donald trump”is the person in the center of the story of what happened on January 6. So we want to hear it,” Bennie Thompson said during a public hearing. “He has to be held accountable. He has to answer for his actions,” he added.
The commission plans to “do everything possible to tell the fullest story possible and provide recommendations to help ensure that nothing like January 6 happens again in the future,” he continued.
Trump’s response
The mission of the panel, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, is to shed light on the president’s behavior before, during and after the attack on Capitol Hill, which shocked the entire world.
Following the summons, Trump on Thursday called “fiasco” a subpoena issued by the congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on Capitol Hill and asked why he had not been called earlier to testify.
“Why didn’t the Deselection Commission ask me to testify months ago?” Trump said on his Truth Social platform after lawmakers investigating the Capitol assault decided to subpoena him to testify. “It has only served to further divide our country,” he added.
What happened during the assault on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the House of Congress to try to prevent lawmakers from certifying the victory of his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. The tycoon continues to assure without proof that the victory was “stolen” from him.
On Thursday, before its shocking announcement, the commission had reconstructed the chronology of the events, showing that the former president had planned “well in advance” to declare himself victorious in the 2020 elections, even before the release of the results.
Democratic lawmaker Zoe Lofgren evoked “a premeditated plan by the president to declare his victory, whatever the actual outcome.” Her victory speech “was planned well in advance, before the votes were counted.”
“His intention was clear, to ignore the rule of law and stay in power,” said Republican Adam Kinzinger..
In support of their statements, the parliamentarians projected several videos of the former president, some of his relatives or former White House employees.
In footage taken just before the 2020 presidential election by a Danish documentary crew, Roger Stone, a longtime ally of the former Republican president, can be heard saying he doesn’t care about the vote.
“Fuck the vote, let’s go straight to violence,” he said.
Stone, who has not been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 incident, disputed the authenticity of the videos, saying they had been doctored.
The commission also reproduced the recording of a call from Trump to Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State of Georgia, in which the former president says that he “needs” about 11,000 ballots in his nameenough to beat his rival Biden in this southern state.
It also revealed elements of hundreds of thousands of pages provided by the Secret Service, the elite police force responsible for the close protection of high-ranking state officials.
The parliamentarians want to understand why SMS sent by the agents on the day of the assault were deleted.
Evidence Points to Trump
The documents confirm evidence presented at previous hearings that Trump inflamed his supportersdespite being briefed on the potential for violence, lawmaker Adam Schiff said.
Since its creation, the commission has questioned more than a thousand witnessesincluding two children of Donald Trump, and has fine-tuned tens of thousands of documents.
The investigative report is expected to be released later in the year, but probably not before the November 8 congressional elections, which will determine which party controls Congress for the remainder of President Biden’s term.
Panel members openly suggested that Attorney General Merrick Garland should impeach Trump in connection with the attack on Capitol Hill.
The commission itself has not officially said whether it will recommend referrals to justice.
Source: Ambito
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