The committee investigating January 6 and the attack on Congress opened with bombshell video footage on Thursday that showed a number of his most trusted aides and advisers, including his daugher Ivanka Trump, explaining that they knew the election was not stolen.
The president’s eldest daughter was in one of the first videos played by committee members during their opening statements at Thursday’s hearing; during Rep Liz Cheney’s remarks, the congresswoman showed Ms Trump, a White House aide, explaining how she accepted Attorney General Bill Barr’s assertion that the election had been fair and free of fraud.
“I respected AG Barr, and accepted what he was saying,” Ms Trump told the committee in her recorded testimony.
Her words directly conflict with the ex-president’s numerous falsehoods about the 2020 election, which he still refuses to accept that he lost, and proves that Mr Trump’s inner circle was warning him that he was spreading misinformation long before January 6.
The video followed several other videos of Trump insiders making similar statements. Among them was Jason Miller, a Trump campaign surrogate, who explained how the campaign’s data team knew even as election results were rolling in that the president was going to lose, and lose badly.
She also revealed how members of the House GOP caucus, who have loudly resisted any efforts to investigate the attack for more than a year, got in contact with the White House in the president in the days following the riot hoping to score pardons for any potential criminal liability they had exposed themselves to during the attack or in the weeks prior.
The committee’s hearing on Thursday is one of two primetime hearings that the panel is planning to hold over the next month.
