The PowerPoint presentation, which spanned 38 pages and was titled “Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN,” was part of an email sent on Jan. 5, the day before the attack on the Capitol. The email pertained to a briefing that was to be provided “on the hill.” Hugo Lowell of The Guardian tweeted slides from the presentation on Thursday detailing a conspiracy theory-laden plan for Vice President Pence to install Republican electors in states “where fraud occurred,” and for Trump to declare a national emergency and for all electronic voting to be rendered invalid, citing foreign “control” of electronic voting systems.
In the 13 months since the election, no evidence has emerged that foreign entities influenced the election, or that any significant fraud occurred.
Refusing to believe in the results of a free and fair election have to be disqualifying for any party leader. It's non-negotiable. If we can't agree that the election was fair -- even if our preferred candidate lost -- then we have sacrificed the thing that makes America great. That Hewitt -- and his fellow conservatives who continue to bend over backward to placate Trump -- can't (or won't) see that suggests just how lost the conservative movement is at the moment. — CNN
As rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, several leading Fox News pundits and Donald Trump’s eldest son all voiced desperate concerns that the former president was doing nothing to quell the violence and protect those in the building, according to damning text messages unveiled Monday night by the select committee investigating the attack.
The stunning messages, submitted to the panel by Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, revealed that Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade and Laura Ingraham — all superstar Fox personalities with enormous conservative followings — and Donald Trump, Jr. were all pressing Meadows to convince the president to intervene during the early hours of the siege.
“He's got to condemn this shit ASAP,” Donald Trump Jr. texted Meadows as the attack was underway.
“I'm pushing it hard. I agree,” Meadows replied.
But when the president still did not act, his eldest son reached out again to Trump’s chief of staff, according to Jan. 6 Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who read the series of texts during a hearing Monday night.
“We need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand,” Trump Jr. texted.
Around the same time, a trio of Fox News hosts were also bombarding Meadows with text messages, trying to get Trump to call off the attack.
“Mark, president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy,” Ingraham texted.
“Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished,” added Kilmeade.
“Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,” texted Hannity.
Meadows also received dozens of texts from GOP lawmakers, staffers and members of the press trapped inside the Capitol during the assault, Cheney said.
“We are under siege here at the Capitol,” read one text. “They have breached the Capitol,” read another.
A third person texted: “Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors, rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?”
A fourth person told Meadows: “There's an armed standoff at the House chamber door.”
A fifth person inside the Capitol wrote: “We are all helpless.”
Across the administration, Trump officials also pleaded for Meadows to convince Trump to intervene. Messages read: “Someone is going to get killed” and “POTUS needs to calm this shit down.”
Is that the extent of your argument, Tim? blind and baffled rage? — NOS4A2
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot has "firsthand testimony" that former President Donald Trump watched the violence unfold on television instead of taking immediate action to stop the attack, Rep. Liz Cheney said on Sunday.
"We are learning much more about what former President Trump was doing while the violent assault was underway. The committee has firsthand testimony now that he was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television as the assault on the Capitol occurred," Cheney, vice chair of the panel, told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos.
The Wyoming Republican called Trump's conduct that day "a dereliction of duty."
"We know, as you know well, that the briefing room at the White House is just a mere few steps from the Oval Office. The president could have at any moment walked those very few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television, and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop. He could have told them to stand down. He could have told them to go home, and he failed to do so," she said.
The January 6 committee also has firsthand testimony that members of Trump's staff, including his daughter and then-White House senior advisor, Ivanka Trump, "went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence," Cheney said.
Prior to the investigation's findings, several news reports last year highlighted that Trump watched the riot on television and did not take steps to intervene.
Just five days after the riot, The Washington Post reported that Trump was glued to the TV screen as members of Congress locked down in the Capitol sought his help.
Post reporter Carol Leonnig, co-author of the book "I Alone Can Fix It," described Trump as "almost giddy" while he watched the riot on television. Journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa also reported in their book "Peril" that Trump ignored pleas to step in and instead continued watching the attack on TV.
Hours afterward, Trump released a video urging his supporters to go home while also telling them: "We love you, you're very special." Twitter and Facebook later suspended Trump from their platforms due to further risks of violence.
"It took Trump 187 minutes to make a statement calling off the mob that attacked our Capitol," the January 6 committee tweeted on Monday. "The former President's dereliction of duty is cause for serious concern."
I mean you have to be a literal moron to think Jan 6 is the election play. — StreetlightX
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