Summary
The January 6 Committee holds its 7th public hearing. According to
testimony, rally organizers and Trump allies knew Donald Trump would order
them to Capitol after his speech. Capitol rioter Stephen Ayres recounts how
Trump got the crowd riled up. Former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone
testifies Trump should have conceded. The January 6 Committee shows
testimonies of senior White House officials saying they repeatedly advised
Trump to concede.
Transcript
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): The January 6 investigation day
seven.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): American carnage, it turned out to be an
excellent prophecy of what his rage would come to visit on our people.
MADDOW: The view from inside the oval office told for the first time by
Trump`s own White House Counsel.
PAT CIPOLLONE, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I walked in. I saw General
Flynn. I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. I was not happy to see the people
who were in the Oval Office.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Explain why.
CIPOLLONE: The overstock person, I`ve never met, I never knew who this guy
was. I walked in, I looked at him and said, "Who are you?" I don`t think
any of these people were providing the President with good advice. So, I
didn`t understand how they had gotten in.
MADDOW: Alleged conspirators invited into the White House by the President
with bizarre results.
CIPOLLONE: To have the federal government seize voting machines, that`s a
terrible idea for the country.
ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISOR: Flynn screamed at me
that I was a quitter. I yelled back better come over. Better sit your
effing ass back down.
SIDNEY POWELL, TRUMP LAWYER: He asked Pat Cipollone if he had the authority
to name a special counsel, and he said yes.
MADDOW: A mob summoned by the President to come not just to the nation`s
capital city, but to the U.S. Capitol building.
MATT BRACKEN, RIGHT-WING COMMENTATOR: We`re going to only be saved by
millions of Americans moving to Washington, occupying the entire area, if
necessary, storming right into the Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Red wave, bitch. Red wave -- there`s going to be a Red
Wedding going down January 6.
REP. STEPHANIE MURPHY (D-FL): So, why did you decide to march to the
Capitol?
STEPHEN AYRES, FORMER TRUMP SUPPORTER: Basically, the President got
everybody round up, ordered everybody head on down. So, we basically just
following what he said.
MADDOW: A jarring closing revelation from the investigators.
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): After our last hearing, President Trump tried to
call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in
these hearings. This Committee has supplied that information to the
Department of Justice.
MADDOW: Tonight, one of the committee members who led today`s hearing,
Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, plus Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes,
Joy Reid, Lawrence O`Donnell, Ari Melber, Stephanie Ruhle, Alex Wagner, all
here for our primetime recap of the seventh hearing from the January 6
investigation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MADDOW: Good evening. I`m Rachel Maddow here at MSNBC headquarters
alongside the great Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O`Donnell, and Nicolle
Wallace. I`m very happy to be with all of you this evening. I will be
joined tonight by our colleagues Ari Melber, Stephanie Ruhle, Alex Wagner
over the course of tonight`s coverage.
We are all here together not because this is some weird cable news version
of an all-star game or a pro bowl, but because this is our primetime recap
of the sprawling and at times shocking hearing today from the January 6
investigation. Today`s hearing was led by two members of Congress,
Stephanie Murphy of Florida, Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Congressman Raskin
will be our guest here live tonight not too long from now.
But before we speak with him about today`s revelations from the
investigation, we are first going to recap what those revelations were. We
are conscious of the historic nature of these proceedings, conscious of the
precedent from the 1970s when the Watergate hearings were equally historic,
equally consequential for the country. They were also equally inconvenient
to watch live as they happen at the Watergate hearings like today`s January
6 hearing, they were held in the middle of the workday, and that is just
not convenient for most Americans, particularly when the hearings are hours
long like today`s was.
Our predecessors in the news business either re-aired or recapped the
Watergate hearings every night in primetime when that investigation was
underway in 1973. We know now looking back at history that that was a good
decision by news organizations back then. It was a service to the country
at the time, and it meant a lot. And so, we here at MSNBC have committed to
do the same for everyday time hearing from the January 6 investigators.
So, whether or not you were able to watch today`s hearings live, let`s go.
Here`s the main revelations from the investigators. We`ll go through them
one by one. And let`s start with what I think may be the two most explosive
points that were made today. Both of them brand new and both of them very
specific. The first is how the mob of Trump supporters ended up at the U.S.
Capitol building on January 6th.
Remember, the rally was not at the U.S. Capitol building. The rally was
just outside the White House quite a long walk actually from the U.S.
Capitol building. Today, the January 6 investigators revealed for the first
time that former President Trump planned in advance that he would tell the
crowd at his rally to march to the U.S. Capitol building where Congress was
to be in session counting the electoral votes.
[20:05:14]
We`d heard testimony at previous hearings that Trump wanted the crowd to
march to the Capitol, that he tried to and intended to go there alongside
them himself. But today, for the first time, they showed evidence,
including previously unseen texts and emails, that proves that Trump
secretly planned in advance that he would tell the crowd to march to the
Capitol building.
It was supposed to be a secret. It was supposed to be closely held among
him and January 6 organizers so that nobody else in the government could
stop the plan, so it couldn`t be, in one person`s words, sabotaged so no
federal agencies would be able to intervene to stop what he was planning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MURPHY: After her January 2nd call with Mr. Meadows, Katrina Pierson sent
an email to fellow rally organizers. She wrote, POTUS expectations are to
have something intimate at the Ellipse, and call on everyone to march to
the Capitol. The President`s own documents suggest that the President had
decided to call on his supporters to go to the Capitol on January 6, but
that he chose not to widely announce it until his speech on the Ellipse
that morning.
This is a January 4th text message from a rally organizer to Mike Lindell,
the MyPillow CEO. The organizer says, you know, this stays between us after
the Ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol. It cannot
get out about the second stage, because people will try and set up another
and sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march, because I will be
in trouble with the National Park Service and all the agencies. But POTUS
is going to just call for it, "unexpectedly."
And then on the morning of January 5th, Ali Alexander, whose firebrand
style concerned Katrina Pierson, sent a similar text to a conservative
journalist. Mr. Alexander said, "Tomorrow: Ellipse, then US Capitol. Trump
is supposed to order us to the Capitol at the end of his speech, but we
will see."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Ellipse then U.S. Capitol. So, revealed today about the January 6
investigation, it was the plan all along for Trump to say to the crowd that
he was rallying just outside the White House. It was the plan for him all
along for him to tell them unexpectedly that they should leave that rally
site and walk to Congress, walk to the U.S. Capitol building across town
where Congress was meeting to count the electoral votes that had not been
put in the rally permit application, that is not something that had been
discussed in the upper echelons of government among any of the agencies
that would have to work in order to make a movement like that safe or
anything approaching safe. It was going to be a surprise.
The rally organizers, the Stop the Steal people were told people like Mike
Lindell, MyPillow guy, we`re told that these were the President`s secret
plans. But the actual government was not told, because they knew in advance
that if those agencies had advanced word that was Trump`s plan, they tried
to stop it. So, this was a private plan among the president and the people
he was using to summon the crowds to Washington, one that needed to be kept
secret from the government because of course what it was was a plan for a
physical overthrow of the government. So, that was news today.
As we will see in a moment, the investigators also revealed that while
Trump`s speech writers put one reference to going to the Capitol Building
in his written speech for the morning of January 6, Trump ad-libbed it
three extra times in his speech that morning to make sure it was getting
through loud and clear that he wanted the mob to go physically get
Congress.
Today, in live witness testimony, the committee also showed how that worked
in practice, what it meant that day in very practical terms, that Trump
supporters who thought they were being summoned to the Capitol for a Trump
rally at the Ellipse outside of the White House, soon found themselves
somewhere else, soon found themselves directed by President Trump that they
should leave the White House area, they should leave the Ellipse, and
instead walk across town and go to the U.S. Capitol building.
This was testimony today from Stephen Ayres who did help storm the Capitol,
even though he didn`t intend to in advance, he was criminally charged for
his role in January 6.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON (D-MS): So, this committee has reviewed thousands of
hours of surveillance footage from January 6. During this review, we
identified you entering the Capitol as we see in this video. Mr. Ayres, why
did you decide to come to Washington on January 6th?
AYRES: For me, for me personally, you know -- I was, you know, pretty
hardcore into the social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I followed,
you know, President Trump, you know, on all the websites, you know. He
basically put out, you know, come to the Stop the Steal rally, you know,
and I felt like I needed to be down here.
[20:10:24]
CHENEY: Mr. Ayers, when you entered the Capitol last year, did you believe
that the election had been stolen?
AYERS: At that time, yes. You know, everything that I was -- I was seeing
online, I definitely believed that that`s exactly what -- that was the
case.
CHENEY: And when you heard from President Trump that the election was
stolen, how did that make you feel?
AYRES: Oh, I was, you know, I was very upset, as were most of his
supporters. You know, that`s basically what got me to come down here.
CHENEY: We`ve also talked about today and in previous hearings the extent
to which the President himself was told that the election hadn`t been
stolen, by his Justice Department, by his White House counsel, by his
campaign. Would it have made a difference to you to know that President
Trump himself had no evidence of widespread fraud?
AYRES: Oh, definitely, you know. Who knows, I may not have come down here.
MURPHY: Mr. Ayres, you were in that crowd at the rally, and then the crowd
that marched to the Capitol. When you arrived on the Ellipse that morning,
were you planning on going to the Capitol?
AYRES: No, we didn`t actually plan to go down there. You know, we went
basically to see the Stop the Steal rally and that was it.
MURPHY: So, why did you decide to march to the Capitol?
AYRES: Well, basically, you know, the President got everybody riled up and
told everybody to head on down. So we basically was just following what he
said.
MURPHY: After the President`s speech as you`re marching down to the
Capitol, how did you feel?
AYRES: I was, you know, I`m angry. You know, after everything that was
basically said in the speech. You know, a lot of the stuff he said he
already put out in tweets. I`ve already seen it and heard it before. So, I
mean, I was already worked up and so were most of the people there.
MURPHY: So, as you started marching, did you think there was still a chance
the election would be overturned?
AYRES: Yes, at that time I did, you know, because everybody was kind of
like in the hope that, you know, Vice President Pence was not going to
certify the election. So, that hope was there.
MURPHY: Did you think that the President would be marching with you?
AYRES: Yes, I think everybody thought he was going to be coming down. You
know, he said it in his speech, you know, kind of like he`s going to be
there with us. So, I mean, I think -- I believed it.
MURPHY: I understand. We know that you illegally entered the Capitol that
afternoon and then left the Capitol area later on. What made you decide to
leave?
AYRES: Basically, when President Trump put his tweet out. We literally left
right after that come out. You know, to me if he would have done that
earlier in the day, 1:30, I -- you know, we wouldn`t be in this -- maybe we
wouldn`t be in this bad of a situation or something.
MURPHY: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MADDOW: We left when Trump put out his tweet telling us to leave. If he had
done that earlier in the day, maybe 1:30 p.m. Instead of after 4:00 p.m.
maybe we wouldn`t be in this bad situation. Today, Stephen Ayres, one of
the live witnesses at today`s hearing. At one point in the hearing room,
Mr. Ayers approached members of the Capitol Police and D.C. metropolitan
police who were injured on January 6 who were at the hearing today just to
watch the proceedings. Mr. Ayers spoke to each of them and reportedly
apologized to them about his role in the capital attack. I`m not sure the
apologies from him went over well with all of those officers, but he did
attempt it personally and eye to eye.
That testimony from him about being there that day, responding to President
Trump`s call to be there, responding to President Trump`s call to go to the
Capitol building even though he hadn`t planned to do that at all, his later
testimony about his regret for his actions and how participating in the
Capitol attack has effectively ruined his life.
It is all very human, very affecting on a personal level, but I will say
for the purposes of the committee`s investigation, and the very specific
question of the culpability of former President Trump and the Trump White
House in the crimes that were committed, Mr. Ayers is testimony is more
than just human. It`s more than just affecting. It closes the loop on an
important legal question as to whether or not Trump was controlling the
crowd that day. He clearly was in a very granular sense.
This wasn`t some peaceful protests that got out of hand, that got beyond
him. This was a serious series of actions that were planned in advance and
directed personally by the President. And the crowd responded to him as if
they were a machine and he held the remote control that drove it. He said,
go, they went. He said, leave, they left.
[20:15:24]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RASKIN: The medieval-style combat with our police, the occupation of the
building, this was going on for several hours until the President issued at
4:17 a tweet, I believe that included a video, telling people to go home.
Did you see that, and did that have any effect on what you were doing?
AYRES: Well, when we were there, as soon as that come out, everybody
started talking about it and that`s -- it seemed like it started to
disperse, you know, some of the crowd. Obviously, you know, once we got
back to the hotel room, we seen that it was still going on, but it
definitely dispersed a lot of the crowd.
RASKIN: And did you leave at that point?
AYRES: Yes, we did. Yes, we left.
RASKIN: So, in other words, that was the key moment when you decided to
leave when President Trump told people to go home.
AYRES: Yes, yes, we left right when that come out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That evidence about Trump being in control of the crowd, being
responsible for its movement and behavior, that was a main theme today. And
it fit with a broader and just ripping argument from the investigations
Vice Chair Congresswoman Liz Cheney, at the outset of the hearing today,
when she argued that the President is the one who did it. And no matter
what defenses are being mounted on his behalf, the fact that he did it is
something that can`t be pawned off on anyone else.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: The argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by
others outside the administration, that he was persuaded to ignore his
closest advisers, and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong.
This new strategy is to try to blame only John Eastman or Sidney Powell or
Congressman Scott Perry or others and not President Trump.
In this version, the president was "poorly served" by these outside
advisers. The strategy is to blame people his advisers called "the crazies"
for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense. President Trump is
a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone
else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own
choices.
As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed
and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen
than almost any other American, and he was told this over and over again.
No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information
and reach the opposite conclusion.
And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind, nor
can any argument of any kind excuse President Trump`s behavior during the
violent attack on January 6th.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: He`s a 76-year-old man, not an impressionable child. You will know
when your insults and critique is landing when the general thrust of it is
you are an adult. Vice Chair Liz Cheney landing a few as she want to do.
Before we take a break here though, I just want to get in one more point, a
real bombshell and a standalone point dropped by Liz Cheney right at the
end of the hearing. She knows how to make an impression. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: One more item. After our last hearing, President Trump tried to
call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in
these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President
Trump`s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call.
Their lawyer alerted us and this committee has supplied that information to
the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any
effort to influence witness testimony very seriously. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I yield back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Which is in Congress is
dropping the microphone. Here with my colleagues Lawrence O`Donnell,
Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes. Obviously, that sort of still just
scratching the surface today was a long hearing with a lot of different
points. I think today`s hearing did feel like it was sprawling. We got to a
lot of different things.
But this point about Trump having secretly planned to direct people to the
Capitol without telling the authorities, without telling the other agencies
of the government, that seems to me to be a very important new point.
[20:20:14]
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Yes. And I think it`s both a new point and it`s
also in line with a bunch of other new revelations they have surfaced which
point to consciousness of guilt, right? Like, the fact they were scheming,
the fact that they`re having meetings and not telling other people, the
fact that the secret electors were told not to tell other people, told not
to text about it, like, they have revealed time and time again, again,
because there was this weird degree to which they were doing it in public.
Like, Rudy Giuliani was running around the country doing in public, you
could almost think like, oh, they didn`t realize like, that they had to
hide some of this. But that`s not the case. Like, they did have to hide
some of that.
MADDOW: And they knew it.
HAYES: And they knew it, and that --
MADDOW: And they put it into writing.
HAYES: And they put it into writing. And that to me just speaks to the fact
that there is -- there really was consciousness of guilt. The other thing I
thought that you did a great job laying this out just with the witness is
that it`s just very clear now the crowd was the weapon.
MADDOW: Yes.
HAYES: He had nothing left at that point. He knows he doesn`t control DOD.
He knows he can`t send in the National Guard. He can`t do a traditional
coup. The courts didn`t work. He`s hoping that he can get the growth in
Congress. But all he has left, the weapon is the crowd. And it`s wielded
like a weapon. And everyone around the pot knows it.
The Proud Boys go early, but they know they need backup. Trump goes to the
Ellipse, and he hurls it like a, you know, David and slingshot, right, at
the Capitol. Like, the crowd is the weapon. That is -- that is crystal
clear now after the hearing.
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: But there`s something so crazy. I mean, the
testimony about the OTR builds on Cassidy Hutchinson`s testimony, and we
talked about it together afterward, where Liz Cheney has her go through
almost a boring explanation of what is the difference between a plan,
movement, and an OTR. And it wasn`t totally clear what she was building at,
but it was obviously this.
MADDOW: An OTR means an Off The Record.
WALLACE: OTR means -- right, it`s like President Biden stops and gets ice
cream. President Obama and Michelle sometimes, if they`re on vacation, will
stop by something philanthropic. It`s not on the schedule, so that you
don`t have to lock down the venue that you`re going to, you don`t need to
put mags (INAUDIBLE).
The fact that an OTR was leaked to the rally organizers is a massive -- I
mean, on top of being central to the coup, a massive operational security
violation. And the fact that he was communicating with Katrina Pierson and
the rally organizers about a planned OTR, it`s not an OTR anymore. And so,
it really illuminates the parallel off book government that he was leading.
Of course, he wasn`t sitting atop the nation`s military. He was the
commander in chief of this other thing.
MADDOW: He was running an operation against the U.S. government. And so,
the U.S. government had to be kept in the dark about it.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: And it really -- oh, go ahead.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: And then there`s the Stephen Ayres
testimony which closes the Trump involvement. Meaning, Trump we now know
was planning to say go to the Capitol, let`s keep it a secret that I`m
going to say go to the capitol.
MADDOW: Spring it on him.
O`DONNELL: So, there`s another moment where Trump has another decision to
make, which to him might not have felt like a decision. And that`s when
he`s on that stage in the Ellipse, and they`re starting to tell them, they
have weapons, that crowd has extremely dangerous weapons, and they`re
choosing not to come through our weapons detectors, because they don`t want
to surrender their weapons.
So, Trump now has new knowledge that they have weapons. He has a choice to
make. Do I stick with my original plan of sending them to the Capitol now
that I know they have deadly weapons? Yes, I guess I would. So, he does
that, right? And then -- and then -- so he`s clearly the guy now
established through, you know, these hearings, who has ordered a weapon
equipped crowd to go to the Capitol. The weapons have a purpose.
And then Stephen Ayres comes and tells you, he`s the guy who told us to
leave, that testimony that you just showed about Ayers saying we left
because he told us to leave, sets us up for the next hearing in which
you`re going to see every single minute Donald Trump did not tell them to
leave, and they will sink that no doubt with this is the moment where this
police officers suffered a concussion and that`s a minute where Donald
Trump didn`t act. It will all be there.
And one of the stunning things that happened as sometimes does and hearing
rooms after the testimony is over, is you shed some of it Stephen Ayres
going over to the Capitol Police officers. And he chose to do this. He
chose to go over and shake their hands. There`s a stunning photograph still
that`s out there now of Harry Dunn sitting there in uniform with the
handshake. And the person who tweeted the photograph said, apology offered
an apology accepted. Harry Dunn took that photograph, retweet it and said
apology offered.
REID: Yes, that`s right.
O`DONNELL: He`s actually going to join us at 10:00 tonight. We`ll find out
if that`s an apology accepted by Harry Dunn.
MADDOW: Yes.
[20:25:00]
REID: Right. I mean, the thing is to connect your point to the point that
you all have been making, you know, I have had this like, obsessive
question in my mind. What happened between the hour and 42 minutes after
the loonies all leave, right? You have this amazing picture that Cassie
Hutchinson actually took the picture of Rudolph Giuliani being escorted out
by Mark Meadows to make sure he didn`t double back and go back to the
residence. Like, he wanted him out-out.
So, they`re all gone. Trump is now alone for an hour and 42 minutes. He now
knows that they`re not seizing the election machines. That didn`t happen.
He now understands that he has -- I mean, he`s already lost all of his
legal suits, right? The Sidney Powell option didn`t work. He`s now thinking
I`m out of options.
HAYES: Right.
REID: I`m at options to stay in power. Who does he call if anyone? Because
this isn`t some, you know, logistical genius. I mean, The Apprentice was
produced by other people. He just said what people told him to say. This
isn`t like a smart guy that`s, you know, coming up with logistical plans. I
want to know where -- what happens in that mental trajectory in Donald
Trump`s mind between OK, the legal strategy didn`t work, all these other
strategies aren`t working. They`re telling me the DOJ isn`t doing it. OK,
I`m going to keep trying with Pence, but I`m going to use this crowd.
And it`s a two-layer weapon. It`s the actual just masses of people, the
heirs, the people who just do whatever Donald Trump says. They`re just
apparatchiks. But then there are the knowledgeable people, the Oath
Keepers, the Proud Boys, the people who are doing logistics, the people who
figured out where the speaker`s lounge is, the people who figured out that
they need to block the tunnels, the people who are just screaming, they had
the rope.
I mean, they brought a rope. We just found from Ben Collins, Day of the
Rope is like a thing in far right-wing circles who understood do the rope
means literally bring a rope. And I mean, I want to know, who did Donald
Trump talk to after midnight? Because, you know, he sits up and just calls
people. It`s who he is.
MADDOW: We`re going to get to some of that because we`ve got -- we do we do
get this new part of the timeline, right? Today was in part about January
6, but as they said, you know, the last -- the next hearing, like Lawrence
was describing, is going to be minute by minute on January 6. What today
was, was starting December -- mid-December when the electors cast their
votes.
And so, it was over. And Trump was told by an amazing array of people,
including we`re about to see members of his family, that it was over. And
then he decided he needed this plan B. So, that is next. Today`s hearing
also revealed the extent to which people in Trump`s orbit including his
family, knew that it was over in mid-December before he started on this
other course. That`s all ahead. Stay with us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AYERS: It makes me mad because I was hanging on every word he was saying.
Everything he was putting out I was following it. I mean, if I was doing
it, hundreds of thousands or millions of other people are doing it, or
maybe even still doing it.
The biggest thing is I consider myself a family man and I love my country.
I don`t think any one man is bigger than either one of those. I think
that`s what needs to be taken. You know, people dive into the politics. And
for me, I felt like I had, you know, like horse blinders on. I was -- I was
locked in the whole time. The biggest thing for me is take the blinders
off. Make sure you step back and see what`s going on before it`s too late.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:30:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you believe Mr. Cipollone that the President should
concede once you made a determination based on the investigations that you
credited DOJ did. Did you, in your mind, form a belief the president should
concede the election loss at certain point after the election?
CIPOLLONE: Well, again, I was the White House Counsel. Some of those
decisions are political. So to the extent that -- but if your question is
did I believe he should concede the election at a point in time? Yes, I
did. I believe Leader McConnell went on to the floor of the Senate, I
believe in late December, and basically said, you know, the process is
done. You know, that would be in line with my thinking on these things.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As early as that November 23rd meeting, we understand
that there was discussion about the President possibly conceding the
election. And specifically, we understand that Mark Meadows assured both
you and Attorney General Barr that the President would eventually agree to
a graceful exit. Do you remember Mr. Meadows making any such
representation?
CIPOLLONE: Are you saying as part of that meeting or separately? Again,
without getting into that meeting, I would say that that is a -- that is a
statement and a sentiment that I heard from Mark Meadows.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That is a statement and a sentiment that I heard from Mark Meadows
that the President should agree to a graceful exit. Welcome back to our
primetime recap of the January 6 hearing today. We heard today for the
first time from Trump`s White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who revealed
himself to have known that the election wasn`t stolen, to have believed
that the former President Trump should have conceded the election since he
lost it.
The committee also revealed that lots of other senior people in the White
House in the President`s orbit, including members of the Cabinet, the
President`s own daughter, Ivanka, all also knew that it was over. That it
was over after the electors cast their votes on December 14.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EUGENE SCALIA, FORMER SECRETARY OF LABOR: So, I had to put a call into the
President. I might have called on the 13th. We spoke, I believe, on the
14th in which I conveyed to him that I thought that it was time for him to
acknowledge that President Biden had prevailed in the election. But I
communicated to the President that when that legal process is exhausted and
when the electors have voted, that that`s the point at which that outcome
needs to be expected.
I told him that I did believe yes, that once those legal processes were
run, if fraud had not been established that had affected the outcome of the
election, then unfortunately, I believed that what had to be done was
concede the outcome.
[20:35:39]
WILLIAM BARR, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: December 14th was the day that
the states certified their votes and sent them to Congress. And in my view,
that was the end of the matter. I didn`t see -- you know, I thought that
this would lead inexorably to a new administration.
JUDD DEERE, FORMER WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: I told him that my
personal viewpoint was that the Electoral College had met, which is the
system that our country is set under to elect a President and Vice
President. And I believed at that point that the means for him to pursue
litigation was probably closed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And do you recall what his response, if any, was?
DEERE: He disagreed.
CHENEY: I wanted to clarify, Ms. McEnany. So, back to my previous question.
It was your view then -- or was it your view that the efforts to overturn
the election should have stopped once the litigation was complete?
MCENANY: In my view, upon the conclusion of litigation was when I began to
plan for life after the administration.
MURPHY: And this is what Ivanka Trump told us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: December 14th was the day on which the Electoral College
met. When these electors around the country met and cast the electoral
votes consistent with the popular vote in each state. And it was obviously
a public proceeding or a series of proceedings that President Biden had
obtained the requisite number of electors.
Was that an important day for you? Did that affect sort of your planning or
your realization as to whether or not there was going to be an end of this
administration?
IVANKA TRUMP, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: I think so. I think it was
my sentiment probably prior as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Ivanka Trump, the President`s adult daughter, it was also my
sentiment that it was all over in December once the electors had cast their
votes. I think it was my sentiment probably prior as well. Pat Cipollone`s
testimony, the White House Counsel`s testimony, that White House Chief of
Staff Mark Meadows was among those who knew it was over. That was a really
interesting point raised today. And it`s worth pausing on that for a second
because we heard for the first time from Cipollone, one of the things he
said was, yes, the White House Chief of Staff was with me on this.
His assertion in that regard was also bolstered by Attorney General Bill
Barr. Bill Barr and Pat Cipollone both said in testimony aired today that
they heard from the Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that he knew Trump had
lost, that he knew Trump would have to find a way to concede.
And then, this last thing that I`m just going to play here for a second.
This sort of past -- I think, mostly unremarked upon today given all of the
other revelations from the committee, but when it comes to Mark Meadows,
this seems very important. When it comes to Mark Meadows, we also today got
a brand new previously unheard assertion from his top deputy Cassidy
Hutchinson about what Mark Meadows did around this time and why he did it.
Now, we don`t know why they held this piece of Cassidy Hutchinson testimony
until today. We`ve heard so much from her in previous hearings both on tape
and in live testimony. But it is possible that the investigators on the
January 6 Committee have held this back until today, because it`s so bad
for Mark Meadows, because they are continuing a legal battle with Mark
Meadows to try to get him to testify to their investigation.
This clip about Mark Meadows today points to Mark Meadows` state of mind,
his intentions behind what he was doing, and a way that might prove to be a
problem for him if he ever faces criminal charges in this matter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CASSIDY HUTCHINSON, FORMER AIDER TO MARK MEADOWS: During this period, he --
I perceived his goal with all of this to keep Trump in office. You know, he
had very seriously and deeply considered the allegations of voter fraud.
But when he began acknowledging that maybe there wasn`t enough voter fraud
to overturn the election, you know, I witnessed him start to explore
potential constitutional loopholes more extensively, which I then connected
with John Eastman`s theories.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: The White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows seriously and deeply
considered the fraud allegations. Basically, he found there wasn`t anything
to them. And so he then instead turned to trying to find constitutional
loopholes to keep Trump in power anyway. That is, I know he lost, I am
going to try to keep him in power anyway knowing that he lost.
That moment was not a criminal referral of Mark Meadows to the Justice
Department, but the investigators are handing the Justice Department
basically like both of the Lego pieces, they would need to build a very
simple, stable criminal case against him.
WALLACE: Yes. And this ties into what a federal judge has already called
likely felony crimes committed by Trump and Eastman. We now have, ding,
ding, ding, the third sort of piece of -- the third Lego, if you will, in a
very simple legal Lego structure.
REID: Can you -- I mean, maybe explain how the -- I mean, the Chief of
Staff is obviously the most loyal person to the president or the closest
person in many ways to the President. But I cannot explain Mark Meadows in
my own mind. This is a guy -- he`s like a garden variety, birther, Tea
Party congressman from North Carolina. He`s not like a Ted Cruz who like
styles himself as some sort of 1776 like Redux revolutionary. Like, he`s
just some guy who becomes Chief of Staff.
And why is he willing to risk jail? I mean, he got like $1 million for his
pack from the slush fund. $1 million isn`t worth lying n for the President
of the United States and fomenting a coup. I cannot make it make sense in
my mind.
WALLACE: Well, he`s also different from every other Chief of Staff, right?
I mean, John Kelly couldn`t hide his horror and disgust with Trump as he
talks about -- and Reince Priebus, you know, couldn`t get out of the Oval
and on the phone with reporters to leak about him fast enough, you know,
that talked about breaking speed records in the West Bank. What Meadows
does is he breaks bad and Cassidy Hutchinson tells us what it happened.
HAYES: Yes, right. That`s right.
REID: Yes.
WALLACE: Somewhere between all the fraud was in Bill Barr`s words,
bullshit, and you know, let`s stay in power for four more years, Meadows
breaks bad.
HAYES: And I also thought that Cassidy Hutchinson there -- and again, I`ve
said this before at this very table, but I have to say it again, there is
this weird suspension of disbelief guilelessness to all of this. To Eugene
Scalia, Eugene Scalia is a pretty smart guy. (INAUDIBLE) Antonin Scalia,
Secretary of Labor. Like, his like very sort of like lawyerly well. I told
him on December 14, that was the end of the process. It`s all garbage. It`s
all made up.
Guys, guys, I can tell. I knew the answer. Please come on me. Like,
everybody constantly having to indulge this. Like, oh, on December 14, it
was done, he lost, it was -- and it`s ludicrous set of like all of these
people, Bill Barr, Eugene Scalia, everyone taking this seriously. For
Cassidy Hutchison, just seeing her quiet voice like, oh, yes, once the
fraud thing didn`t work out, it was -- it`s about keeping him in office,
obviously. Like, didn`t they have to know that?
MADDOW: Yes. And by which -- by which it means there weren`t real
arguments.
HAYES: There were never real arguments or real factual predicates to any of
this. And we`ve had so much testimony. And I think it`s all truthful
testimony of the mountains of labor that are going on churning in these
five weeks afterwards.
MADDOW: Well, it`s because everybody wants to help him -- and it`s not --
it`s not a real argument. There`s not a factual basis for him staying in
power. It`s a pretext.
GUTFELD: Yes, exactly.
MADDOW: They finally see if they can help him support the pretext.
HAYES: Correct.
O`DONNELL: But I do think --
MADDOW: So they`re implicated.
HAYES: Right, but that`s my question is -- that`s exactly my question. Were
they -- what were they do -- what did they tell themselves they were doing
about all these pre-textual efforts?
O`DONNELL: They were they were letting Trump learn the Trump way, which is
I`m not going to be the one who tells right crazy man this thing. I`m going
to let -- I`m going to let the Electoral College tell him that.
HAYES: Right.
O`DONNELL: And I think it is entirely conceivable that people like Scalia,
Bill Barr, people who`ve been around government, people like me were
watching this thing and thinking, I don`t know what Trump believes or
doesn`t believe, but I know what the Electoral College is going to do, so
it doesn`t matter.
HAYES: Right.
O`DONNELL: And I know Biden is going to be in the inauguration on January.
I know all of this, right? And so, I don`t care when he figures this out or
doesn`t figure it out. And I`m not going to be the one that goes in and
burns myself up. And if I`m Mark Meadows, and I want to make money from
Donald Trump when he`s not President, which is exactly what Mark Meadows
wants, I`m not going to be the bad news guy. I`m going to let the process
show this guy where the bad news is, and then you get to this
constitutional loopholes moment that Cassidy Hutchinson mentions.
That was inconceivable to Bill Barr. It was inconceivable to Cipollone. It
was inconceivable to me.
HAYES: Right. That`s why it goes over.
O`DONNELL: I didn`t know that there were constitutional loopholes. It turns
out there, and they exist on January 6. And one of the constitutional
loopholes they were going for in January 6 with the mob, as you say, as the
tool, was to literally stop it. If they don`t do it on January 6, what`s
the next sentence in the Constitution? Well, there isn`t.
(CROSSTALK)
[20:45:12]
HAYES: That`s right. That`s right.
O`DONNELL: And can we get it thrown into the House of Representatives? And
if we get it thrown into the House of Representatives, then Donald Trump
can win a vote.
MADDOW: And so, to answer Joy`s question, the question of who is Mark
Meadows and how is he operating here? He`s the guy who thought
constitutional loophole will do it that way.
REID: Yes.
MADDOW: That`s what it takes in terms of the facility with your citizenship
in that moment.
REID: Right.
MADDOW: All right, in a previous January 6 hearing, the investigators
sprung the noose on us that Trump hadn`t just come up with some scheme to
maybe overthrow the Justice Department and install a new attorney general.
He hadn`t just thought about it. He hadn`t argued for it. He actually tried
to do it.
Today, we got another one of those sprung on us, something that he didn`t
just argue about, he wasn`t just trying to be pretty -- persuade people
about, he apparently actually tried to do it, and we did not know it before
today, but that is next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CIPOLLONE: I don`t think Sidney Powell would say that I thought it was a
good idea to appoint her special counsel. I was vehemently opposed. I
didn`t think she should have been appointed to anything.
[20:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: Today`s January 6 Hearing revealed that many of the people around
former President Trump including his White House Chief of Staff and his
daughter Ivanka, they all consider the 2020 election to be over. They all
thought it was a settled matter as of December 14, the day the Electoral
College cast their votes.
On that point of the thing being over, though, being widely acknowledged to
be over on December 14 when the electors cast their votes, the
investigators today also showed us what happened after December 14.
December 14 happens, the electors cast their votes, everybody in Trump`s
orbit, including his family tells him it`s over. The investigators today
then showed us how Trump then decided he needed a plan B and how Plan B
evolved from that point forward.
If the whole Trump White House staff and cabinet and everybody decided it
was over by December 14, well, by December 16, he had found some rando
outsiders who would give him a new plan to stay in power, one that they
apparently cooked up over a meal at his Washington D.C. hotel.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RASKIN: On the evening of December 18, 2020, Sidney Powell, General Michael
Flynn and others entered the White House for an unplanned meeting with the
President. The meeting that would last multiple hours and become hot-
blooded and contentious. The executive order behind me on the screen was
drafted on December the 16th, just two days after the Electoral College
vote by several of the President`s outside advisors over a luncheon at the
Trump International Hotel.
As you can see here, this proposed order directs the Secretary of Defense
to seize voting machines, "effective immediately." But it goes even further
than that. Under the order, President Trump would appoint a special counsel
with the power to seize machines and then charge people with crimes with
all resources necessary to carry out her duties.
The specific plan was to name Sidney Powell as special counsel, the Trump
lawyer who had spent the post-election period making outlandish claims
about Venezuelan and Chinese interference in the election among others.
Here`s what White House Counsel Pat Cipollone had to say about Sidney
Powell`s qualifications to take on such expansive authority.
CIPOLLONE: I don`t think Sidney Powell would say that I thought it was a
good idea to appoint her special counsel. I was vehemently opposed. I
didn`t think she should have been appointed to anything.
RASKIN: Sidney Powell told the President that these steps were justified
because of her evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election.
However, as we`ve seen, Trump`s allies had no such evidence and of course
no legal authority for the federal government to seize state voting
machines. Here`s Mr. Cipollone again denouncing Sidney Powell`s terrible
idea.
CIPOLLONE: There was a real question in my mind and a real concern, you
know, particularly after the Attorney General had reached a conclusion that
there wasn`t sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the
election when other people kept suggesting that there was. The answer is,
what is it? And at some point you have to put up or shut up. That was my
view.
UNKNOWN: Why was this on a broader scale a bad idea for a country?
CIPOLLONE: To have the federal government seize voting machines, that`s a
terrible idea for the country. That`s not how we do things in the United
States. There`s no legal authority to do that. And there is a way to
contest elections, you know, that happens all the time. But the idea that
the federal government could come in and seize election machines, no,
that`s -- I don`t -- I don`t understand why we even have to tell you why
that`s a bad idea for the country. It`s a terrible idea.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MADDOW: Do I need to spell this out. Seizing voting machines, that was the
kind of wall that Trump ran into on trying to seize voting machines. You`ll
recall that even before this, he had told the Justice Department under Bill
Barr that he should cease voting machines and Bill Barr pulled him no.
Under this fake or draft executive order, it was going to be the Pentagon,
the Defense Department, that was going to go seize the voting machines. You
saw the White House Counsel`s response to that idea there.
[20:55:25]
But seizing the voting machines wasn`t the only big terrible idea in that
draft executive order. The other one would have put Trump lawyer Sidney
Powell in charge of charging people with crimes and investigating all the
fraud which she attributed to dead communists and Venezuela. That is
something we learned today. That`s something he not only was advised to do
in this draft executive order. It`s something he not only thought about
doing. It`s not something he just kicked around with the crazies in the
White House. He actually tried to do it. He actually did it.
Certain accounts of this meeting, the investigators said today, indicate
that President Trump actually granted Ms. Powell security clearance and
appointed her to the somewhat ill-defined position of Special Counsel.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
POWELL: He asked Pat Cipollone if he had the authority to name a special
counsel, and he said yes. And then he asked him if he had the authority to
give me whatever security clearance I needed, and Pat Cipollone said yes.
And then the president said, OK, you know, I`m the naming her that and I`m
giving her security clearance.
And then shortly before we left and it totally blew up, that`s when
Cipollone and/or Herschmann and whoever the other young man was said you
can name her whatever you want to name her, and no one`s going to pay any
attention to it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did he respond? How did the president respond to
that?
POWELL: Something like you see what I deal with. I deal with this all the
time.
RASKIN: Over the ensuing days, no further steps were taken to appoint
Sidney Powell, but there is some ambiguity about what the president
actually said and did during the meeting. Here is how Pat Cipollone
described it.
CIPOLLONE: I don`t know what her understanding of whether she had been
appointed, what she had been appointed to, OK? In my view, she hadn`t been
appointed to anything and ultimately wasn`t appointed to anything, because
there had to be other steps taken. And that was my view when I left the
meeting. But she may have a different view, and others may have a different
view, and the president may have a different view.
CHENEY: Were any steps taken, including the president himself telling her
she`d been appointed?
CIPOLLONE: Again, I`m not going to get into what the president said in the
meeting. You know, my recollection is you`re not appointed even -- you`re
not appointed until steps are taken to get the paperwork done, get -- and
when I left the meeting, OK -- I guess -- I guess what I`m trying to say is
I`m not going to get into what the president said or want -- said he
wanted.
RASKIN: Mr. Cipollone, when the matter continued to flare up over the next
several days, was it your understanding that Sidney Powell was still
seeking an appointment or that she was asserting that she had been
appointed by the president at the December 18 meeting?
CIPOLLONE: You know, now that you mention it, probably both, you know, in
terms of like I think she was --- I think she may have been of the view
that she had been appointed and was seeking to, you know, get that done,
and that she should be appointed.
MADDOW: He did it. This is echoing for you because in a previous January 6
hearing, we learned that Trump actually tried to fire the Attorney General
and appoint this guy, Jeff Clark, to take over the Justice Department. He
didn`t just, you know, think about doing it or argue for it. He actually
did it. In White House Call Logs, Jeffrey Clark started to be described as
the Acting Attorney General because Trump did try to install him.
Now, we learned there`s another. Trump actually went ahead and did it as
well when it comes to Sidney Powell. We previously known that he talked
about making her special counsel. It had been suggested to him. Now we know
he ordered that she would have the job of Special Counsel. And the only
reason it didn`t come to pass. It wasn`t effectuated in our lives, is
because White House official -- White House officials apparently refused to
act on his order, which is an astonishing thing in the history of the U.S.
presidency.
But it`s only one that we learned about today. There`s more. Stay with us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RASKIN: One user asked is the 6th D-Day? Is that why Trump wants everyone
there? Another asserted Trump just told us all to come armed. Fucking A,
this is happening. A third took it even further. It will be wild means we
need volunteers for the firing squad.