4 days in January: Trump push for Capitol coda to 2020 vote
Newslooks- WASHINGTON (AP)
It would have been something never quite before seen in America — a defeated president, Donald Trump, standing at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with a mob of supporters, some armed, contesting the election outcome.
“He’s going to look powerful,” mused Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to a young White House aide four days earlier.
But White House lawyers thought it was a “terrible” idea. Counsel Pat Cipollone warned that Trump could be charged with “every crime imaginable” if he joined mob on Capitol Hill trying to interfere with the certification.
In the end, Trump never made it to the Capitol on Jan. 6. His security refused to take him as rioters, some with weapons, laid siege to the building.
Furious, and stuck at the White House, Trump watched the insurrection on television.
The Jan. 6 hearings are providing dramatic new insight about Trump’s intentions as he told loyalists he would join them on a march down Pennsylvania Avenue to “fight like hell” for his presidency. This account is drawn largely from the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Her recollections from her close proximity to the president and his inner circle suggest Trump’s demands were not the brash desires of an impulsive commander in chief but part of his last-ditch plan for stopping Biden’s victory.
Trump and his allies quickly disputed Hutchinson’s account, and the former president conducted his own interview days later disparaging her with derisive commentary and nicknames.
This coming week, the committee is set to focus on Trump’s own actions and those of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys in allegedly leading the Capitol attack.
A look at what’s known about Trump’s plans to join the mob on Jan. 6: