On December 18, 2020, four days after the United States Electoral College They have confirmed Joe Biden’s victory During the November 3 presidential election, then-US President Donald Trump met for six hours at the White House with a small group of supporters who wanted to take baseless allegations of electoral fraud to their final consequences. Shortly after that meeting, in the early morning hours of December 19, Trump took to Twitter, for the first time, to appeal to his supporters to join him in Washington DC on January 6, 2021: “Show up! , going crazy!”
Trump’s closeness with figures such as General Michael Flynn and lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell was already known, and it is also known that the then US President surrounded himself with his own advisers and staunch supporters in mid-December 2020. White House lawyers began pressuring him to accept defeat.
On Tuesday, in the 7th Plenary Session of the Special Commission of Inquiry For the capitol invasionSome White House officials, who tried to end the December 18, 2020 meeting, reported a tense atmosphere with exchanges of insults and screams between the US president’s staunch supporters and official advisers.
Eric Hershman, one of the White House lawyers at the time, testified before the investigative commission that “the outcry had gotten completely out of control. “What did those people propose? [a Trump] It was complete madness.
The Dec. 18 meeting was attended by Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell — a lawyer who said he had evidence of Venezuela and “communists.” Operated voting machines in the United States – And entrepreneur Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com.
On the other hand, in the White House team, Hershman and Pat Cipollone (the president’s chief lawyer) along with Derek Lyons (the White House secretary) tried to prevent Trump from hearing proposals aimed at changing the outcome of the election. President.
“I was surprised and asked them if they were really saying that the Democratic Party had worked with Hugo Chávez. [que, por aquela altura, tinha morrido há sete anos e meio] and with the people of Venezuela”, I remembered Hershman, in testimony shown on video during a public hearing tuesday
“At one point, General Flynn showed a map with IP addresses around the world that were allegedly connected to voting machines. He said something about Internet-connected thermostats.
When White House counsel and lawyers asked Flynn, Powell, and Byrne to justify the avalanche of court rulings against election fraud allegations (60 out of 61 cases against TrumpBetween the presidential election and the end of December 2020), outside advisers to the then US president said “judges are corrupt”.
“All of them?” Hershman asked, according to his testimony. “In every process you lost? Are they all corrupt? Even the ones we named?”
As a starting point
The 18 December 2020 meeting is seen by the inquiry team as a critical point in the culminating events. With Capital Invasion on January 6, 2021.
During Tuesday’s hearings, on the day Congress was set to seal Biden’s election, Trump called for a demonstration in Washington DC by his supporters, interpreted by extremist groups like the Pride. as a call to rebellion.
“Our only salvation is millions of Americans going to Washington to occupy the entire area, including the Capitol,” Matt Bracken, a commentator with ties to US far-right groups, said in a video released after the shooting. Tweet By Trump in the early hours of December 19, 2020. “We know what we have to do. If we have enough men, we can break down any kind of fence.
Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney – Deputy Chairman of the Investigative Commission – Trump tried to call one of the witnesses heard during the investigation, which could be a crime of attempted witness tampering. According to Cheney, the witness – who was not identified Tuesday – did not respond to the call and passed the information on to members of the investigative commission.
“Hardcore explorer. Extreme communicator. Professional writer. General music practitioner. Prone to fits of apathy.”