WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of Jan. 6, but the defeated president was becoming “detached from reality” and clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, the committee investigating the Capitol attack was told Monday.
On election night itself, Trump was “growing increasingly unhappy” and rejecting the results as they came in, former campaign manager Bill Stepien said in testimony played before the House panel investigating the Capitol riot.
Son-in-law Jared Kushner tried to steer Trump away from attorney Rudy Giuliani and his far-flung theories of voter fraud that advisers believed were not true. Trump would have none of it.
The back-and-forth kept up in the months that followed. Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue recalled breaking down one claim after another — from a truckload of ballots in Pennsylvania to a missing suitcase of ballots in Georgia —- and telling Trump “much of the info you’re getting is false.”
“He was becoming detached from reality,” said former Attorney General William Barr, who called the voting fraud claims “bull——,” “bogus” and “idiotic,” and resigned in the aftermath. “I didn’t want to be a part of it.”
The witnesses appeared before the House committee as the panel focused on the “big lie,” Trump’s false claims of voter fraud that fueled the defeated Republican president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and provoked a mob of his supporters to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol.
The panel also provided new information about how Trump’s fundraising machine collected some $250 million in the aftermath of the November election to keep fighting, mostly from small-dollar donations from Americans. One plea for cash went out 30 minutes before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
“Not only was there the big lie, there was the big ripoff,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., opened Monday’s hearing saying Trump “betrayed the trust of the American people” and “tried to remain in office when people had voted him out.”
Stepien was to be a key in-person witness but abruptly backed out of appearing live because his wife went into labor. The ex-campaign manager is still close to Trump, and had been subpoenaed to appear.
But the panel marched ahead after a morning scramble, showing previously recorded testimony from the ex-campaign manager and others close to the president as Trump latched on to repeated false claims about the election although those closest told him the theories of stolen ballots or rigged voting machines were not true.
Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller described how the festive mood at the White House on election night turned as Fox News announced Trump had lost the state of Arizona to Joe Biden, and aides worked to counsel Trump on what to do next.
But he ignored their advice, choosing to listen instead to Giuliani, who was described as inebriated by several witnesses. Giuliani issued a general denial on Monday, rejecting “all falsehoods” he said were being said about him.
“My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, it’s too early to tell, too early to call the race,” Stepien said in the recorded testimony.
But Trump “thought I was wrong. He told me so.”
And Barr, who had also testified in last week’s blockbuster hearing, said that Trump was “as mad as I’d ever seen him” when the attorney general explained that the Justice Department would not take sides in the election.
