House January 6 Committee Alleges Ties Between Trump, ‘Extremist’ Orgs in 7th Hearing

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), speaks during a January 6 committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 12, 2022. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

In its seventh hearing on July 12, the House January 6 Committee alleged ties between President Donald Trump and “extremist” right-wing groups.

Much of the evidence centered around testimony provided by former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

Cipollone, who was involved in a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting at the White House that included both internal and external legal advisers, met with the January 6 Committee for eight hours on Friday to provide testimony.

In her opening statement, Ranking Member Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said that Cipollone’s testimony “met our expectations.”

In his opening statement, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) continued committee attacks against the former president, who the commission has said intentionally tried to mount an insurrection against the United States government.

Instead of “[trying] to achieve [his] desired outcome through force or harassment or intimidation,” Thompson said, Trump “seized on the anger he had already stoked among his most loyal supporters” and “summoned a mob to Washington, D.C.” on Jan. 6.

Echoing Thompson, Cheney said that on Jan. 6, Trump “summoned a mob to Washington” by spreading “election lies” that “provoked that mob.”

Cipollone ‘Corroborated Virtually Everything’ in Controversial Hutchinson Testimony

According to the committee, Cipollone “corroborated virtually everything [former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson]” said in her controversial testimony to the January 6 Committee.

In her testimony during a last-minute hearing to the commission, Hutchinson made claims that raised some eyebrows: among these claims, Hutchinson said that in a moment of rage with Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump threw a glass plate against a wall, forcing her and the White House usher to clean ketchup smears off the wall.

Hutchinson also claimed that, angry at not being permitted to attend the Jan. 6 march on the Capitol, Trump attacked a Secret Service agent and lunged to take control of the White House Limousine steering wheel.

Both Trump and several Secret Service agents have denied these claims. However, the commission claims that in his testimony, Cipollone corroborated almost all of it.

“Cipollone has corroborated almost everything that we’ve learned from the prior hearings,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in an interview given hours before the hearing. “I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. … He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn’t see any contradiction there.”

Committee Claims Trump Ties to Right-Wing ‘Extremist’ Orgs, Efforts to Encourage March on Capitol Despite Weak Evidence

The commission also alleged that Trump had ties to right-wing “extremist” organizations ahead of the Jan. 6 rally.

However, the evidence linking these claims were weak, mostly comprising a few efforts by right-wing activist groups to get in contact with the White House and claims that Trump tweets and comments had inspired supporters to commit violence at the Capitol. But the tweets shown included no direct calls for violence.

In the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 rally, Oath Keepers general counsel Kellye SoRelle told NBC News that founder Stewart Rhodes tried to get SoRelle to put him in contact with the White House.

SoRelle, whose work for the group Lawyers for Trump put her in contact with many lawyers fighting to bring suits for election fraud in Trump’s favor, had contacts including top Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. However, SoRelle said she  “wasn’t, like, communicating with Trump directly.”

“[Rhodes] was hitting me up for a contact [to the White House],” SoRelle said. “He didn’t have any access points.”

Throughout much of the hearing, the committee focused on a Dec. 19 tweet by Trump that read: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.”

Pro-Trump websites took up the call, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said, with sites like TheDonald.win “[featuring] discussions of the tunnels beneath the Capitol complex, suggestions for targeting Members of Congress, and encouragement to attend a, quote, ‘Once in a lifetime event.’”

One poster, Raskin reported, wrote, “Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels.” Another post suggested that demonstrators come to the event with “body armor, knuckles, shields, bats, pepper spray, whatever it takes.”

According to the committee, in a tweet he drafted days before Jan. 6 but never sent, Trump further tried to incentivize his supporters to march to the Capitol.

“I will be making a Big Speech at 10AM on January 6th at the Ellipse (South of the White House),“ the draft tweet read. ”Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!”

Instead, Trump did not end up advising his supporters to go to the Capitol until his speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6.

Bannon’s Agreement to Testify Overhangs Hearing

Overhanging the hearing was a statement by former White House aide Steve Bannon expressing a willingness to testify to the committee to delay his trial for contempt of Congress.

Though the commission did not mention it, on Monday a federal judge refused to delay the trial, which is set to begin in a week.

Last year, the January 6 Committee pushed through an indictment of Bannon for contempt of Congress after he refused to testify, citing claims of executive privilege as a former executive branch staffer. Congress later approved the criminal recommendation, which was picked up by the Justice Department, who began criminal proceedings against Bannon.

Over the weekend, Bannon apparently changed his mind on testifying after Trump in a letter reportedly waived the claim to executive privilege, Bannon’s lawyer said.

The Justice Department maintains that Bannon’s offer to testify was nothing more than a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability.”

The Justice Department claimed that Trump lawyer Justin Clark told the FBI that Trump “never invoked executive privilege over any particular information or materials” and that these claims were no basis for Bannon’s “total noncompliance” with the commission subpoena.

Hope of Trump Indictment, Preventing Possible Reelection Bid, Underpins Hearings

Members of the Democrat-dominated January 6 Committee have made no effort to hide their hope that Trump will face criminal charges for his actions on and leading up to Jan. 6. Charges that lead to a conviction of insurrection may put an end to his chances of running for reelection, which he has indicated he may do.

“I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump or anyone else,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “They need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is.”

Raskin said the committee has laid out in various legal pleadings “the criminal statutes that we think have been violated,” and claimed that the panel has evidence that Trump knew Democratic rival candidate Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

“I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew because he was surrounded by lawyers,” Raskin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He continues to spread [doubts about the 2020 election results] to this very day. He continues to foist that propaganda on his followers.”

“I certainly think the president is guilty of knowing what he did,” Kinzinger said when asked during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” if Trump should face criminal charges. “Seditious conspiracy. Being involved in these, you know, kind of different segments of pressuring DOJ, Vice President, etc.”

It remains unclear whether the DOJ will take the unprecedented step of opening a criminal investigation of Trump, whatever the calls from members of the panel.