Piecing Together What Trump Knew and When He Knew It
The Jan. 6th Committee report establishes a clear record of his intentional lies.
When Donald Trump claimed that he had won the 2020 electionāand when he exhorted his followers, on that basis, to march to the Capitol on January 6, 2021ādid he know that his claim wasnāt true?
The answer to that question isnāt obvious. One could argue, based on Trumpās public behavior, that he was pathologically deluded and sincerely thought he had won. If some jurors buy that theoryāif they decide that Trump was sincere, albeit wildly wrongāit might be hard to convict him of the crimes for which the House January 6th Committee has recommended his prosecution.
On Monday, in its final hearing, the committee referred Trump to the Department of Justice for possible indictments based on four statutes. One of the statutes, 18 U.S.C. Ā§ 1512, applies only if the accused person ācorruptlyā sought to impede an official proceeding. Another, 18 U.S.C. Ā§ 371, applies only if he conspired to ādefraudā the government, using ādeceit, craft or trickery.ā A third, 18 U.S.C. Ā§ 1001, applies only if he āknowingly and willfullyā made false or fraudulent statements.
In the hearing and in the āintroductory materialā the committee released in anticipation of its full report later this week, the panelās members concluded that Trump knew enough to be charged with these crimes. Hereās their evidence.
1. Trump planned to claim fraud long before he had any plausible basis. āIn the weeks before election day 2020, Donald Trumpās campaign experts, including his campaign manager Bill Stepien, advised him that the election results would not be fully known on election night,ā says the report. Despite this, the committee found āa range of evidenceāāto be fleshed out in the full reportāāof Trumpās preplanning for a false declaration of victory.ā
2. Trump ignored his campaign managerās warnings on election night. In conversations with Trump as the returns came in, āStepien and other campaign experts advised him that the results of the election would not be known for some time, and that he could not truthfully declare victory,ā says the report. Trump ārefusedā to accept these warnings, and he declared victory that night.
3. After the election, every knowledgeable person in the government and in Trumpās campaign told him that his claims were false. The report quotes Trumpās then-attorney general, Bill Barr: āI repeatedly told the president in no uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud . . . that would have affected the outcome of the election.ā Barr said he had told Trump that his allegations were ānot panning outā and ānot meritorious.ā
Richard Donoghue, who was then Trumpās acting deputy attorney general, told the committee that he and the acting attorney general who succeeded Barr, Jeff Rosen, had tried āto put it in very clear terms to the president.ā Donoghue said he had explained to Trump that the Justice Department had examined allegations in āGeorgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada.ā He said he had told Trump āsomething to the effect of āSir, weāve done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed.āā
Pat Cipollone, Trumpās White House counsel, told the committee that in a meeting with Trump and a circle of election-fraud conspiracy theorists (led by Sidney Powell) on Dec. 18, 2020, he had told the group that āI had seen no evidence of massive fraud in the election. . . . That was made clear to them, okay, over and over again.ā
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trumpās campaign, said he had told the president āseveralā times that as to āelection day fraud and irregularities, there were not enough to overturn the election.ā He also said he told Trump that āthe international allegationsā against Dominion Voting Systems, the electronic voting company that pro-Trump conspiracy theorists were targeting, āwere not valid.ā
4. Trump repeated numerous false statements shortly after being told they were false. The report details eighteen cases in which this happened, compiled in a handy table. The most damning examples are from Trumpās Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which was recorded. For instance, Raffensperger told Trump that the story the president was spreading about ballots being counted three times in one county was false. Raffensperger explained that video evidence debunked Trumpās story, and he offered to send Trump a link to the video.
Trump replied: āI donāt care about a link. I donāt need it.ā
The next day, Trump completely misrepresented the phone call, tweeting: āI spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday . . . He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the āballots under tableā scam, ballot destruction, out of state āvotersā, dead voters, and more.ā
The ādead votersā allegation is another example. In the phone call, Trump claimed that ādead people votedā in Georgia and that the āminimum is close to about 5,000 voters.ā Raffensperger then explained to Trump that he had checked out this allegation and āthe actual number [was] two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So thatās wrong.ā
Trump ignored the correction. In fact, in his speech just before the Jan. 6th attack, he doubled the figure: āOver 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election.ā
The report also notes that Barr, in a Nov. 23 meeting with Trump, debunked the presidentās wild statements about Dominion. āI specifically raised the Dominion voting machines,ā Barr told the committee. āI saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations. . . . I told him that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that.ā
Three days after that meeting, Trump repeated the same smears: ā[T]hose machines are fixed, theyāre rigged. You can press Trump and the vote goes to Biden. . . . All you have to do is play with a chip, and they played with a chip, especially in Wayne County and Detroit.ā
5. Trump acknowledged that his claims didnāt check out. Stepien told the committee that he had investigated Trumpās allegations and had told the president, in each case, that the claim āwasnāt true.ā The committeeās interviewer asked Stepien how Trump had reacted to these corrections. āUsually he had pretty clear eyes. Like, he understood,ā Stepien recalled. āWe told him where we thought the race was, and I think he was pretty realistic with our viewpoint, in agreement with our viewpoint . . .ā
6. Trump acknowledged that he had lost. Cassidy Hutchinson, who had served as a special assistant to the president, told the committee that in mid-December 2020, when the Supreme Court dismissed a suit to block the election results, Trump was furious. She said she had heard Trump tell Mark Meadows, who was then his chief of staff, āsomething to the effect of, āI donāt want people to know we lost . . . I donāt want people to know that we lost.ā
The committee says these incidents prove that Trump knew his allegations were false, and therefore he had the corrupt intent necessary to be charged with violations of the statutes. The report also notes that David O. Carter, a federal district judge, essentially agreed with this conclusion, in two separate opinions handed down in March and October. In the latter, Carter noted that the evidence presented in his court showed that Trump āknew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.ā Carter also assessed, in the earlier opinion, that Trump ālikely knew [his] electoral count plan had no factual justification.ā Therefore, Carter, concluded, Trumpās āmindset exceeds the threshold for acting ācorruptlyā under Ā§ 1512(c).ā
Personally, Iām sympathetic to the argument that Trump thought he had won. Heās a deranged narcissist. He believes what he wants to believe. As a citizen, I agree that for this reason, among others, he should never be anywhere near political power. But as a juror, Iād have to be persuaded that he meets standards such as āknowingly,ā āwillfully,ā ādeceit,ā and ādefraud.ā
The committeeās preliminary report goes a considerable way toward persuading me. A man who goes around repeating stories that he has been told are false, again and again, is certainly being willful. And by concealing what heās been toldāor, in the case of his interactions with Raffensperger, egregiously misrepresenting what heās been toldāhe knowingly deceives the public. Iām not sure how many times a spreader of bogus allegations has to be corrected before his defiance of corrections counts as deceit. But itās less than eighteen.
