WASHINGTON — A House committee investigating the assault on the U.S. Capitol promised revelations in the televised hearings that began last month.
It has so far delivered.
Here is a look at the most notable revelations in the six sessions that have been held:
Trump knew he’d lost: A slew of testimony shows that even after top-level administration and campaign aides had accepted and directly told Trump that he’d lost the election, he persisted with public claims it had been stolen or rigged.
Former Attorney General William Barr said in a videotaped deposition aired at the hearings that the FBI had looked into all the allegations and told the president they were “bull—-.”
But drop-the-mic testimony came from Richard Donoghue, a former No. 2 official in the Justice Department on Trump’s response after he and other senior DOJ officials told him there was nothing they could do because there was no evidence of widespread election fraud.
Donoghue testified that Trump essentially responded, “That’s not what I’m asking you to do. What I’m just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
Lawmakers sought pardons: GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks and Scott Perry asked for pardons from Trump, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Hutchinson said she heard that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had also asked for a pardon from the White House counsel’s office. Brooks has acknowledged he had done so, and others denied it.
Hutchinson’s testimony also revealed that longtime Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani and Meadows expressed interest after the Capitol attack in preemptive pardons for themselves, though they both denied that.
None of the people received pardons.
Trump wanted to go to the Capitol; Trump wanted to lead his supporters to the Capitol as the attack was underway, over the objections of then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Hutchinson testified.
