January 6 hearing: Trump was 'detached from reality' says Bill Barr
BBC
Donald Trump's top lawman worried that the his boss became "detached from reality" after the 2020 election, a congressional panel has heard.
Testimony from Bill Barr played at the 6 January Capitol riot inquiry revealed deep division at the Trump campaign over his claims of election fraud.
Two camps emerged - a "Team Normal" that accepted Mr Trump's loss, and loyalists who did not.
The panel aims to lay out Mr Trump's role in the riot.
The second of a series of public hearings, Monday's session was preceded by the announcement that a star witness - Mr Trump's former campaign manager Bill Stepien - would not be appearing because his wife had gone into labour.
Instead, his lawyer gave a statement on his behalf and Mr Stepien's previous private testimony was publicly played by the Democratic-led US House of Representatives select committee.
An ‘inebriated’ Giuliani urged Trump to falsely claim victory on election night
The Guardian
Rudy Giuliani was “apparently inebriated” on election night in November 2020 when he urged Donald Trump to declare prematurely and wrongly that he had beaten Democrat Joe Biden for the presidency.
Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice-chair of the congressional select committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 by extremist Trump supporters, declared as much during her opening remarks on Monday in the committee’s second public hearing of six in Washington DC. The first hearing was last Thursday.
“You will also hear testimony that Donald Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he won and insist that the vote counting stop, to falsely claim that everything was fraudulent,” Cheney said.
Trump knew there was no election fraud: Jan 6 panel – a timeline
Al Jazeera
In the second of several hearings aiming to present the findings of a congressional panel investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, lawmakers and witnesses stressed that former President Donald Trump knew that his election fraud allegations were false.
The committee featured on Monday testimonies from former Trump advisers and Justice Department officials who said they explicitly relayed to the ex-president that there was no election corruption.
Yet, Trump pressed on with his allegations that the election was stolen – accusations that lawmakers on the panel say were behind the Capitol riots, when Trump’s supporters stormed the building in an effort to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.