House investigators have tried to make a methodical case that President Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election led directly to the insurrection by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The panel investigating the attack has held the first two in a series of hearings, providing its initial findings after a yearlong probe and more than 1,000 interviews.
The committee is trying to establish that Trump pushed lies about widespread election fraud despite hearing clear evidence that his claims were not true. Future hearings will review Trump's efforts to overturn the election in the weeks ahead of the insurrection.
What we've learned so far
Video clips of Trump aides describing conversations with then-President Trump have been played, detailing what allegedly happened that day as Trump saw he had lost to President Joe Biden. As aides tried to tell Trump he had lost, Trump's then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Trump he should declare victory.
Election investigations turned up empty
After election night, the Department of Justice began investigating Donald Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud. States and localities which did checks did not find evidence to support the then-president's claims. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr resigned from office after he publicly said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Barr said that Trump was becoming angry and “detached from reality.”
Barr said that when he told Trump “how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”
Trump fundraised off of false claims, raising hundreds of millions of dollars after the election.
“Not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Ripoff,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the panel.
What's next
The panel will describe Trump's efforts to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay the electoral count illegally during Thursday's hearing.
Rep. Cheney spoke in a video released on the Select Committee's Facebook page laying out more on the gravity they see in the situation. Cheney said a federal judge has said Trump likely violated multiple federal statutes.
