming her that, and I'm giving her security clearance. And then shortly before we left and it totally

blew up was when Cipollone and or Hirschman and whoever the other young man was said, you can name her whatever you want to name her and no one's going to pay any attention to it. How did he respond? How did the president respond to that? Something like, you see what I deal with, I deal with this all the time. Over the ensuing days, no further steps were taken to appoint Sidney Powell, but there is some ambiguity about what the president actually said and did during the meeting. Here is how Pat Cipollone described it. I don't know what her understanding of whether she had been appointed, what she had been

appointed to. Okay. In my view, she hadn't been appointed to anything and ultimately wasn't appointed to anything because there had to be other steps taken. So that was my view when I left the meeting, but she may have a different view and others may have a different view and the president may have a different view. Were any steps taken, including the president himself, telling her she'd been appointed? Again, I'm not going to get into what the president said in the meeting. My recollection is

you're not appointed until steps are taken to get the paperwork done. when I left the meeting okay the I guess I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not gonna get into what the president said Mr. Bologna when the matter continued to flare up over the next several days was it your understanding that Sidney Powell was still seeking an appointment or that she was asserting that she had been appointed by the president at the December 18 meeting? You know now that you mentioned it probably both you know in terms of like I think she was dead I think she may have been of the view that she had been appointed and was seeking to get that done and that she should be appointed. remember that Ms. Powell, the person who President Trump tried to make special counsel, was ultimately sanctioned by a federal court and sued by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation.

In her own defense to that lawsuit, Sidney Powell argued that, quote, no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact. Not long after Sidney Powell, General Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani left the White House in the early hours of the morning, President Trump turned away from both his outside advisors' most outlandish and unworkable schemes and his White House counsel's advice to swallow hard and accept the reality of his loss. Instead, Donald Trump issued a tweet that would galvanize his followers, unleash a political firestorm, and change the course of our history as a country. Trump's purpose was to mobilize a crowd. And how do you mobilize a crowd in 2020? With millions of followers on Twitter, President Trump knew exactly how to do it.

At 1.42 a.m. on December 19, 2020, shortly after the last participants left the unhinged meeting, Trump sent out the tweet with his explosive invitation. Trump repeated his big lie and claimed it was, quote, statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election before calling for a big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, we'll be wild. Trump supporters responded immediately. Women for America First, a pro-Trump organizing group, had previously applied for a rally permit for January 22nd and 23rd in Washington, D.C., several days after Joe Biden was to be inaugurated. But in the hours after the tweet, they moved their permit to January 6th, two weeks before.

This rescheduling created the rally where Trump would eventually speak. The next day, Ali Alexander, leader of the Stop the Steal organization and a key mobilizer of Trump supporters, registered wildprotest.com, named after Trump's tweet. Wildprotest.com provided comprehensive information about numerous newly organized protest events in Washington. It included event times, places, speakers, and details on transportation to Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, other key Trump supporters, including far-right media personalities, began promoting the wild protest on January 6th. It's Saturday, December 19th. The year is 2020.

And one of the most historic events in American history has just taken place. President Trump, in the early morning hours today, tweeted that he wants the American people to march on Washington, D.C. on January 6 Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. And now Donald Trump is calling on his supporters to descend on Washington, D.C. January 6. He is now calling on we, the people, to take action and to show our numbers. We're going to only be saved by millions of Americans moving to Washington, occupying the entire area, if necessary, storming right into the Capitol.

We know the rules of engagement. If you have enough people, you can push down any kind of a fence or a wall. This could be Trump's last stand. And it's a time when he has specifically called on his supporters to arrive in DC. That's something that may actually be the big push Trump supporters need to say, this is it. It's now or never. You better understand something, son. You better understand something. Red wave, bitch. Red wave. There's going to be a red wedding going down January 6th. On that day, Trump says, show up for a protest. It's going to be wild.

And based on what we've already seen from the previous events, I think Trump is absolutely correct. Motherfucker, you better look outside. You better look out January 6th. Kick that fucking door open look down the street there's gonna be a million plus geeked up armed americans the time for games is over the time for action is now where were you when history called where were you when you and your children's destiny and future was on the line in that clip clip, you heard one of Trump's supporters predict a red wedding,

which is a pop culture reference to mass slaughter. But the point is that Trump's call to Washington reverberated powerfully and pervasively online. The committee has interviewed a former Twitter employee who explained the effect that Trump had on the Twitter platform. This employee was on the team responsible for platform and content moderation policies on Twitter throughout 2020 and 2021. The employee testified that Twitter considered adopting a stricter content moderation policy after President Trump told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by from the lectern at the September 29th presidential debate, but Twitter chose not to act. Here's the former employee whose

voice has been obscured to protect their identity discussing Trump's stand back and stand by comment and the effect it had? My concern was that the former president for seemingly the first time was speaking directly to extremist organizations and giving them directives. We had not seen that sort of direct communication before and that concerned me. So just to clarify further, you were worried and others at Twitter were worried that the president might use your platform to speak directly to folks who might be incited to violence? I believe that Twitter relished in the knowledge that they were also the favorite and most used service of the former president and enjoyed having that sort of power

within the social media ecosystem. If President Trump were anyone else, would it have taken until January 8th, 2021 for him to be suspended? Absolutely not. If the former president Donald Trump were any other user on Twitter, he would have been permanently suspended a very long time ago. Despite these grave concerns, Trump remained on the platform completely unchecked. Then came the December 19 tweet and everything it inspired. Indeed. It felt as if

a mob was being organized and they were gathering together their weaponry and their logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight prior to December 19th. Again, it was vague. It was nonspecific, but very clear that individuals were ready, willing, and able to take up arms. After this tweet on December 19th, again, it became clear

not only were these individuals ready and willing, but the leader of their cause was asking them to join him in this cause and in fighting for this cause in DC on January 6th as well. I will also say what shocked me was the responses to these tweets, right? So these were a lot of the locked and loaded, stand back, stand by, those tweets were in response to Donald Trump saying things like this, right? So there would be a response that said, big protest in D.C. on January 6th,

be there, be wild, and someone would respond and say, I'm locked and loaded and ready for Civil War Part II, right? I very much believe that Donald Trump posting this tweet on December 19th was essentially staking a flag in D.C. on January 6th for his supporters to come and rally. And you were concerned about the potential for this gathering becoming violent?

Absolutely. Indeed, many of Trump's followers took to social media to declare that they were ready to answer Trump's call. One user asked, Is the 6th D-Day? Is that why Trump wants everyone there? Another asserted, Trump just told us all to come armed. Fucking A, this is happening.

A third took it even further. It will be wild means we need volunteers for the firing squad. Jim Watkins, the owner of 8kun, the fringe online forum that was birthplace of the QAnon extremist movement, confirmed the importance of Trump's tweet. When did you first decide to go to D.C. for January 6th? When the President of the United States announced that he was going to have a rally, then I bought ticket and went. Watkins was at the Capitol on January 6th.

Some who have since been indicted for their involvement in the attack on the Capitol also responded. One of them posted on the 19th, quote, Calling all patriots, be in Washington, D.C., January the 6th. This wasn't organized by any group. DJT has invited us, and it's going to be wild. Some of the online rhetoric turned openly homicidal and white nationalist, such as, why don't we just kill them, every last Democrat, down to the last man, woman, and child? And it's time for the day of the rope. White revolution is the only solution. Others

realized that police would be standing in the way of their effort to overturn the election, so one wrote, I'm ready to die for my beliefs. Are you ready to die, police? another wrote on the donald dot win cops don't have standing if they're laying on the ground in a pool of their own blood the donald dot win was an openly racist and anti-semitic forum the select committee deposed that site's founder jody williams he confirmed how the president's tweet created a laser-like focus on the date of January the 6th. People have been talking about going to D.C. since the election was over. And do you recall whether or not the conversation around those dates centered on the 6th after the president's tweet? Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, after it was announced that, you know, he was going to be there on the 6th to talk, yes.

Then anything else was kind of shut out, and it was just going to be on the 6th. Okay, and that was pretty clearly reflected in the content on the site? Yeah, yeah, sure. On that site, many shared plans and violent threats. Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels, wrote one user. A commenter replied, suggesting zip ties instead.

One post encouraged others to come with body armor, knuckles, shields, bats, pepper spray, whatever it takes. All of those were used on the 6th. The Post concluded, join your local Proud Boys chapter as well. The Donald.win featured discussions of the tunnels beneath the Capitol complex, suggestions for targeting members of Congress, and encouragement to attend this once-in-a-lifetime event. While Trump's supporters grew more aggressive online, he continued to rile up his base on Twitter. He said there was overwhelming evidence that the election was the biggest scam in our nation's history.

As you can see, the president continued to boost the event, tweeting about it more than a dozen times in the lead-up to January the 6th. Mr. Chairman, I reserve. The Chair requested those in the hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have escorted members from the room. Pursuant to the order of the committee of today, the chair declares the committee in recess for a period of approximately 10 minutes. So we are going to the break here on day seven of the January 6th Select Committee hearing. As we watch the committee leave the room. I'm sure when we come back from the break is when we'll actually hear from the witnesses that we expect to hear from today. The former Oath Keeper and also the January 6th Rioter.

I think we will hear from those witnesses when the committee returns Gabe what did you think of the some of the testimony so far and some of the the actual video of some of the testimony yeah I mean Cipollone's saying more than I thought he would so that's that's good to see but also i mean just the mere fact that you know uh you had sydney powell you know as she sips on that that dr pepper uh you know it's it's funny to see how all of them kind of reveal like oh well we all said it was we all said uh we we should do this thing right and and the fact that the fact that they're revealing more about how they're saying the opposite of what they said openly in public i think it's very revealing

to what their intent um is as each of them you know attempted to commit sedition and the fact that we had people like Mike Lindell and the CEO of Overstock as people that were influencing the outcome of trying to overturn this election. Like what reality do we live in where some random CEO of a retail company is the person that's going to be the decision maker on how to move forward? Well, I mean, that is the, you know, the Donald Trump White House in a nutshell is just let any rando in as long as as long as you'll be you'll do and say exactly what the Cheeto dust mobster wants. We watched as they described described that he didn't care if if all legal uh roads were taken here he wanted to overthrow this

election he wanted to remain the president he wanted to be dictator of the united states of america and it didn't matter what the ramifications were right and also the fact that you had all those people like tim pool and all the right-wing people who were online ramping up this intensity for January 6th, right? Talking about this red wedding, talking about how it was going to be intense. It's going to be a wild time, right? I mean, wildprotest.com sounds like something that is not safe for work. You would find it on some sort of, well, I'll just say it's not safe for work. But you look at these people who were on there fueling the fire. They're literally throwing kerosene on, getting the Trump supporters excited for this.

Right. So when you go there, it's hard to try to excuse yourself to say nobody knew what was going to happen. This got way out of control. It was just a bunch of people who were trying to express their patriotism. That is complete bullshit. When they're doing this, they're stoking the fire and they're getting these people agitated and they're getting them riled up for the intent to get them to cause violence and cause chaos. to see what she thought of the testimony that we've seen so far, particularly from Pat C. Bologna. I mean, Pat C. Bologna. Excuse me. Yes, yes, yes. So what did you what did you think of the some of the testimony and some of the deposition that we heard so far, Jessica? Well, I think we've had some very, you know, strategic lawyering from individuals like Representative Raskin, you know, circling Cipollone because I, yes, he's making the

admissions that we expected him to make, but I'm also finding him to have this air of disdain for the process, this kind of, you know, recalcitrance to just answering questions directly. But of course, you know, lawyers like Raskin are talented questions directly. But of course, you know, lawyers like Raskin are talented and can get around that and get him to answer. So he is, you know, making all these obvious concessions that we know, you know, Trump was told that he lost the election well in advance of January 6th. And he was told this repeatedly. We've had Billy McEnany confirm this. We've had, you know, Ivanka Trump again, more testimony from Bill Barr. I mean, just one after another, if there is any doubt whatsoever that Donald Trump did not believe that he actually lost the election, that doubt should be fully eviscerated at this point.

But we're really getting to what I consider is going to be the real, the drama of this hearing today, which is the violence that Donald Trump stoked, the absolute clear call to action that the mega extremists heard when Donald Trump issued that tweet. And remember, this is a tweet that comes out of this unhinged Oval Office meeting where he is frustrated, right, because he is not getting the go ahead to go forward with his lunatic proposed plans from individuals like Patrick Byrne, ex-CEO of Overstock, who was in an affair with Russian operative, convicted Russian operative Maria Butina. So these are not just randos. These are these are individuals who do not have. Well, you know, who have very questionable motivations themselves. So, yeah, I'm really interested to see what comes next. And these these two these two witnesses that are coming out.

I agree with you. Let me bring in Texas Paul, see what his response was to some of the testimony that we watched, the recorded testimony. Texas Paul, how are you? Yeah, he runs the mic about. Even better. Yeah, game, set, match. I just, the testimony that you have today is what they were able to bring to us now. This is game, set, match. When you start putting these people on the stand and they're, all of it comes out. This is over. I mean, this is over. And I'm glad, I'm glad Jessica brought up Maria Butina because Patrick Byrne had the presidency, the former presidency. And a lot of people don't know who he was and that he was actually the target of a honeypot.

Maria Butina, you know, if you remember when she got home, she was welcomed like a hero. They brought her bouquets of flowers because she had manipulated these people. She worked inside the NRA. She worked inside the inner circle of the Oval Office because Patrick Byrne could call the president anytime he wanted. This is just game, set, match is all I, you know, I just kept watching this. My jaw kept dropping because each person that would testify just drove another nail in that coffin that there was no question that Trump was completely 100 percent briefed by qualified human beings there's no way he could have believed any of the nonsense including the meeting in the oval office where they're all screaming at each other and and giuliani the drunk is calling people you know expletives and and and there was no doubt i mean cipollone just just sat there and destroyed everything they said and put them on show me.

Another character was Hirschman. We know we've seen him throughout these hearings with him and his justice bat. as Justice Batt, but it sounded like Hirschman and General Michael Flynn almost came to blows there as Hirschman just was having none of the bullshit from Mike Flynn and the Overstock CEO. These people not even knowing who this person was. And I guess that's why, Jessica, I said rando is because the White House counsel, the people around him who were trying to give the president actual legal advice, have no idea who this person is sitting there giving the president advice that they have to work so damn hard to undermine. Right. They have to unravel this just delusion that the president wants to believe in that moment because he wants to be president.

Did you experience this when you were on the Trump team? If there was something that he really wanted to believe, it doesn't matter how untrue or how delusional, he would go to any means necessary to get someone. He would run out and get someone standing in front of a door like, hey, do you believe me? That way he can believe it himself or something weird. Well, what I what I would tell you definitely resonates with me is that this unhinged meeting where people are at each other's necks is the inevitable outcome of the Trump campaign and Trump administration. This was a campaign of mass destruction from go. I most certainly experienced it. He fosters an environment where people have knives out at each other. And he does this to try to pit people against each other and let's see who survives. In this last 11th hour effort that he was having in

the Oval Office, obviously he was willing to throw anything at the wall, bring any kind of rando, as you're describing them, into the mix to achieve his objective. There were no bounds. But like I said, this was a campaign of mass destruction from the jump. And this is we're seeing the obvious, you know, finale in this hearing today. Well, we, we watch as the witnesses have taken their seats here, um, for today's, um, hearing, um, and we'll, we're waiting on the committee to return. It seems like they're taking a lot of security measures here, Gabe. Yeah.

But what do you expect to hear from these witnesses? I know we've talked to Dakota Adams, the estranged son of Stuart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder, who who lived with one of these witnesses or Stuart Rhodes lived with him for a while. Crashed on the couch. Yeah. Yeah. As it were. So what do you expect to hear from some of these as the committee returns? Well, I'm hoping that this is done out of a genuine desire to see justice and not some sort of attempt to kind of throw this committee under the bus, you know, so to speak. But what I'm hoping is to get an inside look into how the workings of the of the Oath Keepers are right as a spokesman. You know, he he knows he knows Stuart. He knows how they work. He knows exactly what their intent and what their goal is. And having some insight as a direct line in from someone who was the voice of the Oath Keepers, I think, is going to be paramount to revealing what the intended goal of using them on January 6th was.

Outside of getting a direct quote from Stuart Rhodes or someone. But I think this will be very revealing and give people a better idea of kind of what they were planning. Right. And I think it goes to the character witness, just not of Stuart Rhodes, but also all these groups that we watched, their podcasts, their Internet shows, Tim Pool, some of these other personalities that we watched. As that tweet was sent out, and here's the tweet about it will be wild. Alexander buying the wild or protest wild or wildprotest.com website to try to stoke this violence.

And this is in the Trump orbit. They jump on these things immediately. And they we've they've done this time and time and time again with Trump. They continue to do this as there's something happens. They jump all over it. It's kind of like yesterday. Hunter Biden was trending all day long because of the hearing today. Right. You know, they continue to do these things.

Now, Jessica, what do you expect to hear from these witnesses? Do you think we'll we'll get some insight into what what the Oath Keepers were thinking internally or because it seems like Tattonhoven wasn't involved at that point, but maybe just the mindset. Yeah. Yeah, Van Tatenhoven wasn't involved, but he was definitely, he was a hands-on, or not hands-on, but, you know, firsthand witness to what the Yokekeepers were doing. And Stephen Ayers as well. These individuals are going to tell us very clearly and without a shadow of a doubt that it was Donald Trump whose directive they were following on January 6th. It was Donald Trump, their commander in chief, who sent them to the Capitol to overthrow our democracy and to reinstall him as dictator. Of course, they didn't think that

at the time. They were gaslit, believing that his lies were true. They were his useful idiots. So you are going to hear this as many January 6th defendants have raised in their own defenses in the cases that the Justice Department has brought up until now. We were motivated. We were sent. We were following the direction of the commander in chief to be there. Texas, Paul, I think you had some technical difficulties there, but we just saw the camera pan over to the police officers that were defending the capitol that day and one of these witnesses was actually a writer who was possibly fighting with those exact police officers or their colleagues um boy you talk about a strong image in a room of strong images what do you what do you make of that where the police officers that were there that day defending the capitol are going to sit here and listen to a january 6 writer

an insurrectionist testify you know cops that's what they do man they they they deal with the scum of the earth and then they have to sit in the courtroom with them and watch the same guy that was a total piece of garbage when he was dealing with them show up in a suit, nice haircut. You know, everything's it's it's par for the course for them. And they it doesn't bother them at all. They've seen it all a hundred times. And anybody that's watched any any kind of hearing knows that's exactly what's going to happen here today this guy that you're going to see up there in a suit and tie uh when he walks around he's in tactical gear he's in his camo he's he's you know this guy right here that you've got

right here this guy has a fresh haircut fresh suit fresh you know and he never looks like that ever he is another one of these backwoods nuts that i call them uh you know they just these cops have been dealing with this forever i i you know i i would like to add in in watching this each of these hearings it was really watching this hearing that really kind of struck me each one you know we've always had something huge happen and we're like wow wow wow but this one it seems like it feels like this would turn a corner you know this is really donald trump has decided okay we couldn't do it with the courts. We couldn't do it by this means. We couldn't do it by that means.

This hearing is really the screw it. We're going for broke and we're going to have us a revolution. Well, I think that also. Yeah, I think that speaks to kind of what options were left, which were none. Right. They explored legal options. They got shut down. Yeah, I think that speaks to kind of what options were left, which were none, right? They explored legal options. They got shut down. And the only way for him to take over was to physically take it. And that is going to be revealed, which would be the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the, you know, the militia men that are going to be the ones will be his, you know, his strong to, to take what he wants, what he believes is his. Um, and I think that's, that's, you know, whether things kind of lined up that way,

or that was always the goal in terms of saying, uh, we've shown you how he's attempted in all these places and everyone has said along the way, it was not going to happen. It was not fraud, uh, all of these cabinet members. And now he's like, screw it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to take how I want it and I'm going to use the force of these people to do it. So, you know, I think that's, that, that could be one of the strategies. I mean, the other thing too, I think with the Capitol police here is the B I think the big difference between cops, you know,

having to be in a courtroom is you have a party that gaslit these gentlemen, these and women that are the Capitol police and saying, oh, it was just a tourist visit. You know, you're overreacting. These aren't, you know, these weren't traumatic events that you experienced. And so I think it does maybe sitting a little different to actually be in the room with them right now and looking over at someone who was directly at the Capitol and involved with the violence against them. I think it definitely kind of hits a different tone for them, but that's just kind of my assumption. Seems like we're waiting on the committee to enter. I don't know. We haven't waited this long.

Makes you wonder. Yeah, I don't know. We haven't waited this long. Makes you wonder. Yeah. I don't know. You know, Gabe hit a really good point there, is how badly these people have been gaslit. I just did a video that's going to probably come out today or in the morning about the last Trump rally up in Alaska. He is still gaslighting to this day. He brought out, you know, Russia's down to the old war relics

when they're fighting in Ukraine because all their good stuff's gone. GOP is in the same position. They dug up Sarah Palin. They're down to the old war relics that they're digging up. But she was giving the same exact message in her speech that she gave at that Trump rally. Pure gaslighting. It's good versus evil in their minds. Because that's what they keep getting told over and over and over again.

And I've done several videos about how they're trying to morph into the party of God. It's a Christian fascist movement now. And they really believe because of all of this gaslighting, they have hurt so many people financially. They've hurt so many people's relationships with their families. They've hurt so many people in so many ways that absolutely believe what Gay was talking about, that gaslighting that never ever stops and jessica can tell you about it she's she's she's seen it happen you know from both ends you know i mean it's just a never stops message that never never alters never veers never anything driven into their heads well jessica tell

us about the um what you see with this christ this Christian nationalism, because I know you have some opinions about it, especially being inside the Trump camp at one point. The blasphemous nationalism? Yes, yes. The non-Christian, anti-Christian, so-called Christianity? I knew I could rely on you giving your opinion here. The ones, these are the people who would be casting stones at Jesus Christ if he were hanging on a cross today. Let's just be clear about this. But yeah, it is, this is exactly what Paul was saying. These people cloak themselves in moral authority.

They cloak themselves in the Bible and the American flag. They're followers so tragically because they are in this vortex of misinformation where they tell you, you can't even listen to the other side. Don't even bother hearing what they have to say because they've completely delegitimized other voices. And they have created idols of themselves at Fox News, idols of, you know, Donald Trump is their ultimate idol, their God. And they worship at his altar, tragically, tragically believing that he is, you know, a patriot, an American, somebody who cares about this country and, for God's sake, freedom, which is the most dangerous lie, that they believe that Donald Trump is a champion of freedom when he is really Hitler 2.0, Putin 2.0, the dictator that wants to destroy everything that America stands for.

I knew I could count on you giving your opinion there, Jessica. Everyone, if you're not already, subscribe to the Mind of Stutch Network here on YouTube. We will continue these hearings. We heard Liz Cheney really teasing the next hearing. It seems like it's going to be a primetime hearing. So, again, subscribe to the Mind of Stutch Network here on YouTube. You don't want to miss a single one of these hearings. And you don't want to miss a single one of the great videos like Texas Paul was talking about earlier, where we bring you breaking news from the Midas Touch network

and the Midas Touch personalities right on the YouTube channel. So do that. Also, I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't mention the promo code for the store.midastouch.com. Get 10% off the pro-democracy enamel pin, the unapologetically pro-democracy enamel pin the unapologetically pro-democracy union made in the usa enamel pin so there you go jordy i know he's probably listening out there 10 off just use the promo code justice go to store.midastouch.com as one one uh one thing i want to add to what jessica just said is you know revealing obviously we all know the GOP is, is full of hypocrisy, projection, you know, they contradict themselves within the same statement. But we especially saw that in the, in the hearing with Rusty Bowers, and Brad Rappensperger, right, like, you hear the

story of Rusty Bowers saying, my wife was directly impacted by the horrific, you know, protesting, if you want to call it that, outside their homes, as well as their daughter, who was gravely ill at the time. home was broken into. Like this is MAGA. This is Trump's Republican party. That is what it is right now. They will attack their own if Trump says to, right? If you go against what his story is, what his narrative, what his, you know, direction is, then you will be on the opposite side of the fence for them, right? You will be the target in which they want to attack. And it is crazy because if they really were Christians, if they really were people who are followers of Christ, then they would want to love one another, right? They wouldn't want to disrespect.

They wouldn't want to do illegal things. They wouldn't want to attack someone. But unfortunately, like it is just a facade. It's just a label that they can hide behind to act moral and act on a high ground, but really dig in and be morally corrupt. When we come back, I want to add to that because Ron Reagan and them had a great point about. Hang in there. Hang in there, Texas. Well, we're going to have the committee come back. Thank you, panel, for joining us in the break. We're going to go to the hearing here. Back to the coverage. They were

having a bit of technical difficulty here, but I think they've cleared it up. So, back to the hearing as we go. We'll watch as Benny Thompson gavels in to hear from the witness and get the testimony of the former Oath keeper and the January

6th rioter who has pled guilty. Let's go to the hearing. Committee will be in order. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, President Trump's tweet drew tens of thousands of Americans to Washington to form the angry crowd that would be transformed on January the 6th into a violent mob. Dr. Donnell Harvin, who was the chief of Homeland Security and Intelligence for DC, told the committee how his team saw Trump's

December 19th tweet unite violent groups across the spectrum on the far right. We got derogatory information from OSINT suggesting that some very, very violent individuals were organizing to come to DC. And not only were they organizing to come to D.C., but these groups, these non-aligned groups were aligning. And so all the red flags went up at that point. You know, when you have our militia collaborating with white supremacy groups, collaborating with conspiracy theory groups online, all

toward the common goal, you start seeing what we call in, you know, terrorism, a blended ideology. And that's a very, very bad sign. Then when they were clearly across, not just across one platform, but across multiple platforms of these groups, coordinating, not just like chatting, hey, how's it going? What's the weather like where you're at? But like, what are you bringing? What are you wearing? Where do we meet up? Do you have plans for the capital? That's operational. That's like pre-operational

intelligence, right? And that is something that's clearly alarming. The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are two key groups that responded immediately to President Trump's call. The Proud Boys are a far-right street fighting group that glorifies violence and white supremacy. The Oath Keepers are extremists who promote a wide range of conspiracy theories and sought to act as a private paramilitary force for Donald Trump. The Department of Justice has charged leaders of both groups with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States on January the 6th. Trump's December 19th tweet motivated these two extremist groups,

which have historically not worked together to coordinate their activities. December 19th at 10.22 a.m., just hours after President Trump's tweet, Kelly Meggs, the head of the Florida Oath Keepers, declared an alliance among the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Florida Three Percenters, another militia group. He wrote, we have decided to work together and shut this shit down. Phone records obtained by the select committee showed that later that afternoon, Mr. Meggs called Proud Boys leader Enrique Terrio, and they spoke for several minutes. The very next day, the Proud Boys got to work.

The Proud Boys launched an encrypted chat called the Ministry of Self-Defense. The committee obtained hundreds of these messages, which show strategic and tactical planning about January the 6th, including maps of Washington, D.C. that pinpoint the location of police. In the weeks leading up to the attack, leaders in both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers worked with Trump allies. One such ally was Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump's former National Security Advisor and one of the participants in the unhinged meeting at

the White House on December 18th. He also had connections to the Oath Keepers. This photo from December 12th shows Flynn and Patrick Byrne, another Trump ally who was present at that December 18th meeting, guarded by indicted Oath Keeper Roberto Minuta. Another view of the scene shows Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes in the picture as well. Another central figure with ties to this network of extremist groups was Roger Stone, a political consultant and longtime confidant of President Trump. He pardoned both Flynn and Stone in the weeks between the election on November 3rd and January 6th. In the same time frame, Stone communicated with both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers regularly.

The committee obtained encrypted content from a group chat called Friends of Stone, FOS, which included Stone, Rhodes, Tarrio, and Ali Alexander. The chat focused on various pro-Trump events in November and December of 2020, as well as January 6th. As you can see here, Stuart Rhodes himself urged the Friends of Stone to have people go to their state capitals if they could not make it to Washington for the first Million Mega March on November 14th. These Friends of Roger Stone had a significant presence at multiple pro-Trump events after the election, including in Washington on December the 12th. On that day, Stuart Rhodes called for Donald Trump to invoke martial law, promising bloodshed if he did not.

He needs to know from you that you are with him, that he does not do it now while he is commander in chief. We're going to have to do it ourselves later in a much more desperate, much more bloody war. Let's get it on now while he is still the commander in chief. That night, the Proud Boys engaged in violence on the streets of Washington and hurled aggressive insults at the police. You oathbreakers! Do your fucking job! Give us one hour! One hour! Just the previous night, the co-host of InfoWars issued an ominous warning at a rally alongside Roger Stone and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. We will be back in January!

Encrypted chats obtained by the Select Committee showed that Kelly Meggs, the indicted leader of the Florida Oath Keepers, spoke directly with Roger Stone about security on January 5th and 6th. In fact, on January 6th, Stone was guarded by two oath keepers who have since been criminally indicted for seditious conspiracy. One of them later pleaded guilty and according to the Department of Justice, admitted that the oath keepers were ready to use quote, lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump from the White House, including the National Guard.

As we've seen, the Proud Boys were also part of the Friends of Stone network. Stone's ties to the Proud Boys go back many years. He's even taken their so-called fraternity creed required for the first level of initiation to the group. Hi, I'm Roger Stone. I'm a Western chauvinist. I refuse to apologize for the failure of the modern world. Thank you, Roger. I'm Roger Stone. Kelly Sorrell, a lawyer who assists the Oath Keepers and a volunteer lawyer for the Trump campaign, explained to the committee how Roger Stone and other figures brought extremists of different stripes and views together.

You mentioned that Mr. Stone wanted to start the Stop the Steal series of rallies. Who did you consider the leader of these rallies? It sounds like from what you just said, it was Mr. Stone, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Ali Alexander. Is that correct? Those are the ones that became like the center point for everything. We'll learn more from Ms. Murphy about these individuals and their involvement in the days leading up to the violent attack on January 6th. We'll also hear how they were allowed to speak at a rally for President Trump the night before January 6th, even though organizers had expressed serious concerns about their

violent and extremist rhetoric directly to Mark Meadows. And you'll hear testimony from White House aides who were with the president as he watched the crowd from the Oval Office and will testify about how excited he was for the following day. Let me note now that our investigation continues on these critical issues. We have only shown a small fraction of what we have found. I look forward to the public release of more of our findings later, Mr. Chairman, and I now yield back. Gentleman yields back. Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Ms. Murphy. During our most recent hearing, the committee showed some evidence of what President Trump, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and other White House officials knew about the potential for violence on January 6th.

And despite this information, they made no effort to cancel the rally, halt the march to the Capitol, or even to lower the temperature among President Trump's supporters. Katrina Pearson, one of the organizers of January 6th's rally and a former campaign spokeswoman for President Trump grew increasingly apprehensive after learning that multiple activists had been proposed as speakers for the January 6th rally. These included some of the people we discussed earlier in this hearing. Roger Stone, a longtime outside advisor to President Trump. Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, and Ali Alexander, an activist known for his violent political rhetoric. On December 30th, Ms. Pearson exchanged text messages with another key rally organizer about why people like Mr. Alexander and Mr. Jones were being suggested as speakers

at the president's rally on January 6th. Ms. Pearson's explanation was POTUS, and she remarked that the president likes the crazies. The committee asked Ms. Pearson about these messages, and this is what she said. So when you said that he likes the crazies, were you talking about President Trump? Yes, I was talking about President Trump.

He loved people who viciously defended him in public. But consistent in terms of the support for these people, at least with what the president likes from what you could tell. Yes, the people that would be very, very vicious and publicly defending him. On January 2nd, Ms. Pearson's concerns about the potential rally speakers had grown serious enough that she reached out to Mr. Meadows directly. She wrote, According to phone records obtained by the committee, Ms. Pearson received a phone call from Mr. Meadows eight minutes later. Here is what Ms. Pearson said about that conversation.

So what specifically did you tell him, though, about other events? Just that there were a bunch of entities coming in. suspect but they're going to be on other on other stages some on other days a very very brief overview of what was actually happening and why I raised the red flag and when you told him that people were very suspect what what did did you tell him what you meant by that or what did you convey to him about what you're the problems with these folks I think I even texted him some of my concerns, but I did briefly go over some of the concerns that I had raised to everybody with Alex Jones or Ali Alexander and some of the rhetoric that they were doing.

I probably mentioned to him that they had already caused trouble at other capitals or at the previous event, the previous march that they did for protesting, and I just had a concern about it. Ms. Pearson was especially concerned about Allie Alexander and Alex Jones because in November 2020, both men and some of their supporters had entered the Georgia state capital to protest the results of the 2020 election. Ms. Pearson believed that she mentioned this to Mark Meadows on this January 2nd call. Notably, January 2nd is the same day on which, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, Mr. Meadows warned her that things might get real, real bad on January 6th. After her January 2nd call with Mr. Meadows, Katrina Pearson sent an email to fellow rally

organizers. She wrote, POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the Ellipse and call on everyone to march to the Capitol. President's own documents suggest that the president had decided to call on his supporters to go to the Capitol on January 6th, but that he chose not to widely announce it until his speech on the Ellipse that morning. The committee has obtained this draft, an undated tweet from the National Archives. It includes a stamp stating, President Haseen.

The draft tweet reads, I will be making a big speech at 10 a.m. on January 6 at the Ellipse, south of the White House. Please arrive early. Massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop this deal. Although this tweet was never sent, rally organizers were discussing and preparing for the march to the Capitol in the days leading up to January 6. This is a January 4 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. The end of the message indicates that the president's plan to have his followers march to the Capitol was not being broadly discussed. And then on the morning of January 5th, Ali Alexander, whose firebrand style concerned

Katrina Pearson, sent a similar text to a conservative journalist. Mr. Alexander said, tomorrow, ellipse then US Capitol. Trump is supposed to order us to the Capitol at the end of his speech, but we will see. President Trump did follow through on his plan, using his January 6th speech to tell his supporters to march to the Capitol on January 6th. The evidence confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the President. Another part of the President's strategy involved certain members of Congress who amplified his unsupported assertions that the election had been stolen.

In the weeks after the election, the White House coordinated closely with President Trump's allies in Congress to disseminate his false claims and to encourage members of the public to fight the outcome on January 6th. We know that the president met with various members to discuss January 6th well before the joint session. The president's private schedule for December 21st, 2020, shows a private meeting with Republican members of Congress. We know that Vice President Pence, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Rudy Giuliani also attended that meeting. We obtained an email that was sent from Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama to Mark Meadows setting up that meeting. The subject line is, White House December 21st regarding January 6th. In his email, Congressman Brooks explained that he had not asked anyone to join him in the, quote, January 6th effort, because in his view, quote, only citizens can exert the necessary influence

on senators and congressmen to join this fight against massive voter fraud and election theft. At this point, you may also recall testimony given in our earlier hearing by Acting Attorney General Richard Donahue, who said that the president asked the Department of Justice to, quote, just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. According to White House visitor logs obtained by the committee, members of Congress present at the White House on December 21st included Congressman Brian Babin, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Jody Heiss,

Jim Jordan, and Scott Perry. Then Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene was also there. We heard testimony in an early hearing that a pardon was ultimately requested by Congressman Mo Brooks and other members of Congress who attended this meeting. We've asked witnesses what happened during the December 21st meeting and we've learned that part of the discussion centered on the role of the vice president during the counting of the electoral votes. These members of Congress were discussing what would later be known as the Eastman theory, which was being pushed by attorney John Eastman. In one of our earlier hearings, you heard in great

detail that President Trump was trying to convince Vice President Pence to do something illegal. His White House counsel confirmed all of that in testimony last week. Your view, Mr. Cipollone, upon those discussions with Mr. Philbin, with Greg Jacob, what was your assessment as to what the Vice President could or could not do in the Trump session? What was my assessment about what he could or couldn't do? Yes, your view of the issue. My view was that the vice president didn't have a legal authority to do anything except what he did.

They both told us, Mr. Philbin and Mr. Jacob, that they looked very closely at the Eastern memos, the Eastern theory, and thought that it had no basis, that it was not a strategy that the presidency pursued. It sounds like that's consistent with your impression as well. My impression would have been informed certainly by them. Campaign senior advisor Jason Miller told us that Mr. Cipollini thought John Eastman's

theories were nutty, something Mr. Cipollini wouldn't refute. We've received testimony from various people about this. One was Jason Miller, who was on the campaign, said that what was communicated to me was that Pat Cipollone thought the idea was nutty and at one point confronted Eastman basically with the same sentiment. I don't have any reason to contradict what he said. On January 4th, John Eastman went to the White House to meet with the president and vice president.

Mr. Cipollini tried to participate in this meeting, but he was apparently turned away. You didn't go to the meeting in the Oval Office where Eastman met with the president and with the vice president. Do you remember why you didn't personally attend? I did walk to that meeting, and I did go into the Oval Office with the idea of attending that meeting, and then I ultimately did not attend that meeting. Why not? The reasons for that are privileged.

Okay. Were you asked to not attend the meeting, or did you make a personal decision not to attend the meeting? Again, without getting into... Recall that Greg Jacob, the Vice President's counsel, stated that Mr. Eastman acknowledged he would lose 9-0 if his legal theory were challenged in the Supreme Court. Mr. Cipollini had reviewed Mr. Eastman's legal theory and expressed his view repeatedly that the vice president was right.

He even offered to take the blame for the vice president's position. I thought that the vice president did not have the authority to do what was being suggested under a proper reading of the law. I conveyed that. I think I actually told somebody in the vice president's, just blame me. I'm not a politician. And I just said, I'm a lawyer. This is my legal opinion. But let me tell you this.

Can I say a word about the vice president? Please. I think the vice president did the right thing. I think he did the courageous thing. I have a great deal of respect for Vice President Pence. I worked with him very closely. I think he understood my opinion. I think he understood my opinion afterwards as well.

I think he did a great service for this country and I think I suggested to somebody that he should be given the presidential medal for his actions. Earlier this year a federal district court judge concluded that President Trump and Mr. Eastman, relying on Mr. Eastman's theory, more likely than not violated multiple federal criminal laws in their pressure campaign against the vice president. Also recall earlier in this hearing, we saw that Rudy Giuliani's team did not have actual evidence of fraud sufficient to change the result of the election. That's important because as January 6th approached,

the Republican members of the House and Senate were looking for reason to object to the electors. And no real evidence was ever given to them. explaining in detail the many constitutional and legal problems with objections and describing the principal judicial rulings dismissing the claims of widespread fraud. But their plan to object to the certification of the election on January 6th went forward anyway. The next day, on January 5th, the day before the attack on the Capitol, tens of thousands of people converged on Washington. While certain close associates of President Trump privately expressed concerns about what would occur on January 6th, other members of the president's inner circle spoke with great anticipation about the events to come. The committee has learned from the White House phone logs that the president spoke to Steve Bannon, his close advisor, at least twice on

January 5th. The first conversation they had lasted for 11 minutes. Listen to what Mr. Bannon said that day after the first call he had with the president. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging and now we're on, as say the point of attack right the point of attack tomorrow. I'll tell you this It's not gonna happen like you think it's gonna happen. Okay, it's gonna be quite extraordinarily different And all I can say is strap in From those same phone logs, we know that the president and mr. Bannon spoke again on the phone that evening, this time for six minutes. That same day, on the eve of January 6, supporters of President Trump gathered in Washington, D.C. at another rally. This rally was held at Freedom Plaza, which is located near the White House, and featured some of the speakers who Katrina Pierson and others deemed too extreme to share

the stage with the president the next morning. And as this rally was underway, the president asked members of his staff to come to the Oval Office. Let's hear from the White House aides who were in the Oval Office that night. I was in the office, in the Oval Office, and he had asked me to open the door so that he could hear. I guess there was a concert or a rap or something going on. Did he say anything other than just open the door? He made a comment. I don't remember specifically what he said, but there was a lot of energy. When we walked in, the staff was kind of standing up and assembled along the wall, and the president was at the desk and

Dan Scavino was on the couch and the president was dictating a tweet that he wanted Scavino to send out. Then the president started talking about the rally the next day. He had the door of the oval open to the Rose Garden because you could hear the crowd already assembled outside on the Ellipse and they were playing music and it was so loud that you could feel it shaking in the oval. He was in a very good mood and I say that because he had not been in a good mood for weeks leading up to that. And then it seemed like he was in a fantastic mood that evening. He asked if members of Congress would be with him tomorrow. And what do you understand by me voting in his favor as opposed to physically with him or anything like that?

Yeah, I took that to mean not voting to certify the election. Then he did look to the staff and ask for ideas of how, if I recall, he said that we could make the rhinos do the right thing is the way he phrased it. And no one spoke up initially because I think everyone was trying to process what he meant by that. The president was making notes that talking then about we should go up to the Capitol. What's the best route to go to the Capitol? I said he should focus on policy accomplishments. I didn't. What was his response? He acknowledged that and said we've had crowd is, was going to be.

What did he say about it? Just that they were fired up, they were angry, they feel like the election's been stolen, that the election was rigged. Did he get any indication of how he knew that the crowd was fired up or angry? He continued to reference being able to hear them outside. Through the open door of the Oval Office, the president could hear the sound of the crowd

and the music at the rally at the Freedom Plaza. And these are some of the things that they were saying there at the plaza, just blocks from where the president sat that evening, excited for the next day. This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this country between dark and light, between the godly and the godless, between good and evil. And we will win this fight or America will step off into a thousand years of darkness. Tomorrow, tomorrow, trust me, the american people that are standing on the soil that we are standing on tonight and they're going to be standing on this soil tomorrow this is soil that we have fought over fought for and we will fight for in the future the members the members of

congress the members of the house of representatives the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don't have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow we the people are going to be here and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie. We will not stand for a lie. We will not stand for a lie. I want them to know that 1776 is always an option. These degenerates in the deep state are going to give us what we want or we are going to shut this country down. It's 1776! 1776! 1776! 1776! 1776! At 5.05 p.m. as the Freedom Plaza rally was underway just blocks away, President Trump tweeted, Washington is being inundated with people who don't want to see an election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats.

Our country has had enough. They won't take it anymore. To the crowds gathering in D.C., he added, we hear you and love you from the Oval Office. The committee has learned that on January 5th, there were serious concerns at Twitter about the anticipated violence the next day. Listen to what the Twitter witness told us about their desperate efforts to get Twitter to do something. What was your gut feeling on the night of January 5th?

I believe I sent a Slack message to someone that said something along the lines of, when people are shooting each other tomorrow, I will try and rest in the knowledge that we tried. And so I went to, I don't know that I slept that night, to be honest with you. I was on pins and needles because, again, for months I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if nothing, if we made no intervention into what I saw occurring, people were going to die. And on January 5th, I realized no intervention was coming. Even as hard as I had tried to create one or implement one,

there was nothing and we were at the lens and the mercy of a violent crowd that was locked and loaded. And just for the record, this was content that was echoing statements by the former president, but also Proud Boys and other known violent extremist groups? Yes. There were also concerns among members of Congress. We have a recently released recording of a conversation that took place among Republican members in the U.S. Capitol on the eve of January 6th. This is Republican Congresswoman Debbie Lesko from Arizona

who led some of the unfounded objections to the election results. I also asked leadership to come up with a safety plan for members. I'm actually very concerned about this because we have who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people coming here. We have Antifa. We also have, quite honestly, Trump supporters who actually believe that we are going to overturn the election. And when that doesn't happen, most likely will not happen, they are going to go nuts.

That same evening as President Trump listened to the rally from the Oval Office, he was also working on his speech to be delivered the next day. And based on documents we've received from the National Archives, including multiple drafts of the President's speech, as well as from witness testimony, we understand how that speech devolved into a call to action and a call to fight. One of the first edits President Trump made to his speech was to incorporate his 5.05 p.m. tweet, revising his speech to say, all of us are here today, do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats. Our country has had enough.

We will not take it anymore. He also added, together we will stop the steal. President Trump's edits continued into the morning of January 6. And as you can see from the president's daily diary here, the president spoke to his chief speechwriter Stephen Miller for over 25 minutes that morning. Following his call with Mr. Miller, President Trump inserted for the first time a line in his speech that said, quote, and we will see whether Mike Pence enters history as a truly great and courageous leader. All he has to do is refer the illegally submitted electoral votes back to the states that

were given false and fraudulent information where they want to recertify. No prior version of this speech had referenced Vice President Pence or his role during the joint session on January 6th. These last-minute edits by President Trump to his speech were part of the president's pressure campaign against his own vice president but not everyone wanted these lines regarding the vice president included in the president's speech including white house lawyer eric herschman did you ever speak to anybody in the white house at the time about this disagreement between the president and vice president other than the president based based on the objection from your counsel? Maybe had a brief conversation about it with Eric Hirschman.

Tell me about that. What do you remember him saying to you about this disagreement? I just remember him saying that he had a, I don't want to get this wrong, sort of some of the effect of thinking that it would be counterproductive, I think he thought, to discuss the matter publicly. So it came up in the context of editing the president's speech on January the 6th I just came up with the conversation where Eric knew it was in the speech and so he had a sidebar with me about it and so the speechwriters took that advice and removed the lines about Vice President

Pence later that morning at 1120 a.m., President Trump had a phone call with the Vice President. And as the committee detailed in an earlier hearing, that phone call was, by all accounts, tense and heated. During this call, the Vice President told the President that he would not attempt to change the outcome of the election. In response, the President called the Vice President of the United States a wimp and other derogatory words. As you can see in this email, after Vice President Pence told President Trump that he would not unilaterally deliver him a second term in office,

the speechwriters were directed to reinsert the Mike Pence lines. Here is how one of the speechwriters described President Trump's last-minute change to the speech. And as I recall, there was a very tough, a tough sentence about the Vice President that was, that was added. President Trump wanted to use his speech to attack Vice President Pence in front of a crowd of thousands of angry supporters who had been led to believe the election was stolen. When President Trump arrived at the Ellipse to deliver his speech, he was still worked up from his call with Vice President Pence and

although Ivanka Trump would not say so, her chief of staff gave the committee some insight into the president's frustration. It's been reported that you ultimately decided to attend the rally because you hoped that you her chief of staff gave the committee some insight into the president's frustration. It's been reported that you ultimately decided to attend the rally because you hoped that you would calm the president and keep the event on an even keel. Is that accurate? No, I don't know who said that or where that came from. What did she share with you about why it was concerning that her father was upset or agitated after that call with Vice President Pence in relation to the Ellipse rally? Why did that matter? Why did he have to be calmed down, I should say?

Well, she shared that he had called the vice president and not an expletive word. I think that bothered her. And I think she could tell based on the conversations and what was going on in the office that he was angry and upset and people were providing misinformation and she felt like she might be able to help calm this situation down um at least before he went on to stage

the president did go on stage and then he gave the speech that he wanted to give it included the formal changes he had requested the night before and in that morning but also many important last minute ad lib changes a single scripted reference in the speech to mike pence became eight a single scripted reference to rally goers marching to the capitol became four with president trump ad-libbing that he would be joining the protesters at the Capitol. Added throughout his speech were references to fighting and the need for people to have courage and to be strong. The word peacefully was in the staff written script and used only once. Here are some of these ad-lib changes that the president made to his speech.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn't listen to the rhinos and the stupid people that he's listening to. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't

need any of our help, we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy did not attend the speech, and they were concerned that the statements in the speech about the election were false. In fact, the message that President Trump delivered that day was built on a foundation of lies. He lied to his supporters that the election was stolen. He stoked their anger. He called for them to fight for him. He directed them to the

US Capitol. He told them he would join them. And his supporters believed him and many headed towards the Capitol. As a result, people died. People were injured. Many of his supporters' lives will never be the same. President Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, recognized the impact of the speech immediately. And this is what he said on January 6th in excerpts from text messages to Katrina Pearson. Mr. Parscale said, quote, this is about Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country, a sitting president asking for civil war. And then when he said, this week I feel guilty for helping him win, Katrina Pearson responded, you did what you felt right at the time and therefore it was right. Mr. Parscale added, yeah, but a woman is dead. And yeah,

if I was Trump and I knew my rhetoric killed someone. When Ms. Pearson replied, it wasn't the rhetoric. Mr. Parscale said, Katrina, yes, it was. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. General Adler yields back. We're joined today by Mr. Jason Van Tavenhove and Mr. Stephen Ayers. Tavenhove is an artist and journalist. He's a former spokesman of the Oath Keepers and a former close associate of Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the founder and president of the Oath Keepers, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy in relation to the Capitol attack. Mr. Van Taten Hove broke with the Oath Keepers and has since spoken out forcefully against the violent group. Mr. Ayers is a former supporter of President Trump. He answered the President's call to come to Washington, D.C.

on January 6th. He marched to the Capitol on the President's orders. He pleaded guilty last month to disorderly and disruptive conduct at the Capitol. Mr. Ayers, who no longer supports President Trump, came forward voluntarily to share his story as a warning. I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will please stand and raise their right hand.

Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Thank you. You may be seated. Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. I recognize myself for questions. Today we've discussed how President Trump summoned an angry mob of supporters to Washington, D.C., many of whom came prepared to do battle against police and politicians alike.

We're fortunate enough to be joined by two witnesses who can help us understand who was in the mob that day. Both hardcore violent extremists like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and average Trump supporters swept up in the fervor of the day. Mr. Van Tatenhove, can you help us understand who the Oath Keepers are? I can, thank you. My time with the Oath Keepers began back at Bundy Ranch with that first standoff when I went to cover them as an independent journalist. I then subsequently covered two more standoffs,

the Sugar Pine Mine standoff and the White Hope Mine standoff. It was at that time that I was offered a job as national media director and an associate editor for the web page. So I spent a few years with the Oath Keepers and I can tell you that they may not like to call themselves a militia, but they are. They're a violent militia, and they are largely Stuart Rhodes. I think, rather than try to use words, I think the best illustration for what the Oath Keepers are

happened January 6th, when we saw that stacked military formation going up the stairs of our Capitol. I saw radicalization that started with my beginning of my time with them and continued over a period of time as the member base and who it was that Stuart Rhodes was courting drifted further and further right into the alt-right world, into white nationalists, and even straight-up racists. And it came to a point where I could no longer continue to work for them. But the Oath Keepers are a dangerous militia

that is in large part fed by the ego and drive of Stuart Rhodes, who at times seemed to see himself as this paramilitary leader. I think that drove a lot of it. So in my opinion, the Oath Keepers are a very dangerous organization. Well, thank you very much. You talked a little bit about that danger. So what is the Oath Keepers vision for America and why should Americans be concerned about it? I think we saw a glimpse of what the vision of the Oath Keepers is on January 6th.

It doesn't necessarily include the rule of law. It doesn't necessarily include... It includes violence. It includes trying to get their way through lies, through deceit, through intimidation, and through the perpetration of violence. The swaying of people who may not know better through lies and rhetoric and propaganda that can get swept up in these moments. And I'll admit I was swept up at one point as well, too.

But I don't know if that answers the question. Well, it does. And you talk about being swept up. So at what point did you break with the old keepers? There came a point, there were many red flags, and I probably should have broke with them much earlier than I did. But the straw that broke the camel's back really came when I walked into a grocery store. We were living up in the very remote town of Eureka, Montana and there was a group of core members

of the group, the Oath Keepers and some associates and they were having a conversation at that public area where they were talking about how the Holocaust was not real. And that was, for me, something I just could not abide. And, you know, we were not wealthy people at all. We were barely surviving, and it didn't matter. I went home to my wife and my kids, and I told them that I've got to walk away at this point. I don't know how we're going to survive or where we're going to go or what we're going to do, but I just can no longer continue and put in my resignation.

Thank you very much. Mr. Ayers, there were many people in the crowd that day, January 6th, including you, who were not part of an extremist group, I'd like to start by having you tell the American people a little bit about yourself. Can you tell us about your life before January 6th? Yeah, basically nothing but a family man and a working man. Worked at the company, a cabinet company up in northeast Ohio for going on 20 years. You know, family is my life.

You know, I was a supervisor there, so that took up a lot of my other, you know, a lot of my free time. Other than that, with'm with my family, camping, playing basketball, playing games with my son. Just what any ordinary American citizen, family man would do. Yep, exactly.

So this committee has reviewed thousands of hours of surveillance footage from January 6th. During this review, we identified you entering the Capitol as we see in this video. Mr. Ayers, why did you decide to come to Washington on January 6th? For me personally, I was pretty hardcore into the social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I followed President Trump on all of the websites. He basically put out, come to stop the steel rally and I felt like I needed to be down here. So you basically learned about the rally on social media and at some point made a decision to come to Washington.

Yeah, yeah. I had some friends I found out were coming down. I just hopped, you know, hopped on with them right at the tail end when I found out and came down here with them. Thank you very much. The chair recognizes the vice chair, Ms. Chaney of Wyoming, for any questions that she may have. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ayers, when you entered the Capitol last year, did you believe that the election had been stolen? At that time, yeah. You know, everything that I was seeing online, I definitely believed that that's exactly what that was the case.

And when you heard from President Trump that the election was stolen, How did that make you feel? Oh, I was, you know, I was very upset, as were most of his supporters. You know, that's basically what got me to come down here. And do you still believe the election was stolen? Not so much now. I got away from all the social media when January 6th happened, basically deleted it all. I started doing my own research and everything. And for me, for something like that to be that, for that to actually take place, it's too big.

There's no way you can keep something like that quiet as big as something like that. With all the lawsuits being shot down one after another, that was mainly what convinced me. Well, and I think that's very important. And we've also talked about today and in previous hearings the extent to which the president himself was told that the election hadn't been stolen by his justice department by his white house counsel by his campaign would it have made a difference to you to know that president trump himself had no evidence of widespread fraud oh definitely you know um who knows? I may not have come down here then, you know.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. General Lady yields back. Chair recognizes General Woman from Florida, Ms. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, earlier today, we showed how Donald Trump's December 19th tweet summoned both extremist groups as well as rank-and-file supporters of President Trump to come to Washington, D.C., average Americans. He told them to, quote, be there, we'll be wild, and they came. We showed how President Trump repeatedly told them, fight, fight, fight, and they marched to the Capitol. Mr. Ayers, you were in that crowd at the rally and then the crowd that marched to the Capitol. When you arrived on the Ellipse that morning, were you planning on going to the Capitol?

No, we didn't actually plan to go down there. We went basically to see the Stop the Steal rally, and that was it. So why did you decide to march to the Capitol? Well, basically, you know, the president, you know, got everybody riled up, told everybody head on down. So we basically were just following what he said. After the president's speech, as you're marching down to the Capitol, how did you feel? I was, you know, I'm angry, you know, after everything that was basically said in the speech, you know, a lot of stuff he said he already put out in tweets, a lot I've already seen it and heard it before. So, I mean, I was already worked up and so were most of the people

there. So as you started marching, did you think there was still a chance the election would be overturned? Yeah, at that time I did, you know, because everybody was kind of like in the hope that, you know, Vice President Pence was not going to certify the election. You know, also the whole time on our way down there, he kept hearing about this big reveal. I remember us talking about, and we kind of thought maybe that was it. So that hope was there. Did you think that the president would be marching with you?

Yeah, I think everybody thought he was going to be coming down. You know, he said in his speech, you know, kind of like he's going to be there with us. So, I mean, I think I believed it. Understand. We know that you illegally entered the Capitol that afternoon and then left the Capitol area later on. What made you decide to leave? Basically, when President Trump put his tweet out, we literally left right after that come out. You know, to me, if he would have done that earlier in the day, 1.30, you know, we wouldn't be in this, maybe we wouldn't be in this bad of a situation or something. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Chair recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Van Tatenhoff, in the run-up to January 6th, Stuart Rhodes publicly implored President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act,

the 1807 law that allows the president to call up militias to put down a rebellion against the United States. And I want to get your thoughts about this in the context of your prior relationship with Stuart Rhodes. I understand that you had conversations with Rhodes about the Insurrection Act. Why was he so fixated on that? and what did he think it would enable the oath keepers to do? Well, I think it gave him a sense of legitimacy, that it was a path forward to move forward with his goals and agendas. I think we need to quit mincing words and just talk about truths. And what it was going to be was an armed revolution.

I mean, people died that day. Law enforcement officers died this day. There was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol. This could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no one would have won there that would have been good for no one the he was always looking for ways to legitimize what he was doing whether by wrapping it in the the trappings of it's not a militia it's a community preparedness team we're not a militia we're an educational outreach

group it's a veteran support group. But again, we've got to stop with this dishonesty and the mincing of words and just call things for what they are. You know, he's a militia leader. He had these grand visions of being a paramilitary leader. And the Insurrection Act would have given him a path forward with that. You know, the fact that the president was communicating, whether directly or indirectly, messaging, you know, kind of, that gave him the nod. And all I can do is thank the gods that things did not go any worse that day. What did the Oath Keepers see in President Trump?

They saw a path forward that would have legitimacy. They saw opportunity, I think, in my opinion, to become a paramilitary force, you know last week the department of justice indicated that it has evidence of the oath keepers bringing not just firearms but explosives to washington ahead of january 6th and the committees also learned that stewart rhodes stopped to buy weapons on his way to washington and shipped and shipped roughly seven thousand dollars worth of tactical gear to a January 6th rally planner in Virginia before the attack. Did you ever hear Rhodes discuss committing violence against elected political leaders? Yeah, I mean, that went back from the very beginning of my tenure.

One of the first assignments that he brought to me, wanting me to do as more of a graphic artist function, was to create a deck of cards. You may remember back to the conflict in the Middle East, where our own military created a deck of cards, which was a who's who of the key players on the other side that they wanted to take out. And Stuart was very intrigued by that notion and influenced by it, I think. And he wanted me to create a deck of cards that would include different politicians, judges,

including up to Hillary Clinton as the Queen of Hearts. This is a project that I refuse to do. But from the very start, we saw that there was always the push for military training, including there were courses in that community that went over explosives training. So yeah, this all falls in line. Mr. Van Tatenhoff, you say in your very thoughtful written testimony that we received today that you fear what the next election cycle will bring. And you also say that we have been exceedingly lucky in that we have not seen more bloodshed so far. I wonder if you would elaborate on those two statements i think as far as the luck goes we've had the potential from bundy ranch on i mean being boots on the ground at these these standoffs and they were standoffs where there were firearms pointed

across lines at federal law enforcement agencies um you know whatever it may be with that particular standoff. But I do, I think we've gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen because the potential has been there from the start. And we got very lucky that the loss of life was, and as tragic as it is, that we saw on January 6th, the potential was so much more. Again, all we have to look at is the iconic images of that day with the gallows set up for Mike Pence, for the vice president of the United States.

And I do fear for this next election cycle because who knows what that might bring if a president that's willing to try to instill and encourage to whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and deceit and snake oil. And regardless of the human impact, what else is he going to do if he gets elected again? All bets are off at that point. And that's a scary notion. I have three daughters. I have a granddaughter. And I fear for the world that they will inherit if we do not start holding these people to account. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Van Tatenhoff. Mr. Ayers, I first want to ask you about what finally caused you to leave on January the 6th.

We know that the medieval-style combat with our police, the occupation of the building, this was going on for several hours, until the president issued at 4.17 a tweet, I believe, that included a video telling people to go home. Did you see that, and did that have any effect on what you were doing? Well, when we were there, as soon as that come out, everybody started talking about it,

and it seemed like it started to disperse some of the crowd. Obviously, once we got back to the hotel room, we seen that it was still going on, but it definitely dispersed a lot of the crowd. And did once we got back to the hotel room we seen that it was still going on but it definitely dispersed a lot of the crowd and did you leave at that point we did yeah we left so in other words that was the key moment when you decided to leave when president trump told people to go home yeah yeah we left right when that come out um You were not a member of an organized group like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, as most of the crowd wasn't. I wonder, on January 6th, was it your view that these far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and Three Percenters and others were on your side? Did you have any reservations about marching with them

and rallying with them? Well, I definitely didn't have a problem. I was probably following them online myself. I thought, hey, they're on our team, good. That's how I kind of looked at it at the time. I didn't have a problem with it. I thought it was a good thing. I'm interested in hearing about what's happened to you

since the events of January 6th. You told the vice chair that you no longer believe Trump's big lie about the election, but that's what brought you originally to Washington. Looking back on it now, how do you reflect on the role that you played in the crowd that day, and what is going on in your life? Basically, you know, I lost my job.

Since this all happened, you know, pretty much sold my house. So everything that happened with the charges, you know, thank God, a lot of them did get dismissed because I was just holding my phone. But at the same time, I was there. So, I mean, it definitely it changed my life, you know, and not for the good. Definitely not for the, you know, for the better. Yeah, mean well i could say president trump is still promoting the big lie about the election um how does that make you feel it makes me mad because i i was hanging on every word he was saying everything he was putting out i was following it i mean if i was doing it hundreds of thousands or millions of other people are doing it or maybe even still doing it um it's like he just said about that you know you got people still following and doing that who knows what the next election could come out you you know, they could end up being down the same path we are right now. I mean, just don't know. Mr. Ayers, I see that your wife has joined you today and welcome

to Washington. We know this has been very difficult on you both and your family. What lessons finally do you want the American people to learn from the way you and your family have suffered as a result of these events? Biggest thing is I consider myself a family man and I love my country. I don't think any one man is bigger than either one of those. I think that's what needs to be taken. You know, people dive into the politics, and for me, I felt like I had, you know, like horse blinders on. I was locked in the whole time. Biggest thing for me is take the blinders off,

make sure you step back and see what's going on before it's too late well i want to thank you for your testimony and for appearing both of you today and mr chairman i yield back to you gentleman yields back i want to thank our witnesses for joining us today the members of the select committee may have additional questions for today's witnesses, and we ask that you respond expeditiously in writing to those questions. Without objections, members will be permitted 10 business days to submit statements for the record, including opening remarks and additional questions for the witnesses. Without objection, the chair recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, for a closing statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When Donald Trump sent out his tweet,

he became the first president ever to call for a crowd to descend on the capital city to block the constitutional transfer of power. He set off an explosive chain reaction among his followers, but no one mobilized more quickly than the dangerous extremists that we've looked at today. Seizing upon his invitation to fight, they assembled their followers for an insurrectionary showdown against Congress and the vice president. On January 6th, Trump knew the crowd was angry.

He knew the crowd was armed. He sent them to the Capitol anyway. You might imagine that our founders would have been shocked to learn that an American president would one day come to embrace and excuse political violence against our own institutions or knowingly send an armed mob to attack the Capitol to usurp the will of the people. But you know, Mr. Chairman, the founders were pretty wise about certain things, and at the start of the republic, they actually warned everyone about Donald Trump. Not by name, of course, but in the course of advising about the certain prospect that ambitious politicians would try to mobilize violent mobs to tear down our own institutions in service of

their insatiable ambitions. In the very first Federalist paper, Alexander Hamilton observed that history teaches that opportunistic politicians who desire to rule at all costs will begin first as demagogues, pandering to the angry and malignant passions of the crowd, but then end up as tyrants, trampling the freedoms and the rights of the people. A violent insurrection to overturn an election is not an abstract thing, as we've heard. Hundreds of people were bloodied, injured, and wounded in the process, including more than 150 police officers, some of them sitting in this room today. I want to give you an update on one

officer who was badly wounded in the attack and is well known to the members of this committee because he testified before us last year. Sergeant Aquilino Ganel is an army veteran who spent a year on active combat duty in the Iraq war and then 16 years on the capital force. Nothing he ever saw in combat in Iraq, he has said, prepared him for the insurrection where he was savagely beaten, punched, pushed, kicked, shoved, stomped, and sprayed with chemical irritants

along with other officers by members of a mob carrying hammers, knives, batons, and police shields taken by force and wielding the American flag against police officers as a dangerous weapon. Last month, on June 28th, Sergeant Ganell's team of doctors told him that permanent injuries he has suffered to his left shoulder and right foot now make it impossible for him to continue as a police officer. He must leave policing for good and figure out the rest of his life. Sergeant Gannell, we wish you and your family all the best.

We are here for you. We salute you for your valor, your eloquence, and your beautiful commitment to America. I wonder what former President Trump would say to someone like Sergeant Connell who must now go about remaking his life. I wonder if he could even understand what motivates a patriot like Sergeant Connell. In his inaugural address Trump introduced one commanding image, American carnage. Although that turn of phrase explained little about our country before he took office, it turned out to be an excellent prophecy of what his rage would come to visit on our people. Mr. Ayers just described how the trust he placed in President Trump as a camp follower derailed his life and nearly wrecked his reputation and his family.

A few weeks ago, we heard Shea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, Speaker Rusty Bowers from Arizona, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger describe how hate-filled intimidation campaigns by Trump and his followers made them prisoners in their homes and drove their stress and anxiety to soaring new heights when they refused to do Trump's bidding. American carnage, that's Donald Trump's true legacy. His desire to overthrow the people's election and seize the presidency interrupted the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in American history, nearly toppled the constitutional order, and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people.

The Watergate break-in was like a Cub Scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions. Mr. Chairman, these hearings have been significant for us and for millions of Americans, and our hearing next week for us and for millions of Americans. In our hearing next week will be a profound moment of reckoning for America. But the crucial thing is the next step. What this committee, what all of us will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political violence and campaigns to steal elections away from the people. Unlike Mr. Ayers and Mr. Van Tatenhove, people who have recovered and evolved from their descent into the hell of fanaticism,

Donald Trump has only expanded his big lie to cover January 6th itself. He asserts the insurrection was the real election, and the election was the real insurrection. He says his mob greeted our police officers on January 6th with hugs and kisses. He threatens to take one of America's two major political parties with him down the road to authoritarianism, and it is Abraham Lincoln's party, no less. The political scientists tell us that authoritarian parties have two essential features in common in history and around the world.

They do not accept the results of democratic elections when they lose, and they embrace political violence as legitimate. And the problem of incitement to political violence has only grown more serious in the internet age, as we have just heard. But this is not the problem of one party. It is the problem of the whole country now. American democracy, Mr. Chairman, is a precious inheritance, something rare in the history of the world and even on earth today. Constitutional democracy is the silver frame, as Lincoln put it, upon which the golden apple

of freedom rests. We need to defend both our democracy and our freedom with everything we have and declare that this American carnage ends here and now. In a world of resurgent authoritarianism and racism and anti-Smitism let's all hang tough for American democracy thank you mr. chairman I yield back gentleman yields back without objection a chair recognizes the gentleman from

Florida miss Murphy for a closing statement thank you mr. chairman at one of our first hearings, Chairman Thompson explained that the members of this committee would not spend much time talking about ourselves. Rather, we would let the evidence play the leading role. And the chairman was right, because this isn't about promoting ourselves as individuals, it's about protecting the country we love.

And it's about preserving what actually makes America great, the rule of law, free and fair elections, and the peaceful transfer of power from one elected leader to the next. But if I may say a word about myself and why I'm proud to serve on this committee. I'm the only member of this committee who was not blessed to be born an American. I was born in Vietnam after the Vietnam War, and my family and I fled a communist government and were rescued by the U.S. Navy and were given sanctuary in America. My patriotism is rooted in my gratitude for America's grace and generosity. I love this country. On January 6th, four decades after my family fled a place where political power was seized through violence. I was in the United States Capitol, fleeing my fellow Americans. Members of the angry mob had been lied to by a president

and the other powerful people who tried to convince them, without evidence, that the election had been stolen from them. Some of them then tried to use physical violence to overturn the outcome of a free and fair election. Our committee's overriding objective is to fight fiction with facts, to create a full account for the American people and for the historical record, to tell the truth of what happened and why it happened, to make recommendations so it never happens again, to defend our democracy. To me there's nothing more patriotic than that. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. General Lady yields back. Without objection, the chair recognizes the general woman

from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for a closing statement. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, let me put what you have seen today in a broader context. At the very outset of our hearings, we described several elements of President Trump's multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 election. Our hearings have now covered all but one of those elements. An organized campaign to persuade millions of Americans of a falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen by widespread fraud. A corrupt effort to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count electoral votes. An effort to corrupt the U.S. Department of Justice. Efforts to pressure state election officials and legislators to change

state election results. A scheme to create and submit fake electoral slates from multiple states. And today, you saw how President Trump summoned a mob to Washington for January 6th, and then knowing that that mob was armed, directed that mob to the United States Capitol. Every one of these elements of the planning for January 6th is an independently serious matter. They were all ultimately focused on overturning the election. And they all have one other thing in common. Donald Trump participated in each substantially and personally.

He oversaw or directed the activity of those involved. Next week, we will return to January 6th itself. As we have shown in prior hearings, Donald Trump and his legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, were working on January 6th to delay or halt Congress's counting of electoral votes. The mob attacking and invading the Capitol on that afternoon of January 6th was achieving that result. And for multiple hours, Donald Trump refused to intervene to stop it. He would not instruct the mob to leave or condemn the violence. He would not order them to evacuate the Capitol and disperse. The many pleas for help from Congress did no good. His staff insisted that President Trump call off

the attack. He would not. Here are a few of the many things you will hear next week from Mr. Cipollone. Was that right? I was, and others were. Was it necessary for you to continue to push for a statement directing people to leave all the way through that period of time until it was ultimately issued after i felt it was my obligation to continue to push for that and others felt it was their obligation as well would it have been possible at any moment for the president to walk down to the podium in the briefing room and and talk to the nation at any time between when you first gave him that advice at two o'clock in 417 when the video statement went out?

Would that have been possible? Would it have been possible? Yes. Yes, it would have been possible. And you will hear that Donald Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help. This is not ambiguous. He did not call the military.

His Secretary of Defense received no order. He did not call his Attorney General, he did not talk to the Department of Homeland Security, Mike Pence did all of those things, Donald Trump did not. We will walk through the events of January 6th next week minute by minute. And one more item. 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 person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call.

Their lawyer alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you, General Lady. Yields back. In my opening, I mentioned how we look to our leaders to serve as a fail-safe if people in this country refuse to accept the results of an election. That's part of the way those in positions of public trust uphold their oath, how they show fidelity to the

Constitution. In a run-up to January 6th, Donald Trump had an obligation to tell his supporters to accept the results of the election. Instead, he urged them to further along the path toward mob violence. The idea of mob violence make me think of another sort of failsafe. All across this country, there are different ideas about what role the federal government should play in our lives. In fact, up here on this desk, there are plenty of different ideas. But there are moments when the institutions of our federal government are the fail-safe. I am from a part of the country where, had it not been for the

federal government and the Constitution, my parents and many more Americans like them would have continued to be treated as second-class citizens. The freedom to be able to vote without harassment, travel in relative safety, and dine and sleep where you choose is because we have a government that looks over the well-being of its citizens. This is especially important in moments of crisis. When we have a natural disaster that state governments can't handle on their own, when there's an emergency that requires action by our public health services or our military, we have a federal government. What happened on January 6, 2020, was another one of those moments in history that test the strength

of our federal government. January 6 was an attack on our country. It was an attack on our democracy, on our Constitution. A sitting president with a violent mob trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another. It still makes my blood boil to think of it. In a moment like that, what would you expect to see? You expect to see the President of the United States sitting behind a resolute desk in the Oval Office, assuring the American people that the attack would be repelled and a threat would be dealt with. You'd expect to be reassured that there was a failsafe.

Instead, the President of the United States sent the mob. He disregarded the advice of the people who had taken an oath to the Constitution. He oversaw a scheme aided by people whose loyalty was only to Donald Trump. There's nothing we can compare that to. There's nothing in our great nation's history that has ever come close to that sort of betrayal and dereliction. Thank goodness our system of government held in spite of a commander in chief who

worked in opposition to what the Constitution designed. When this committee reconvenes, we'll tell the story of that supreme dereliction by the commander in chief, how close we came to a catastrophe for our democracy and how we remain in serious danger. The chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have escorted witnesses and members from the room. Without objection, the committee stands adjoined.

And there you have it. The committee, day seven, has adjourned. Public hearing for the January 6th Select Committee. Big news there at the end. Liz Cheney, always throwing fire, accuses the former President Donald, of witness tampering. We talked about it last week as we convened from the hearing, and it looks like we are going to talk about it again this week. Holy moly.

I want to remind everyone here that next week we will be carrying this hearing as well here on the Midas Touch Network. So please subscribe to the YouTube channel of the Midas Touch Network. Do not forget to go down and hit the subscribe button. Very, very important to stay in tune to the Midas Touch Network, where not only do we carry the hearings, we have an array of podcasts, which I want to lead into that.

One of the personalities of the podcast, Michael Cohen, has joined us before. Michael, welcome here, Michael, to the post-hearing coverage. personalities of the podcast michael cohen has joined us before uh michael well welcome welcome here michael to uh the post hearing coverage we're gonna have some more panelists here but i want to go to you first because of this witness tampering uh allegation that uh is at the end i know you're probably not surprised by this you weren't surprised last week when they started talking about witness tampering there at the end there there were some text messages that were given. But here today, Liz Cheney is outright accusing Donald Trump of tampering with a witness and even the witness let their attorney know what the committee know.

What gives you this? So as I watch it, I'm pretty sure that all the folks that are now currently viewing this live were saying the same thing that I was saying. Wow, wow, and wow. I mean, let's be serious about what we just saw here and what's going on here. Could you imagine had Congress done what they could have and should have done over two years ago when I testified before the House Oversight Committee and that fucking weasel, Matt Gaetz, was running around the House Oversight Committee room that I was in when I was testifying

live the night before tweeting out falsehoods about, oh, wait till his wife finds out about some fictitious girlfriend. Interestingly enough, what we should be noticing is that everything that was said about me is a deflection by these folks, right? Obviously, we now know about Matt Gaetz. We know about Jim Jordan. We know about the whole group of them. But as I sat and watched, I was saying to myself, could you imagine if they would have gone after Trump for obstruction of justice, of witness tampering over two years ago in 2019 when I testified before the House? All of this would be if he just would have been locked up or dismissed or whatever it might have been that would just put an end to this man's reign of terror. That's all that I just kept thinking of. Then I also was listening to as, I mean, God bless Benny Thompson and Jamie Raskin and the whole committee. I mean, what a job that they're doing

in laying out just how dirty this Trump administration was. And I will be very honest with you on this one. I'm really so thankful that this all happened to me in this weird way, because Lord knows what he would have been asking me to do if I was still within that inner circle. I mean, that to me would have been the most damaging thing to this country that I could imagine that I would be a participant in. So in one respect, it's kind of like a silver lining. I'm always looking for a silver lining in terms of what happened. But then let's talk about what Liz Cheney was saying about the weaponization of the Justice Department and how Donald Trump corrupted the Justice Department. Do we not see that, for example, in the unconstitutional remand of the back to prison?

And that's just me I'm talking about. Let's just look at all of the various things, the pardons that were given to Roger Stone or Paul Manafort, the way that Jared Kushner was doling out pardons for cash and for other things. I mean, you know, we're talking about the corruption of our Justice Department. And if we don't have faith in our Justice Department, I believe legitimately as a country, we're screwed. I think I think all all good points with the pardon list, and it sounds like there may have been a pardon list the more we dive into this with some of the testimony today. What did you make of not just the oath-keeper,

the former oath-keeper, who was more of a character witness to Stuart Rhodes and the oath-keepers, because he wasn't involved with the oath-keepers at the time of the January 6th insurrection, but what about the actual writer, the insurrectionist that was there? What did you make of that? I thought it was very unique that the committee had that person come. Do you think that moves the needle at all for some of these folks out there that still believe in Donald Trump or have the inclination to? No, I don't think anything that's going to happen. They can have a video

of Donald Trump, you know, shooting somebody, as he stated on Fifth Avenue, and the same sycophantic MAGA, you know, fools, these MAGA morons would continue to say the same stupid thing. And they would continue to protect or to worship Donald Trump. I mean, this is the cult of Donald Trump, as I talked about in my first book, Disloyal. But I can't wait for you to end up getting the copy of my upcoming book called The Department of Injustice. It goes exactly into what we're talking about right now, which is the corruption of the DOJ based upon a president that doesn't really want to be president. But as Jamie Raskin so appropriately put, that our forefathers contemplated that somewhere down the road, that there would be a president that would want to be more than

a president. And then there were certain safeguards that were put in. However, what Donald showed this country is that for every safeguard that's put in, there's a way within which to undo it. So, you know, look, it was a great, great statement by Jamie Raskin. I think the world of the guy, I think he's absolutely, I think all of them are doing a fabulous job on this committee. I think a historical document, there's probably nothing better that's going to come out of this, you know, and the Mueller report in order to understand this Trump administration. But at the end of the day, no, I don't think that it changes the minds of any of these diehard MAGA supporters. And they're the ones that we have to be careful for, because these are the ones that we have to be careful for because these are the ones that are radicalized.

As that gentleman, I think his name was Ayers, was talking about that they are a paramilitary group. You could call them whatever the heck you want. Oath Keepers, the 1%. You could call these guys whatever, the Proud Boys. It doesn't make a difference what the name of the group is. These people are radical. They have many, many weapons. They're mobilizing. They are now mobilizing through the internet and other forms trying to stay under the radar, but they

are military. They have individuals that are part of the military so that they have some tactical experience. This is really dangerous. We are really at a danger point in our democracy and in this country. And I certainly hope that our Justice Department, I certainly hope that our president, I really hope that our military are gearing up for what really, I hate to say it, could be another civil war. So let me ask you one more thing about Mr. Ayers. And you say these ultra-MAGA supporters, the ultra-MAGA, I guess you would call them. You spent time with Donald Trump, even when he started to gather up these supporters. Does he really like these people?

How does he view these people? What would you tell these people if they were actually in front of you, you know, sycophanting for him? What would they tell you how Donald Trump views them? So the best way to describe the relationship would be a chessboard. They are pawns. He certainly is the king, but not only is he the king, he's the queen, and he's also your rook. He'll allow some other parts, the horse and the castle, in order to exist, but each and every one of them are all pawns in his game, which is to be the monarch, the dictator, right, the supreme leader of the

United States, which of course he would change the name anyway. But these people, let me say that he wouldn't walk across the street to urinate on them if in fact they were on fire, and that's what was needed to save their life. He wouldn't step three feet out of his way in order to do anything for any of them. Look, he wouldn't do it for anyone that he's actually close to, right? Which is truly amazing. Unless that there's something for him,

unless there's a benefit for him, he is the epitome of a narcissistic sociopath. And that's all that this guy thinks about when he wakes up and when he goes to sleep and every second in between. And that's about Donald Trump, not his wife, not his children, certainly not this country, not his party. All he's thinking about is himself and how he could benefit from that opportunity. Plain and simple. Well, and you speak to this as when he turns on people, because he did this with you. He's done this with several other folks.

What do you think his relationship with Pat Cipollone is now, now that especially after next week, they kind of previewed some of the testimony that we might be seeing on video? What do you think? Listen, I think you're going too far in even thinking about, does he even think about Pat Cipollone? Look at what we saw today. Brad Parscale engaging in a text messaging with Katrina Pearson. Brad Parscale made a ton of money running the Trump website in order to raise money, made a ton of money running the Trump website in order to raise money, made a ton of money, made more money in one year than he did in 20 years when he was in private practice as a social media guy.

So Donald feels that, of course, Brad owes him. After seeing the text messages between him and Katrina, and remember, Katrina also became part of the campaign, running around with Laura Trump and Lynn Patton and a whole group of other people, you know, based upon the National Diversity Coalition for Trump that I helped to start, that I was actually the founder of. You know, he's looking at all of these people, including Pat Cipollone, including, you know, the Mark Meadows and his comments. Everybody seems to be pointing the finger at Donald. And it's amazing because while they're all pointing the finger at Donald, the only thing, including Rudy Giuliani and

everybody else, what Donald is doing is he's saying to himself, oh, that's okay. Show me one single piece of paper. Show me one communication from me to you other than your hearsay testimony, and then I'll be concerned. He's not so concerned. I listened to guys like this morning. I was listening, for example, to Dan Goldman talking about, you know, this evidence that they could possibly use, you know, of all of these individuals pointing their finger at Donald and, you know, making the allegation that this could be used in order to demonstrate his mens rea, his guilty mind. It's not going to, it doesn't work that way. And also remember, if this thing goes to a jury, what's the likelihood that

there'll be one person on that jury, the person that will put it into a hung jury, that's not a diehard Trump fan. I mean, it's virtually impossible when there are 24% of the Republican Party that are diehard MAGA fans. We're in a very dangerous situation. And it's why I constantly on mea culpa when I'm on this program with Midas, when I do all of these interviews, I keep begging people, make sure you get out to vote.

Make sure this November and certainly in the general election that you're voting straight down the line for Democrat until this country finally walks away from Trumpism. Otherwise, rest assured, there will be nothing to walk away from. We are at a precipice, folks. We're at a precipice because Donald Trump brought us to the edge of this mountain. And truth be told, he'd rather push you off than to save the country if that means he is not the supreme leader. This is a severely mental and deranged human being who has no empathy for anyone, who has no religious conviction.

And so all he cares about, again, being a narcissistic sociopath, is about himself. So if we all do not mobilize and become a significant movement in these upcoming elections, I truly believe that our country is really headed for that cliff. Well, I appreciate it, Michael. Thank you. And also go to the Mind to Stash Network while you're here and subscribe to the YouTube channel. You will find Michael's podcast, My Alcopa, with Michael Cohen here on the Mindest Touch Network. Thank you, Michael, for joining us. Stick around if you can, friend. We're going to have a panel. I've got to go to another guest here. Thanks, Michael, for joining us. So I'm going to go to, it looks like we may be, I'm looking here at some, it looks like someone may speak.

I'm going to bring in Harry Littman while we're waiting here to see if we have any speakers here. Harry, how are you? Nice for you to join us. I'm happy to, but who are we waiting for? I'm glad I can fill in for you. Well, I'm not sure. Who's the main event that you want me to be a part of? There is no main event here. Sometimes Jamie Raskin makes his way to the microphone.

So I keep a close eye on the microphone here. See, I do everything. I'm the host and I'm watching the thing and I'm bringing in the guests. But I appreciate you joining us here. So what is your first take on the hearing from today? You know, I'm again blown away. They have managed at each time to up the ante. We've kind of mocked them a little because I guess they had some professional consulting help. But man, oh man, how were they going to top Cassidy Hutchinson?

And they did. So I thought they really brought home a plausible account of just how we got from the malevolent mind of Donald Trump to the melee at the Capitol and people being killed. you know, drew at least a dotted line and filled a lot of it in, made it understandable, really sort of tore back the curtain and showed us exactly who was in charge and what they were doing during those pivotal days. And I find myself, as I've been after many of the hearings, kind of thunderstruck. Well, you know, you really called the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson such a way well in advance before anyone of what would happen after she would testify. And you were absolutely correct there, because we've seen some of these dominoes fall, not just Mark Meadows, but now we see Pat Cipollone sitting before them. And it appears at the end of the

hearing when Liz Cheney doesn't only accuse Donald Trump of crimes of tampering with witnesses, but she also alludes to the fact that we're going to hear a lot more from Pat Cipollone in next week's hearing. I don't know if it's going to be Tuesday or Thursday, but everyone go ahead and subscribe to the Mind as Dutch Network right here on YouTube. And Tony, just on that big, I have no idea, but it would be a little bit in character if the person that he's calling and trying to actually intimidate is Sarah Matthews, who's a bit of a Cassidy Hutchinson type. She quits January 6th. She was the deputy press secretary, sat pretty close to all the proceedings.

And she's, you know, someone if he tried to browbeat her, it will, I think, backfire. She's going to be a very effective witness. Sorry. Go ahead. No, no. I think that's I think that's exactly right. We thought she was going to appear today, but they kind of switched it around on us. That's right. They've been very elusive about these hearings and where they're going with them, where they're not. And I don't know what day we'll get next week. But again, everyone stay tuned. Follow Midas Touch on Twitter. I know you've done some great videos for Midas Touch. Again, the one where you very well called Cassie Hutchinson as the key witness here. And again, the dominoes fell. So having looking back on that video that you made about Cassidy Hutchinson, because I think

her testimony has seen those dominoes fall. But what do you expect going forward? Do you think we have more than eight hearings? Do you think they continue this because of more evidence pouring in of people maybe protecting themselves with criminal liability. You're the attorney. You tell me. Yeah. Well, so the next one was designed to be kind of the culminating set piece. That's how Trump spent these 184 minutes while the riot raged. He's anywhere from jubilant to contemptuous of the people who are cowering and, you know, worried about being killed, as some people were. I think we have, at least after that, a summation hearing, but maybe

one other as well. By all accounts, information is flooding into them. But today's hearing just went so, so close home. We, you know, I'd heard, well, everything happened in this December 18th meeting. And it seemed like, really, you're going to tie it all to that? But this was not your normal meeting. Six hours of people screaming at each other. And, you know, look, here's my basic feeling, Tony, about today. There are ragtag conspiracy theorists in the world. There are half-lives and low-lives in the world. And we saw them here today. But what happened is

everybody, and this wasn't clear before the hearings, every grown-up in the room told Trump there's nothing to be done here. So he just cast about until he could find. And look at this. Look at this crew of scoundrels, Powell, Flynn, Giuliani and then Stuart Rhodes. And he and the hearing today made a really conclusive showing that these were the people he summoned. These were the people actually exercising presidential power for, you know, two, three very pivotal days. And these were the people who really endangered the life of his vice president. So they were it was almost like a, you know, crazy, picaresque novel or something, but then you just had to remember they're here and playing a role on the stage because Trump at his wits end and out of options has empowered them to do it. I've

prosecuted guys like this. They're around, but that they should be doing the bidding of the president of the United States. That's the remarkable point of this story. And that means it really does go back to Donald Trump. trying to figure out how to constitutionally overturn the election of the United States that was the freest and most fairest election, that even Bill Barr said the idea that something was stolen is absolutely bullshit, was his words. Even watching more tape from him today. And as a former government person, I can just tell you the fact of that meeting. Junior staffers escorting them into the White House and letting them in. You can well understand why Pat Cipollone, in Sidney Powell's words, set a land speed record. It's, holy shit, what's happening? That is absolutely something the chief of staff cannot permit to

happen. It shows Meadows being either feckless or kind of in on the whole ruse or conspiracy. So just that it starts that way is one thing. And then what transpires thereafter, six hours and just a few minutes later, he sends that big tweet. I found it a pretty persuasive case that he had ignored all the grownups, gone with team crazy and was implementing their plan right away. And it was, in fact, accepted by the terrorists who came on the 6th as a call to arms. He meant it that way. They took it that way.

Well, the lady who kept saying, release the Kraken, we know now Sidney Powell, she was one of the influencers. And some of the deposition tape of her still in this mindset. It just, it's amazing to me that here we are, she's sitting before the select committee, being deposed about the election being overturned by the president, where she was giving this delusional advice, this delusional constitutional advice, I guess you'd call it. And here she is still in this mindset, sipping a Dr. Pepper and

having a good time. Arrogant, disparaging of all the real officials. Again, people like that exist in the world, that they exercise the power and will of the president. That's crazy. I don't know how much time you have, Tony, but can I tell you one other big revelation today? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, please. Okay. So, so fine. They, you know, he pushes and gets Pence mentioned in there. That's already scandalous. But I was really struck that then he goes to the rally and ad-libs. And what's the ad lib? Seven mentions of Pence to get them revved up about this. You know, nothing about the peacefully, the line that was inserted in there to give him deniability. Everything he does is really and truly intended to rev them up into a murderous, intense rage that they would have torn the vice president limb from limb. And I think we're going

to find out at this final hearing as all of this, you know, as DC is burning, he, he is laughing. He won't, you know, he won't put out a tweet. And when he finally does, he says, go home. We love you. You know, this is, this is really a diluted kind of, you know, complete takeover by the by by domestic terrorists. Except, again, it's abetted by the president. The United States domestic terrorists are out there. They don't get to do the bidding of the president. Well, I appreciate you pointing that fact out as well. Harry Glittman, please, please plug your podcast as we sit here.

Oh, well, that's very kind of you. So Talking Feds, which we do week in, week out with some really great guests, Jamie Raskin often among them. But, you know, we're really proud of the sort of roundtable. I think you'd only see people like that on sort of Sunday shows. And even then it would be for soundbites. These are sort of pretty rich discussions. So thanks a lot, Tony, for serving it up. No problem. And also subscribe to the Midas Dutch Network where Harry appears. Yeah.

In great videos in his flat for them. Yeah. In his great crystal ball of knowing that Cassidy Hutchinson was the main predictions. All right. That's right. Thank you very much, Harry. Thanks for joining us. All right. See you, Tony. Harry Littman there. We're going to bring in our panel. I have Jessica Denson, David Bender in Texas, Paul with us right now. And I'd like to get I think David actually had something to build on with. I'm still watching to see if we're going to have someone come to the microphone. But I think David actually had something to build on with the Mike Pence that, David, did you have something you wanted

to build on there? I do. It's interesting to hear, you know, Pat Cipollone talking about, you know, Mike Pence deserving the Medal of Freedom from the president, how much he admired the strength of Mike Pence. There's reporting, and I think it might be Robert Costa's book, I can't remember where, but when the rift happened, after Pence did what he did, held strong, there were still another two weeks, and they weren't speaking, and there was a desire to try and get them back together. So there was an effort to get Trump to give Mike Pence the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a way of somehow healing this rip because people felt it was important that that happened. So he thought about it and he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jim Jordan.

So there's a lot of subtext about what's going on here. Cipollone saying that made me remember that that was the real life circumstance that was going on. Rather than try and rise above it and heal this rift and have his loyal vice president back in the fold, he doubled down,pled down which as jessica well knows this is what he always right well i wanted to go to jessica to get her take on not only um the the second half of the hearing here but at the very end when liz cheney seems to burn down the house of trump and give him a very stark warning here that, hey, we know you're still criming and stuff. What do you make of it, Jessica?

Yeah, and it was referred or the DOJ was notified, which here we go, DOJ. I mean, what else do we need to see? moved and agitated by these very visceral accounts of people's lives being materially altered. We saw the, to Sergeant, I'm saying his name wrong, but now I believe at the end of the hearing from Raskin, he's no longer going to be able to serve as an officer because of the injuries he sustained on January 6th. The American carnage that Donald Trump has caused just runs through every fiber of our society and continues as this man is free. These two witnesses, Stephen Ayers and Jason Van Tatenhove. I'll start with Stephen Ayers. We heard some commentary earlier that said this cult will never break. There's no extraction from

the cult. That's not true. If that were true about any human being living on this planet, we would cease to live, okay? Our very existence is a sign of hope and redemption. So there is an opportunity for these cult members to come out from their brainwashed, sheltered, you know, blinded lives and come to the truth. And it is a very tattered route, as the Stephen Ayers individual shared. He is now a convicted felon because of the lies of Donald Trump that he believed. And what did this man do after the testimony today? He went and hugged those officers and apologized to them. He apologized to them. This is the healing. This is the effect of justice. This is what justice does. Justice is not political retribution. Justice is healing. Justice is

wholeness. Justice is progress and fulfillment and peace. That's what justice is, Merrick Garland, DOJ. That is what we need you to bring right now to our country so that we can have a future that we can live in. Jason Van Tatenhove, I knew before this hearing that I was going to like this man. I really related to him so much. He said towards the end, Liz Cheney asked him what got you out of this circle of the Oath Keepers and described being in a grocery store and how his family was basically so poor. I mean, they just, they did not have money. This just goes to show how disgusting these criminal elites like Donald Trump are. They prey on people who have nothing in this world.

They use the people that are most desperate and wanting for any feeling of belonging or purpose or anything, which manifests itself in all of these horrible manifestations like racism and white supremacy and all of these other manifestations of evil. But ultimately, these people are looking for a place to belong and they prey on the most desperate people and this jason van taten hopefully it was so it was so touching to see what he said he said because when i walked away i did not know where i was going i did not know and i read and it it was so relatable to me because when I sued the Trump campaign, I had no idea where I was going with it. I had no idea where it was going to bring me. But I knew it was the right thing to do.

And this man has taken what he knows and he has put his knowledge and pain to purpose. And he is trying to warn people. He said in his testimony today, he said, talked about the consequences if we do not hold these people to account. He said, before it's too late, we must do something. When I first warned the country about the dangers of Donald Trump, when I woke up from this madness, this delusion. It was in February of 2019. It was about a week before Cohen's testimony to Congress. I went on television for the first time on CNN. I was living under the threat of a $50,000 judgment for violating Donald Trump's campaign illegal nondisclosure agreement. I had just found out that I lost this bogus arbitration

that was brought against me. And they were moving in two courts, state and federal to confirm a $50,000 award against me that would have bankrupt me. I had no money, I couldn't pay it. But the one thing I had was my credit, the one thing I had. And if I had had to face that judgment enforcement which they tried to carry out, even as I was fighting it, I would have lost the one thing that I had.

And even with that pressure, without a book to sell, I came on television and I warned the American people. I said, we are in a very dangerous time in our country. We need all hands on deck to confront the oppression and the lies coming out of the man who's supposed to be the leader of the free world. And before it's too late. So much damage has happened between February of 2019 and today. It has happened between January 6, 2021 and today. No more time for inaction. We must stop this American carnage now. I'm glad you brought it to that point because we watched as Jamie Raskin, so well put, took the words right out of Trump's mouth from his original inauguration speech where he so dumbly referred to the country with American carnage at that time,

and now we are living with the American carnage as you describe it. Texas Paul, give me what your take was from the testimony of the two witnesses in the second half of this hearing, and how do you see do you see you know i ask michael moving the needle and jessica she obviously knows that this is in uh you know we are in def con 5 here um but where do you think do you think this moves the needle at all texas wall for who well i mean you know we're looking at a situation where we're trying to convince certain Americans of what the truth is. Like Jessica said, you come out of this delusion, this hypnotic delusion of what Trump is, what it isn't, what the country is, what it isn't. I mean, we've watched people embrace this Christian nationalism.

As Jessica so well put it, it's a non-Christian nationalism because it has nothing to do with the New Testament whatsoever. What do you make? Do you think those testimonies from Totenhaven and Ayers, do you think that wakes some folks up who are still in this delusion? Michael Cohen doesn't seem to believe it, but what about you? Every one of these hearings, we peel off a few more. We do. And I got to say something. You know, I tell it straight the way it is, whether it's to my people or Republicans or whoever.

I don't lie. I followed the chat while those two guys were testifying. And I got to tell you people, I'm a little sick to my stomach. I don't mean to, you know, to chew your ass or anything like that. But if it had been the David Koresh cult, if it had been the Warren Jeffs cult, if it had been the Reverend Moon cult, if it had been any of the other damn cult in the world that these people left, y'all wouldn't have been shitting all over these two guys like you were. I got to tell you something.

As people leave the MAGA cult, and it's a goddamn cult. It is. It's a cult. 100%. I mean, look at what Stone was preaching the night before. I told you, Palin, same damn thing. Good versus evil, light versus dark. They've anointed Trump to be God's chosen. It's a damn cult. And if you had anybody else leaving any other cult, you would not shit on them when they left. You would a damn cult. And if you had anybody else leaving any other cult, you would not shit on them when they left. You would be helping them. And that's what I'm asking you to do. I hate Republicans more than anybody. I do. I swear to God, I despise those sons of bitches. But you know, when somebody gets out of a cult, you don't crap on them. Okay. Let's just let's not do that anymore. Please. I you i'm begging you but you know can i

make a more important point than that go ahead paul if you followed if you followed what we just saw i mean it it's the night before you had like i said stone light you know all his his speech with good and evil light and darkness sat in the other you had mike lindell tweeting out don't give away the second part the second part's the important don't give away the second part. The second part's the important part. You give away the second part. And you know, them old boys are getting our way. He was talking about Cipollone, I guarantee you. He was talking about Hirschman. He was talking about the people, the grownups in the room. You can't give it away, folks. Then Trump wakes up, been in a bad mood for weeks, and all of a sudden, man, his feet can't touch the floor. He's happy as can be. He's excited. He's ready to go. And then he has a conversation with Pence,

and he's all pissed off. Ivanka lies under Trump, lies under oath, says that she's not there to calm Trump down. And we know Trump immediately changed his speech. As soon as he got off the phone, he said, put this shit back in the speech. And he was hateful as hell. He riled those people up on purpose and sent them down to the damn Capitol. And I hate to say this, but

the only thing I'm afraid of, I'm not afraid of a whole hell of a lot, but one thing that does make me afraid, and I'm a huge Biden supporter, is that right now this country needs a Teddy Roosevelt. We do. When Teddy Roosevelt came into office, the federal government was corrupt as hell. And right now we need a Teddy Roosevelt to take a look at what's going on in our Justice Department, what's going on within all the departments of our government. And this cult has to be rooted out. In the state of New York, they just had their handgun laws overturned. And

it was a be careful what you wish for situation because the new law that they put forward, they go back and they look at all your social media before you can get a permit. That's the kind of shit that needs to be happening. They need to be rooting through this government person to person to person and finding out who is a traitor, who is in this cult, because people in this cult that will not put the Constitution before God anointed Donald Trump need to be kicked the hell out of this government. 100%. And that's the only thing that scares me is that Joe Biden is one hell of a dealmaker. He is. He's a common sense, let's get things done, been in the Senate for 40 years

dealmaker. And right now we need somebody that's going to grab the Eagle, shove it down in that bathtub and hit it with a scrub brush. I'm telling you. Texas Paul always has a way of saying things. I got another guest I want to bring in here, Representative Malcolm Kenyatta. Malcolm, how are you? How are you, sir? Well, I'm like Sandra, of course. Good to see you all. I will tell you, like the entire country, I'm kind of reeling from watching these hearings. You know, it's one thing to know this information. I feel like everybody who has been paying attention since the attack on January 6th, you know, understands that the president was involved, that folks like Rudy

Giuliani were involved, that somehow the MyPillow guy was involved. Apparently the Overstock guy was involved. So we kind of knew some of the pieces of it, but to see it laid out as thoroughly, as methodically as Chairman Thompson and the committee are laying it out, it draws into stark relief how close we came to losing this entire experiment in democracy. And frankly, I leave this hearing after seeing that bevy of evidence, incredibly frustrated that the Department of Justice and that the FBI has not somehow found their way to Mar-a-Lago. I don't know if it's an issue of getting directions to where Mar-a-Lago is, but the evidence is clear here that you have a guy who's no longer sitting in the Oval Office,

but who is still engaged in crimes, this time in terms of witness tampering so that the American people can't understand the full extent of the planning, the preparation, and the engagement that the president had in coordinating this attack on January 6th. So Malcolm, you represent the 181st in Pennsylvania, and in your state, the big lie was you were targeted. The state was targeted by the big lie. And even Republicans now still to this day are pushing that big lie, even in your legislator, to try to spread it just as far and as wide as they can. You gave a speech the other day that kind of went viral at your state legislator about the ban on abortion and the

overturning of Roe v. Wade. So tell folks, because you're in this fight in the actual policy realm, right? We're not just talking about the politics of it. You're down there making policy as a state legislator in Pennsylvania. So tell us what is at stake. You know, Tony, I've been in the thick of this for a while now. I actually was chosen by President Biden, Vice President Harris, to be one of the electors. And my Republican members of the House actually sued us when they talk about all of those lawsuits. One of the lawsuits was to try to keep the electors in Pennsylvania from actually going and fulfilling our ceremonial but critical duty of confirming who the next president and vice president will be through the electoral college process. My colleagues literally sued me and sued others to try to stop us from doing that.

I am the Democratic chair of our subcommittee on campaign finance and elections under the powerful House State Government Committee, one of the most powerful committees in Harrisburg, in part because the name sort of lays it out. We oversee all state functions, including elections. And I have been since 2020 fighting an ongoing, continuous battle to stop my Republican colleagues from not only lying about the last election, but from using their authority to try to make it easier for them to cheat the next time. That video, which went viral, everybody was focused on the abortion piece of that constitutional amendment. But I called that amendment a crap sandwich because it was actually multiple layers of what they wanted to do in that constitutional amendment. Not only did they want to effectively ban abortion, they also wanted to allow our auditor general, who's a Republican elected official, who also doesn't accept the results of the elections. They want to put him in charge of auditing all future elections. They want to have radical voter ID on top of the voter ID that Pennsylvania already

has. And so this is a part of a concerted effort, and Pennsylvania is very much in the thick of it. Well, I appreciate you joining us, and I know you're on limited time here, but what can folks do in reality? Because I know you're doing your best on those subcommittees. And I know Democrats around the country and the state legislators, because I think we kind of get our eye off the ball when we talk about these federal elections, when these elections happen in the states, that's where the policy happens. So what but what can folks really do if they're not elected representative? What can they do? Tell me, what is the power of the ballot that they actually have? So first, let me say thank you to you and to and to your panel, because you are helping to educate folks on how they can be involved. And that's an important part of this process. You know, in 2010, if folks haven't listened to the episode of The Daily from from yesterday, the 7-11 episode of the Daily. It talked about the methodical way in which Republicans went about building power in state legislatures that ultimately led to the

overturning of Roe and now 20 plus states that have effectively banned abortion or on their way to banning abortion. We have to, as people who care about preserving democracy, as Democrats or as democratically aligned independents, we have to do everything we can to refocus this conversation on where this battle is actually being fought. There are folks who went to that insurrection who are now running for state office. Doug Mastriano, I call him Insurrection Doug, is the Republican nominee for governor. He was at the insurrection. He brought down multiple busloads of people from Pennsylvania. He is on track to continue to be a clear and present danger if we do not stop him and make

sure Josh Shapiro becomes our next governor. But I also want to outline this for folks who are listening to your program. We can win the state house in Pennsylvania. Republicans have controlled it for 30 years, for 30 years, but we can win it now in this election, 23 different incumbent Republicans retired. And so we only need to pick up 12 seats. And when I look at some of the money that these national candidates raise, I'm happy because we do need to pick up seats in the U.S. Senate. But also it's a little frustrating because if you're a state house member and you get just one quarter where you raise $100,000 or quarter of a million dollars, that can put you over the finish line in a serious way in a tough contested race. And so I ran hard for U.S. Senate,

talked about what's at stake for working families. And I want to drive this point home that winning in the U.S. Senate, critical. Making sure John Fetterman becomes our next U.S. Senator, critical. I'm doing everything I can to make that happen. Josh Shapiro, critical. But for folks who are watching, please go to my Twitter page. And my pinned tweet is a link to their viral speech, but it's also a link for folks to get involved in PAHDCC, which is the House Democrats Campaign Committee. We need to win these seats, these 12 seats. If not, if not, the same folks who we saw at the insurrection are going to be in charge in Harrisburg, and they're going to be able to decide who can vote and who can't vote. They're going to

be able to decide whether or not the Republican Auditor General can go out and give some credence to the lies that Donald Trump and his acolytes have continued to tell about elections and about the future of our country. And so thank you. Thank you to your panel. And I just encourage everybody, get involved in your local states. If you got just a few minutes, I think David Bender here has a question for you. Representative, like Jessica, a big fan. You ran a great campaign, and I'm glad to hear that you're doing everything you can for Senator, we hope, Fetterman. Let me ask you a question, a couple of questions. One is, you were an elector. There were a group of fake Pennsylvania electors who signed certificates.

Is there any effort to prosecute them at the state level? Is there anything that can be done there with Attorney General, maybe hopefully governor soon, Shapiro? What's happening there? process as some of the other states which have been mentioned during these hearings. And so some of the folks who've been involved in this effort, you know, may have come a little short of actually breaking any crimes, even though they were well on their way. And so, you know, I have not heard of any hearings, excuse me, of any investigations rather, and to that beyond what I just relayed from the Attorney General at this point. And to your previous point, it's funny that you brought up because I was just having a conversation with a group of people here in California about the importance of the Pennsylvania state legislature. It's 12 seats in the assembly. Am I correct? It's five seats in the Pennsylvania Senate. If they flip. I believe we need a few more in the Senate. And I'm always going to be honest with people. Flipping the Pennsylvania

Senate, I think it's going to be really tough. And I think the way the map is composed right now, I don't know if that's possible next year. I think it's possible maybe two years from now. Flipping the Pennsylvania State House is exceedingly possible. It is more than doable. And we're in a position where we could stop a lot of bad things if we had a few more seats in the state house, a lot of bad things. Well, I'm going to say I've been encouraging people to look at Pennsylvania specifically for that reason, because it's going to be so crucial in 24. And we know you just identified people going to your website, but the Pennsylvania HDCC is the fund that you're trying to get people to support. Is that correct? That's right. That's the Pennsylvania House Democratic Campaign Committee.

And people can just look that up as well and see some of these tough races where you have folks who are in D plus one, D plus four, you know, districts. Those are winnable districts, right? Those are tough districts. Those are going to be districts that we're going to have to work really hard in. But here's the good news. We have some incredible candidates who are running all up and down the ballot. I have been supporting those candidates. You will see me doing a lot of travel around the Commonwealth, supporting those candidates, using the platform that I've built to try to put some spotlight on some of these candidates who I think people

ought to pay attention to. You know, Kathy Spahr in Chester County did an event for her right after I got back from vacation after losing the Senate race, got right back on the horse and was out there for Kathy Spahr, who can flip a seat of somebody who signed that letter to throw out the vote. There you go. You know, so that's really what- These are the election deniers, and that's the advantage. It's a very bad year to be a Republican in Pennsylvania because you've got Mastrano at the top of the ticket. You know, with Dr. Oz to live in the state, it's not a good year to be Republican all the way down ballot. So I agree with you. I think that this is a chance really to make a difference for people outside your state to help.

And I'm going to encourage that. David, I think we should make this the worst year to be a Republican. Jessica, did you want to ask Representative Malkin something before he before he hops out of here? As I said, huge fan. So delighted to see you here. I'm so I'm so appreciative of your drawing of attention to local and state races. There is not a race in this country that your vote does not matter in. As Representative Kenyatta is saying, Pennsylvania is so vital. I mean, we can just go down the list, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia. I mean, even in California, just 30 miles up the road, there's a swing race. There is not a single race in this country where you, if you're eligible

to vote, will not make a difference. So realize the power that you have in this moment in history. As this panel is all saying, the urgency could not, we could not have a greater threshold of urgency and the role to play in saving our democracy from the fascist forces, the minority rule that is threatening to undermine our freedom and our future. So, you know, get engaged, donate to organizations, Democratic organizations like Representative Kenyatta is sharing. They need all of our help. This is the moment.

This is the time for us to do this. Thank you. Can I make one more final point before I go? The good news, I think, especially here in Pennsylvania for the statehouse candidates who I know are running, Yes, this is in some ways a defensive vote, right? And a defensive cycle for all the reasons that Jessica just ably laid out. There really are fascists at the door who could win these seats and would do everything in their power to ban abortion, to make it more harder to vote, to treat trans kids like political

footballs. They're going to do all that stuff. But I hope people also feel inspired by the fact that this is also an offensive vote as well. The candidates who are running in these races, they are small business owners. They are just moms who decided to step up and run. They are community activists. They are lawyers. They are faith leaders. These are people who you can be excited about. Candidates who aren't just going to do the bare minimum of protecting our democracy, which we must do, but candidates who are going to be about advancing an agenda that lifts up working people. And that's what always gets me excited when I can vote for somebody to stop something bad,

but also vote for somebody who I know is going to make a difference for working people and for families and neighborhoods like mine. And I think that that's what's at stake as well, an agenda that lifts up working people, because the fascist minority party does not care about working people. These are the same people who are aligned with the Koch brothers and all these big business. That is who they are in it for, a very, very small group. The candidates who are running in these races are people who are going to stop this assault against our democracy, but they're also then going to be able to advance an agenda

that lifts up working families. And I get excited about that. Representative Kenyatta, give us one last time where we can go, where the audience can go to find you on Twitter and the links that you're talking about. Yep, I'm at Malcolm Kenyatta, give us one last time where we can go, where the audience can go to find you on Twitter and the links that you're talking about. Yep, I'm at Malcolm Kenyatta everywhere. If you look at my pinned tweet, it goes right to a link of PAHTCC and encourage folks to donate right there. We're going to win in Pennsylvania, and we're going to be a part of saving our democracy just like we did a couple of years ago. Well, thank you for joining us. And if you scroll down that Twitter feed long enough, you'll probably run into that viral

video so you can find him there. Thank you, Representative Kim Allen, for joining us. Thank you for joining us. What a great guest. I'm going to bring in Gabe, the executive producer extraordinaire and my co-host on our podcast, The Tony Michaels Podcast. Go follow us over on our YouTube channel. Speaking of that, just type, The Tony Michaels Podcast. Go follow us over on our YouTube channel. Speaking of that, just type in The Tony Michaels Podcast.

Follow us there on the tubes of you. And also, while you're here, hit the subscribe button on the Midas Touch Network. We're going to have a great hearing next week, it seems. I want to talk about the hearing that we just had, but I'm already in the next game, folks. I'm already in the next game because I want to see what pat cipollone said i want to know who the witness that donald trump was tampering with i already want to know these things and liz cheney does such a good job and the committee has done such a good job to lay the hook on the American people to keep them watching these hearings, because I think

that's so important. And I know I know it seems dramatic at the very end for Liz Cheney to really burn down Donald Trump's house, as maybe Texas Paul would say, without pissing on the ashes, just letting it smolder for another week or so. But really, I believe that that is to hook us and to hold us. What do you think, Gabe? I haven't had you on much because we've been so busy here. Yeah, I mean, we have some great guests today too. But I think from just a production standpoint, you have to understand that we just came from a few weeks of a break, right?

So you're more or less starting from scratch again. We had a huge turnout of people that were viewing the first night, the prime time evening. And now we're coming back after a little bit of break. We had the holidays. We've had a lot of other stuff that's kind of hit the fan, just in news in general. And now we're trying to get people's attention back, which we already know that everyone has a short attention span. So from a production standpoint, you got to make sure that the next one out of the gate, which was this one is more or less pretty juicy, right? It's spicy. It's got something to it that people can splice, can do sound bites, can share, can tweak and hashtag whatever, right? Like people are already making jokes about how much, how many gallons of ketchup are already on the walls of Mar-a-Lago, right?

These are things that people are talking about because they're very effective at what they've done from a production standpoint. And I think this goes to show you that the following ones, as they tease them out, like it's a show and this is the season, next week on The Insurrection, you find out whatever, right? Last week on The Insurrection, you find out whatever right last week on the insurrection you found out whatever right and this week again it's another one of these like who shot jr moments which is we want to know who this person is that that that trump was tampered is he even old enough

is he even old enough to make that reference i am i know i know the reference nice historical reference right yeah yeah so david david give us a sense in there too isn't there uh texas ball well david give us give us a sense of what you think next week will bring well um what do you think we're in i want to i want to pick up on something Gabe just said. First of all, it wasn't exactly that we, this has been the most nimble of television shows, if you think about it. And it's being produced amazingly by a man who used to run ABC News, Good Morning America, Nightline,

and he's a Brit. So the irony of our democracy being saved by the same people we broke away from is not lost on me. But if you think about what they had to do, they didn't know until the fourth deposition of Cassidy Hutchinson that they needed to put her on the air. The fourth time they sat her down, they realized this needs to go on and it needs to go on quickly because she can be intimidated. So they kept it private as long as they could. Remember, it didn't break until I think, Tony, you and I were texting back and forth. Yes, it was very late.

Right. Well, Harry Littman was one of the only ones that really thought that Cassie Hutchinson would even come into the forefront, which is exactly right. And, you know, we understand that the security of the witnesses, including some of the people who were there today, imagine what it's like to be a former oath keeper or to to be a man who has, you know, is on trial and is about to be sentenced for, was on trial and convicted, he's going to get more threats. And it's no surprise, I do think the fact that Trump is making calls personally shows just how desperate he is and how much attention he's paying. But to the point of what's going to happen next week and what happened today, what happened today was informed by a deposition they got on Friday. Pat Cipollone was in there for eight plus hours on Friday. Today is Tuesday.

They had to work with all of that material and figure out how to cut it together, which is why I think we don't have a hearing again the day after tomorrow tomorrow they needed more time to work out this final tick tock so what's going to happen next week the date tbd could be a week from today could be a little longer we'll know uh is that we're going to see pat's more of pat cipollone but we're going to see the 187 minutes i believe it is the dereliction of duty. This was marshalling the mob. If each of these episodes has a title in next on insurrection, it will be dereliction of duty. And what does that mean? It means that some of the witnesses we already know, we've seen them. Pat Cibloni definitely is going to talk about what he wished the president would have paid attention to. We've heard yet again, and now it's being pieced together, Mark Meadows, not only was he not a gatekeeper in keeping out Sidney Powell and keeping out the pillow guy and the overstock guy, he may have been having a meltdown.

He may really have been paralyzed. And that's some of what Cassidy Hutchinson was sort of implying. Mark, get off your phone. This is happening in real time. And Pat Cipollone's line, which he didn't contradict, is, you know, this is crazy. And more to the point, I think he was quoted as saying, you know, there's going to be blood on people's hands. And there was. So what will we see on next week? We don't know. That's the whole point. Right. And there's a witness that's been threatened and we haven't even identified that person yet. And it's clear it's someone we don't know. Well, I was going to go to someone

with a cowboy hat on, but I have someone waiting in the wings that may or may not Jessica have a cowboy hat on. And I want to get maybe his legal thoughts of what next week could bring in the witness tampering at the end. Ben, my zealous here of legal. Bottom row. The hat row there. Ben, what did you what did you make? Because I really I'm hanging on the hook here. Like I've almost forgot what what the hell this hearing was about because the hook of the witness tampering where you know that the Cheeto Dust mobster, as I refer to him, the former president, Donald Trump, the former guy, he has to know exactly what Liz Cheney knows. And Liz Cheney wanted him to know that she knows what he's done. So what did you make of that ending there? We've always compared Trump to a mafia boss. And in many ways, the presentation is a presentation against a mafia leader.

And because the mafia's inner circle, you know, often isn't forthcoming, the way mafia bosses ultimately go down are often for, you know, tax-related charges or obstruction. Threatening witnesses is a common tactic of the mafia boss and the despot. And that's really what we see here. You know, you could be sure, you know, it seemed that they were obviously talking about Sarah Matthews, although we don't know that for a fact, but that's who it sounded like they were talking about. And the deputy press secretary to Trump, how significant, how heavily that's weighing in Trump. You then compare that to all of his just completely batshit crazy messages, even more batshit crazy messages than before,

kind of coming out of his social media and what's going on in the rallies. And you really see someone spiraling. You also compare that with the New York Times pullout today that about 50 percent of Republicans voting in the primaries no longer support him. And this is someone who is spiraling and spiraling because of the work of the January 6th committee exposing him. This was not a foregone conclusion that it was going to go down this way. And it's a lesson to everybody listening out there and watching that, you know, you can't just be a passive actor in a democracy. You have to be an active player and people make the change. Don't let the change happen to the people. And that's what we see with the January 6th committee and the work that they're doing. And I just want

to also mention this before we go to our great panel, everybody who's watching this now, please make sure you subscribe to the Midas Touch YouTube channel. Hit that subscribe button right now. Turn notifications on for all of the updates, all the breaking news, and of course, this incredible show by Tony Michaels, Gabe Sanchez, and this great panel with Jessica Texas Paul, Dave Bender, and others. And thanks so much, everybody, for the hard work you're all putting into this. Well, so you're not going to stay on hat row. You're going to leave us. No, no, I'm definitely going to stay with my hat.

Okay, great, great. Stay on hat row for a minute. Jessica, did you have something you wanted to follow up on the mafia line? Because then I want to go to the other hat that we have down there, Texas Paul, to see if he has any thoughts. What do you got there, Jessica? Your mic is muted. There we go.

Okay, yeah. I used to, I've long thought along these lines that Ben is talking, that Trump is like a mob boss. And I was watching, there's this amazing show out right now called The Offer. It's about the making of The Godfather, the Al Ruddy story. Al Ruddy was the producer. And I was reminded as I watched this story and then watching The Godfather afterwards, happened to be the first time I ever watched The Godfather, which is shocking,

that Trump doesn't even deserve the privilege of being compared to the mob. Even the mob, as vicious and brutal as they are, are better than Trump because they at least have a code of loyalty and they don't hurt people unless they cross the line into their realm. Donald Trump hurts everyone. He hurts people within his realm. He hurts people on the outside. As I said earlier in this panel, his campaign was and is and always was a campaign of mass destruction. But there's this great line in The Godfather that just stuck out to me so much by the character Clemenza, one of the mafia guys. He says, he's talking about, you know, their rivals, their

mafia rivals. And he says, you know, you got to stop them in the beginning. Like they should have stopped Hitler in Munich. They should have never let him get away with that. They were just asking for big trouble. So it just, you know, brings it back to where we are right now. We are in a historical moment that is going to bring us into so much further trouble if we do not hold Donald Trump accountable right now. I know there's been a waning of public attention on Ukraine, but I really hope that we do not lose sight of the global picture that we're dealing with. There was a clip on Russian media a few weeks ago where one of the Russian commentators said, we haven't decided yet if we're going to install Trump as president again. That is who we are dealing with in this country. We're dealing with Putin's party parading as a legitimate political arm in American politics and their their intentions are are very bad well I I you you say that maybe we shouldn't give him the the title mafia boss because he's not as good I always call

them they're Nazis but they're ninca poop Nazis like these are ninca poops that we're dealing with right heroes yeah right exactly exactly they don't understand they're the baddies they are the These are nincompoops that we're dealing with, right? Hogan's heroes. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. They don't understand they're the baddies. They are the baddies. But they are nincompoops. Because if they were smart, if they did know how to, you know, instrument a coup, we may be in real trouble. Maybe we wouldn't even be sitting here talking.

Texas Paul, give us your thoughts on the nincompoop Nazis, as it were. We're all dying to hear the Texas Paul take. Okay. Republicans suck and people are sick of their shit. I'm telling you, Malcolm Kenyatta hit it right on top. I'm right on the nail. Right on the nail. You know, Republicans have been running Texas for almost 30 years, just like Pennsylvania.

People are sick of their shit. You know, I happen to be lucky enough to live far enough on the east side of Texas that I'm on, I'm in the eastern power grid. All my fellow Texans right now are under warnings of rolling blackouts. How many years is it going to take them to fix the power grid here in Texas? Because I guarantee you, when Ann Richards handed this state over, it was sterling. We took oil money and we had the infrastructure that was the envy of not just this country, of the world. We had the best roads, best schools, best power grid, best of everything. And we've let Republicans run it into the ground because they don't do the job. They want the personal power. They want to make the money,

but they don't want to do the job. And people are sick of it. People are sick and damn tired of Republicans and all the bullshit and the culture wars and the nonsense. They just want to hire somebody. You know, that's how Joe Biden got elected. Be honest with you. People were just sick of Republican shit.

They wanted somebody to come in and do the job. And that's what Joe Biden's doing. It's not sexy. It's not glitzy. He's not on TV, you know, capturing the news's attention every damn day. He's just doing the job. And, you know, Texas can flip. It can, you know, the Congress is going to be an uphill climb to get it done. But people are so damn sick and tired. It's been a long time since we've seen a sweep anywhere. This could

be a sweep year. You know, the polling keeps coming back that people, you know, the right track, wrong track polling. What the right track, wrong track polling doesn't tell you is what they're pissed off about. And right now, I tell you, every single person I talk to, if you talk to a Republican, they're like, well, we hate government, period. If you talk to somebody on the left, they're like, we hate Republicans, period. So nobody's saying, yay, Republicans are doing a great job. And going into this election, if we work, if we volunteer, if we fight, we back our candidates, we donate, we phone bank, if we do the work of getting people elected and show our asses up to vote, this is going to be a massive Democratic year. You're going to see news stories about it. Anybody remember Patrick Pollock when he lost up in Washington?

Refused to believe it. Just refused to believe it. Sounds like a Republican. No, he was a Democrat. It was back in the 80s. There was just this huge sweep and nobody could believe what just happened because the polls kept saying

you know this really should be a close one and this that and the other and we got our asses handed to us because people were sick of our shit 30, 35 years ago they got tired of us well folks are tired of republicans now they are because republicans won't work and won't do the job better O'Rourke will years ago, they got tired of us. Well, folks are tired of Republicans now. They are, because

Republicans won't work and won't do the job. Better O'Rourke will. So, Paul, why aren't you running? You'd make a great candidate. Because if I said I was running, I would fall under a huge number, right, Ben? I would fall under a huge number of federal regulations immediately. He is not announcing breaking news. Texas Paul is saying he's not running at this point. I heard

a candidate right there. I've heard a lot of candidates in my life, and you gave a great campaign speech. Yeah, well... Well, let me tell you something here at the Midas Touch Network. That is one thing. And I'm going to give Jordy a little plug here. We are unapologetically pro-democracy.

Go to the Midas Touch store, store.midastouch.com. This is for Jordy. Use the promo code justice. He's got these new pens over there he's wanting you guys to grab up. They're Union Made in the USA Pro Democracy enamel pens. Go over there and grab you one. Use the word JUSTICE, the promo code, for 10% off. But we really are unapologetically pro-democracy here.

I actually get a lot of folks that watch my show that aren't necessarily Democrats, right? They're liberals or socialists or whatever you would label them as, moderates, independents. I believe that they're just pro-democracy, that they want to engage in the democracy. And I think that's the only way that it works. Ben was talking about this earlier. The only way we keep democracy is to fucking do democracy. Like, do the thing that is democracy and engage in the ballot and i'm not just talking about marking the the ballot don't just go mark the ballot engage talk

to folks your family your friends your your your fellow church members the people who who are the parents of your children at the school hell the damn lady at the grocery store who's checking out your bread talk to them ask them questions and and more than that the Midas touch well well oh yeah also you know there there he is pitching uh Midas touch like that but but I think more than anything engaging in democracy means that yes it is hard. Democracy is hard. That's why they love authoritarianism, because it's so easy to try to pick the person that gives you whatever you want with a magic wand. But that's not how equality and equity is delivered.

That's not how liberty is delivered to us. It is a damn fight. It is difficult. And you have to. You have to engage in your democracy. And like I said, do the the fucking thing called democracy. Just do it. Yes. Aren't you teamed up with a is it field team six for action items that people can take that are just like, tell people about it. I think it's a great idea. Yeah. So we have a partnership with a group called Field Team 6, which is out there registering voters and telling people how you can get involved

in registering voters or sending postcards to remind people to vote. Every week we work with Field Team 6 and we give the top five Midas recommendations for how you can get involved in some activity that week, whether it's phone banking or postcard writing, or showing up to a meeting in a different location, canvassing and door knocking. We give our five favorites of the week, but there's others that you can check out there. And since we started that relationship with Field Team Six,

with Midas Touch and Field Team Six, they say they've seen an increase in participation by over 600 percent, which has been great. And I hope we can get that number up even higher. So just go check out the Midas Touch feed or you can Google and look up the organization Field Team 6 voter registration drive. And we will post our picks every week and you can follow them at Field Team 6 on Twitter. That's fantastic. and i think we have to stay engaged and this is part of it folks watching these hearings engaging with these

hearings knowing what they're saying uh definitely understanding the what what the hearings mean because we have all kinds of different meanings there's the legal meanings like Ben and Harry Littman and Popock and KFA give us. There's the political part of it, which the political strategists like David Benner, my friend Rachel Bitticoffer, give us those political strategies, what it means in politics. And then we have the everyday folks out there, what it means for them, where Texas Paul and people like Jessica give us insight into this Trump campaign and Trump what they do it's important to engage in this way and we hope today that while joining us we've held the audience here all day long it's we've been setting records with these audiences and we've had I think Ben we did the math the day. It's well over a million views is what we have had for the actual broadcast of day one to day seven. Now we'll have, well, probably close to 1.3 or 1.4 million at this point. a cable news network we would be ranking in the top 40 of all cable shows not just new shows

of all cable shows um for you know for the show for the week and we obviously don't have yet uh the cable news network component we're just streaming on youtube so short of that element i mean those are phenomenal numbers and it's growing but it's a testament to the professionalism of the panel, the professionalism of our hosts and our executive producer, Tony and Gabe, and the great work you've done. And why you're just heard the word yet. Oh, we don't we don't have a cable news network yet. So this and to just like Paul isn't running yet. So this, and, and two, just like Paul isn't running yet. If you, exactly. I didn't hear a Sherman S statement out of him either. Paul, there's a draft coming, you know, let me, let me say something to what Ben just said. If you build it, they will come. And what

the committee did was they built something. And that's why people are paying attention. What this network is doing is covering in a way that gives people a chance to engage in it, because that's what this is. The democracy part that everyone's talked about, Jessica spoke to so eloquently. It's it's getting people engaged and and keeping them engaged. This is part of that. What are you pointing at, Paul? He's pointing at Ben texting how he's Googling how to open a cable TV news network right now. That's why I'm calling bullshit because I'm going to ask you, Ben, I'm going to ask you one question. Then I'm going to make one quick, very quick statement.

Ben, how much have we grown in the last few months? Massively. So we're picking up about 3,000 to 5,000 subscribers a day and picked up about another, what, 200,000 subs, Texas Paul, since we first met? A hundred and what percent? A hundred and what percent? What other network or media organization has grown over 100% in a couple

weeks? I'll say this, Texas Paul. Because this guy, and I'm going to tell you the truth, and this is the short statement I'm going to make. This guy right here was sitting there working while the rest of us were listening to each other and thinking of the next thing we were going to say. This guy was looking down at his phone working

and he does it all the damn time. Who else here has gotten a text from this guy at three o'clock in the morning anybody who hasn't yeah who has it right i haven't figured out when he sleeps and that's why david i agree with you if you build it they will come and they are building it he's working his ass off his brothers are working their asses off to they will come and they are building it he's working his ass off his brothers are working their asses off to make it work and they're bringing in people that are different from what you normally see so i'll shut up now and all this but i just wanted to put that plug out there ben you're busting ass and i'm super proud of you always working that's why he's so skinny look at him. He's just working.

You know, there's a brotherhood of those two hats. You can see it, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think I think their brains are melting together or something. And I don't know. It's something about the brothers from another hat, you know, the hats or some shit. And I don't know what's going on. You know, can we go back to the hearings for a second? Because there's something that also struck me that's really interesting. Look at David getting us back on track here. Donald Trump was doing something. Now we've heard it twice. He was naming somebody to a job, telling them they had the job.

Remember he told Jeff Clark he was going to be attorney general? It got changed on the phone logs where, you know, acting Attorney General Clark. And Sidney Powell plainly was told she was going to be a special counsel to the President. And he was doing it until he couldn't get away with it, until the adults came into the room and said, excuse me, there's paperwork involved. But that's what was going on in the last month of that White House. Now, that's not a surprise to anyone, but we're now getting it documented. And that's really important because when this stuff does get written up, and, you know, I hope people understand there's no need for a criminal referral. Committee does not have to make a referral.

They're watching the same way we are. Liz Cheney made a referral today just by saying it out loud. All she does is have to say it out loud. There is actually no legal way other than contempt of Congress for them to make a referral. But the referral is in plain sight, just like it will be wild was in plain sight. The act of committing a crime was the tweet inciting to violence. And that's what they're connecting up with the dots now. This is the 21st century. Exactly. Will be wild, done in a way. And I thought it was really effective to have the voice of the Twitter official who, you know, Twitter employee,

and a voice we're not allowed to hear or recognize because he's worried about his own job still, probably. I wonder if it's Elon. Do you wonder if it's Elon? Probably, at this point, based on this last weekend. It's not Elon. Someone who was scared saying, I couldn't sleep, I was on pins and needles

because I knew there was going to be violence. That was enormously smart of this committee. And again, hats on to their ability to tell a narrative, to make a story into something real and compelling. And that's what we saw. Well, I appreciate the commentary there. Jessica, do you have a finishing statement? And then we'll go to Texas, Paul, and see if Texas Ben has anything to say. Yeah, I feel like I've I've I'm just going to beat my drum again about this American carnage and and the abuse and abuse of everyone, everyone, Trump supporters, non-Trump supporters, the entire country, the world. I started off today talking about how Pat Cipollone defended Trump in impeachment one. He extorted the country that is now experiencing a genocide. This is just so destructive. And I am too grateful as everybody else is for the exceptional work of this committee and their dexterity, their nimbleness and ability to produce this in a way that really is capturing the public's attention. I'm really looking forward to the next hearing because I will never forget

the debut hearing, the primetime debut hearing, how visceral it was. It brought us back to that day, just reliving live what was happening that day. And I think that we're going to come full circle next week in reliving those moments of people beating down the doors of the Capitol as Trump stood by and watched it in glee. And one other thing that I just remembered, I mean, just a random note, how the staff members, the janitors of the Capitol, many of them African-Americans, were left to clean up feces and desecration

from these people who Donald Trump sent. It's just such a base, disgusting image to be left with. But I really think it captures the disregard and disrespect that this man and his cult movement have perpetuated and caused in this country. Texas Paul. his cult movement have have perpetuated and caused in this country texas paul okay you got the uber intelligent analysis from this guy right here yeah you've got the personal 100 heartfelt commentary from the inside from this lovely lady right here you've got viral videos from this hilarious guy right here that's just killing it right now knocking my numbers in the dirt i hate you it's easy when you record phone calls from don jr yeah you got a podcast from this guy right

here who nails it all the time. Every day. We just talked about My Power Grid. Great work, by the way, that last podcast. No problem. Loved it. And then you've got this guy right over here who's working his ass off to build the fastest growing media network in the country. Him, Brett, and Jordy have been busting their asses off to make it

happen and i am telling you people if you will subscribe to the media's mighty and media network had it going didn't i um you're gonna see something i like to put it this way when fox came everybody said there aren't enough crazy white ring nuts to make Fox work. And, you know, Murdoch saw something. This guy has figured out that there are so many people that are tired of paying their two dollars a month to Fox News, that they're cutting the cables, that they are wanting their news when they want it, as they want it, where they want it. He has come up with, he and his brothers have come up with a tremendous idea

that is going to be the next huge, monstrous thing. Watch it happen. Watch it happen. I think you're right when when you say there's plenty of pro-democracy unapologetically pro to not pro-democracy people out there to create a network and it's not just us here on the network it's also the people the Midas Mighty are are one of the greatest greatest followings that there is i've experienced it since i've joined the Midas Touch Network. So go to store.midastouch.com and show Jordy some love.

This is from Jordy. He's got the promo code justice. He's trying to get these new pins he's got, these pro-democracy pins are union made in the USA. So make sure to go over there because if I don't say it enough times, Jordy will be on me. I'm telling you, he's always on me. So, Ben, what's Texas, Ben, give us your last word, and then we'll cut the panel there.

Well, you know, I think what we saw today, even to Texas Paul's point, what Fox Wing has radicalized, what MAGA has radicalized, are these communities of hate. Communities of blaming other people, right? And so part of what the January 6th committee is doing, a major part, and one of the reasons with these witnesses today who managed to extract themselves from these communities of hate is also it's very sophisticated because in exposing Trump as well, sending a message out there to the public at large that there are safe spaces, that there are other people who have been able to make it out of this cult. We know Jamie Raskin's spoken with one of the podcasters on the Midas Media Network,

Dr. Hassan, who got out of the Moody's. And he's a PhD who talks about cult deprogramming. And one of the most significant and most effective ways of cult deprogramming is showing other people who got out of the cult and that they were okay and that they made it. And that was another layer of what was going on today with those witnesses. And what Midas Media, what the Midas community is all about is, as you've created the social media world and all of these things, real communities don't really exist anymore. And because of that, and people are longing for connections, they're longing to feel a part of something. And that's hard to find. And so the demagogues, as Jamie Raskin spoke about in his closing speech, that it would start with the demagogue,

is able to build these communities of hate based on anger vitriol and all of these negative racism we need to create communities of love and communities of normalcy and communities that celebrate democracy and that celebrate peace and families and just going about things in your day and and that is what we all want. And on the one hand, you have the snake oil salesmen and these radical extremists pitching something. And on the pro democracy side for some time, we haven't really had that. And so it's just important to create the communities of love, of peace, these safe spaces where people can laugh, where people can go to a baseball game, where people don't have to worry like we did under the Trump administration,

that any tweet could start a nuclear war, that any tweet could, you know, what's he going to say today that's going to destroy someone's life? And I know, you know, that's what we thought about every day. And so that's what we're creating here. And frankly, that's what the January 6th committee is doing also, as they operate from different levels, the legal, the political, psychological, the human. And that's what we're seeing today and as we've seen throughout all of the years. And so thank you to everybody who's watching and thanks to an incredible. Well, thank you, panel. Thank you, Jessica.

Thank you, David. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, David. Thank you, Texas Paul. And thank you, Texas Ben today. Maybe we'll have Texas Ben back again. So thank you. A great panel again. Please join us next week for the panel. Audience, stick around.

I've got a few announcements for you. Thank you, panel. Thank you very much. Gabe, what a great hearing. Yeah. This is better than I expected oh it's been fantastic and it's our pleasure to bring you to bring you this production of the hearing um we the Midas Touch Network has been working so hard behind the scenes not just us but everyone all the commentators are working very hard. So please follow the Mind is Touch Network right here on YouTube. You're not going to want to miss next week's hearing.

But between now and then, there's going to be plenty of content. And also go over and follow Anthony Tony Michaels' podcast. Yeah, why not? Yeah, why not? Give it a like. Give it a subscribe. Subscribe over on YouTube. Smash that like.

Hit that subscribe. Because here's the thing. We spread our pro-democracy message on our channel five days a week, Monday through Friday, two hours live. Two hours. Noon Eastern, 11 Central, 9 Pacific on YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch. So you can subscribe here on YouTube. And we also simulcast to the Midas Touch Facebook page. So please, please go hit the subscribe button on our podcast.

You can also download it if that suits your fancy. If you don't like to watch and you like to listen. You can listen to it. You got it. Apple, Spotify, Google, your favorite directory. Just go hit download. Give us some love over on the directories. We've had some trolls, really.

Give us some bad reviews. So go give us some love. Now that we've got people out here, go give us some love over on the directories, Apple in particular. But also, don't forget, I got to do this one more time

for Jordy. One more time. Please go to store.myistouch.com. Jordy, my zealous... I got to pick myself up one of these pins. He's got these brand new

unapologetically pro-democracy enamel pins. You know, my Zella, I got to pick myself up one of these pins. He's got these brand new, uh, unapologetically pro-democracy enamel pins. You know, we got rid of the convict 45 or convict 45. He sold out. They're done. He sold out. They were gone.

Just boom. Just like that. We put up a little graphic and you give them 10% off. You just use the promo code justice over at store. Dot. Mine is touch that cam. Uh, so get Jordy to run out of these pens.

Who knows what the next one's going to be? Yeah, maybe next week you'll have something different for me if you run over there and grab your pen. Gabe, it's been a great day, a great hearing. We're at five and a half hours strong here on the Midas Touch Network. It's not a record yet, though. No, it's not. I know.

Yeah, I know. We've done a little longer, but it's been a long day. There's been a lot of information, but I can't wait for next week. So be paying attention. Again, follow the Midas Touch Network here on YouTube. Go follow them on Twitter. You can also follow us on Twitter, at TonyMichaelsPod and at the Tony Michaels and at I am Gabe Sanchez. Don't forget to follow us over there.

We will bring you up to date, give you the links that you go to to set your reminders. It looks like I'm just getting news. Brett's pinging me now. It says just in, looks like next week's hearing is scheduled for Thursday night in primetime. So that's,

is that, no, for this Thursday. See, this is all over the map. It's Thursday. All right. That's what I this is this is all over this thursday all right that's what i thought this is all over the map so it looks like we are going to have possibly a hearing this thursday so stay tuned if we do confirm that there is a hearing folks on thursday we will get that link out as soon as possible so that you guys have that link to go set your reminder. Again, follow and subscribe to Midas Touch Network here on YouTube. Hold on.

Well, yeah. Once we confirm, once we have the info, then we will send it out, whether it's this week or next week. Right. Until we get the final word from the January 6th committee. Again, subscribe here on the Midas Touch Network, and you will be able to set a reminder once that happens. Now, again, they kind of changed the time on us on today.

So we had it set for one time, and then we had to change the time. Right, right, which goes to what David Bender and I were talking about, which is like you're producing this thing. It is very much on the fly, especially when you have thanks to people like Cassidy Hutchinson coming forward, giving their testimony, and making others feel like they can do that, right. That they don't have to feel afraid or worried that there might be some sort of, uh, um, you know, uh, negative feedback, right. From, from the MAGA cult. Um, and I think it kind of goes to saying how, how not so tight of a grip Trump has anymore, right? Like knowing like that grip is loosening where people now feel like they have the ability and space to go out and speak without any sort of fear or any sort of worry.

And so I think, you know, we saw that with Cipollone. You know, we're going to see it with other people. We have a witness that we have not even heard of. I don't know if they're new or if they're old and they're just waiting to kind of put the cherry on top. We had this this idea that maybe there would be a witness. Sarah Matthews, the deputy press secretary. Maybe that's the witness. I don't know. It's all up in the air. Yeah, it could be. It could be whatever.

We still have to see footage from the documentary, which now has been released on Discovery Plus. I think we've got to have more than one more hearing. It really feels like to me. I mean, if I if I were them and obviously knowing the goal here is to warn america from this happening again and making sure that those involved in that administration or tangentially uh involved in that administration even not like directly in the planning of the coup but making sure that those who are trying to do this again you know trying to revisit and make this a sequel aren't able to and so whether they're trying to move this out closer and closer to the midterms, so be it. I don't have a problem with that.

It is political. It's political. And we said on our show, politicize the shit out of this thing. I mean, people have short attention spans. I have ADHD. If I don't have it in front of me, I might forget it.

Tony can tell you when we've had meetings. My brain is all over the place. Trying to keep this guy on track, not focused on making fake documents is horrible. It's horrible to try to keep this guy on track, not focused on making fake documents is horrible. It's horrible. But if it can be closer to the midterms to remind people exactly what they're voting for and what they're fighting for, which is democracy, then so be it. I would much rather have it that way so that it becomes one of these things where it's, you know, every week as, hey, this week on the insurrection. And it's more details. And I'm sure more and more will come out

and we'll get the full final report sometime in 2023. But at least we were able to watch it live. We weren't able to do that with the Mueller report. And we kind of talked about that at the beginning of the show, which is people were able to brush off the Mueller report and say, oh, it's fake news or it's this propaganda, whatever. And this time we're able to watch the January 6th happen in real time and actually watch the hearings in real time and see the evidence that are there under oath with these people

coming forward. Well, I think you're right. And I think we everyone listening out there, please pay attention again, subscribe to the Midas Touch Network YouTube channel. That link will be there for you to set a reminder. Also, you can go follow Midas Touch on Twitter. You can follow us at Tony Michaels Pod at the Tony Michaels and at I am Gabe Sanchez. For all the updates on the production of the next hearing, whenever it shall be, we will have it there. Thank you for joining us today. Until the next hearing, good day. 한글자막 by 한효정