The House Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday tied Donald Trump to leaders of the violent assault on the Capitol and revealed that a march on the building was long a part of his planned coup to remain in power despite losing reelection.
Committee Chair Bennie Thompson said it is the responsibility of leaders in a democracy to accept the results of an election they lose and tell their supporters that it is over and time to move on and work toward the next election.
“He went the opposite way. He seized on the anger that he already stoked,” said Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. “Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington, D.C., and ultimately spurred that mob to wage a violent attack.”
Committee member Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, said Trump and his allies pushed to overturn the election on Jan. 6, with Trump on the inside leaning on Vice President Mike Pence to simply throw out votes from states Trump had narrowly lost and declare Trump the winner; with extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers on the outside plotting to attack, invade and occupy the Capitol; and with Trump’s enraged mob on its way to the Capitol to demonstrate Trump’s strength.
“All of these efforts would converge and explode on Jan. 6,” Raskin said.
Stephen Ayres, 39, one of the hundreds of Trump supporters who were arrested and charged with illegally entering the Capitol, said he came to Washington specifically because Trump told him to and then marched on the Capitol for the same reason.
“The president got everybody riled up. Told everybody to go down,” he testified Tuesday, adding that he had previously been focused on his family and his job at a cabinet-making company. He said he only left the Capitol after Trump’s eventual tweet asking his supporters to do so.
“If I had done that earlier in the day … I wouldn’t be in this bad situation,” said Ayres, who last month pleaded guilty in federal court. “I lost my job since all this happened. ... It changed my life. Not for the good.”
A second witness, former Oath Keepers publicist Jason Van Tatenhove, said the group was pushing for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act so they could participate in Trump’s coup attempt. He pointed out that Trump’s mob had set up a gallows with which to hang the vice president.
“This could have been the spark that could have started another civil war, and no one would have won that,” he said.
