There was some news made at this one too:
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol and what led up to it revealed recorded testimony from two witnesses interviewed in the late stages of the committee’s work, both of them close advisers to President Donald J. Trump who described conversations with him before and after Jan. 6.
Hope Hicks, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump in two different stints of his presidency as well as in his 2016 campaign, recalled her growing concern after the November 2020 election that “we were damaging his legacy.”
She raised this with Mr. Trump, who, she said then told her “something along the lines of, you know, nobody will care about my legacy if I lose. So, that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.”
At another point, the committee asked her about a text exchange in which she told a colleague that Mr. Trump had refused to issue a statement urging people against violence in the lead-up to Jan. 6.
She said that she had raised it with another top adviser, Eric Herschmann, who said that he had made the same recommendation directly to the president and that Mr. Trump had again refused to warn against violence. A person with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be named to avoid publicly contradicting Ms. Hicks said that the timing of their discussion was not the lead-up to the riot but the day it was taking place, and that Mr. Herschmann had been referencing his efforts to get Mr. Trump to disavow the violence.
At another point, the committee played testimony of former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, who described telling Mr. Trump that Jan. 6 was a “terrible day.”
She recalled him responding, “No. People are upset. They are very upset.”
Of course he was egging them on. He did it in public when he tweeted out that Pence had betrayed the country even as the thugs were trashing the Capitol.
This was the whole reason for the meeting:
The Committee released the 154 page Introductory Material to the Final Report of the Select Committee. You can read it here.
The 1,000 page full report is expected on Wednesday. Stay tuned.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to throw a little something in the old Christmas stocking it would be most appreciated.