Former President Donald Trump tried to call a witness set to appear before the House Jan. 6 Committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) revealed in a bombshell statement right at the end of Tuesday’s hearing.
Trump allegedly called the witness, whose identity has not been revealed, following the committee’s last hearing on June 28, said Cheney, who serves as the committee’s vice chair. The witness didn’t answer Trump’s call, instead referring it to their lawyer, who referred it to the committee. The incident has been referred to the Department of Justice, Cheney added. She said the witness has not yet appeared publicly in hearings.
“We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Cheney said.
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The surprise revelation came at the end of the nearly three-hour hearing in which the committee detailed the far-right operation that took Trump’s words as a call to action to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. The committee heard from past members of the Oath Keepers, some of whom were shown in videos with Trump associates such as Roger Stone and on the streets of D.C. in the run-up to the attack.
The committee also revealed that Trump had planned to order his supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, a far cry from the spontaneous move he later painted it to be. The committee showed a tweet that was drafted—but never sent—telling them to do so after his speech on the Ellipse.
After his supporters did just that, storming the Capitol building as Vice President Mike Pence prepared to certify the election results, those who tried to re-elect him, including former campaign manager Brad Parscale, suddenly regretted getting involved.
“This is about trump pushing for uncertainty in our country,” he texted ex-Trump flack Katrina Pierson. “A sitting president asking for civil war.” He later added he felt “guilty for helping him win.”
The hearing also featured a detailed retelling of a wild Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, that pitted White House lawyers against Trump’s motley crew of election deniers. In the six-hour meeting, which went past midnight, Trump loyalists Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn and Rudy Giuliani insisted there was fraud and floated bonkers ideas for overturning the election, like appointing Powell a special counsel.
After describing screaming matches and near-physical confrontations, the committee showed a photo of chief of staff Mark Meadows escorting Giuliani out of the White House—snapped by star witness Cassidy Hutchinson—so he could not get back into the president’s ear.
“Donald Trump is a 76-year-old man,” Cheney said regarding Trump’s judgment, or lack thereof. “He is not an impressionable child.”
In her closing statements, Cheney and committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said the committee will detail the events of Jan. 6 “minute by minute” during its hearings next week.
“We’ll tell the story of that supreme dereliction by the commander in chief, how close we came to a catastrophe for our democracy,” Thompson said. “And how we remain in serious danger.”
