“Trump is a 76-year-old man, he is responsible for his actions,” says Republican

parliamentarians of United States accused this Tuesday (12) of the then president Donald Trump of inciting a crowd of supporters to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a last-ditch attempt to stay in power while Congress formally attested to its electoral defeat.

Members of a select House committee investigating the attack said Trump was told by his administration and campaign advisers that he had lost the 2020 presidential election and should recognize Trump’s victory. Joe Biden but he chose to disregard her advice.

In video testimony, witnesses described a tense six-hour meeting in December 2020 where Trump ignored his staff members and sided with outside advisers who spurred him on to continue issuing baseless allegations of election fraud.

Trump was responsible for the ensuing chaos, they pointed out.

“President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He’s not an impressionable child… He’s responsible for his own actions and his own choices,” said Republican Representative Liz Cheney, vice chair of the panel.

“The strategy is to blame people whom the former president’s aides called ‘crazy’ for what Donald Trump himself did. This, of course, is nonsense,” Liz added of the Capitol Hill episode.

Committee members said Trump incited the riot by refusing to admit he lost the election and by making comments on his social media, such as the one on December 19, 2020, when he asked his supporters to gather in Washington for a “major protest.” ”.

“Be there, be wild.”

The committee’s seven Democrats and two Republicans used the hearings to build a case showing that Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat in the November 2020 election go far beyond normal politics and constitute illegal conduct.

Trump, who has hinted that he may seek the White House again in 2024, denies any wrongdoing and falsely claims he lost only because of widespread fraud that benefited Biden, a Democrat.

“You are not tough enough”

The hearing also served to analyze links between right-wing militant groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the internet conspiracy movement QAnon, and Trump and his allies.

The hearing featured video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House attorney, who spoke with committee investigators for eight hours behind closed doors last Friday.

Cipollone said he asked Trump to relent.

The committee played recorded testimonies from Cipollone and other Trump administration figures describing a furious meeting on Dec. Overstock.com, encouraged him to fight the election result.

“I don’t think any of these people were giving the president good advice. I didn’t understand how they got in,” Cipollone claimed.

The meeting lasted more than six hours, ending after midnight.

Giuliani, who was escorted out of the White House, said in video testimony that his argument was, “You guys aren’t tough enough. Or maybe I put it another way: you guys are a bunch of sissies, excuse the expression. I’m pretty sure the word was used.”

The attack on the Capitol, after a speech Trump gave at a rally outside the White House, delayed Joe Biden’s election certification by hours, injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths.

The committee also interpreted the testimony of a former Twitter employee describing his fear after Trump’s tweet in December.

“It felt like a mob was being organized and she was gathering her weaponry, her logic and her reasoning why she was prepared to fight,” the official recalled.

About 800 people, including members of both right-wing groups, have been accused of participating in the Capitol riot, with about 250 guilty pleas so far.

Trump and his supporters, as well as many Republicans in Congress, describe the January 6 panel as a “political witch hunt,” but the panel’s supporters say it is a necessary investigation into a violent threat to democracy.

(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Doina Chiacu and Rose Horowitch; editing by Andy Sullivan and Howard Goller)