Donald Trumps advisers told him election was lost, says January 6 committee

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Donald Trump was told repeatedly by advisers that he had lost the 2020 election but continued making false claims about voter fraud, leading Bill Barr, his former attorney-general, to question whether the former president had “become detached from reality”.

Barr’s comments came in testimony during a second public hearing by the bipartisan committee investigating last year’s attack on the US Congress.

Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair, said “numerous credible sources from the president’s inner circle” had told Trump in the months after the election that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn the result.

The committee also heard that, on the night of the election, a drunk Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s close allies, advised the former president to “just claim he won” on the night of the vote.

In some of the most damning testimony about Trump’s state of mind following the election, Barr told the committee: “I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff he has become detached from reality.'”

Members of the committee added that Trump used the false claims of election fraud to raise money from supporters. “The big lie was also the big rip-off,” said Zoe Lofgren, the Democratic representative from California.

Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chair, said: “Donald Trump lost an election, he knew he had lost an election, and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy.”

The hearing was the second in a series of public sessions held by the committee with an aim of focusing public attention on Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election and his role in inciting the riot on January 6.

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In the first hearing last week, a U.S. Capitol police officer described the chaotic scenes as pro-Trump protesters stormed Congress in an attempt to overturn the election results.

Members of the committee also showed evidence to suggest that the attack was carefully planned by the two far-right groups at the heart of it: the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. The leaders of both groups have since been charged with sedition.

Committee members had hoped on Monday to interview Bill Stepien, Trump’s former campaign manager. Stepien canceled at the last minute, citing a family emergency because his wife had gone into labor.

But his video testimony was detailed and damaging for his former boss. Stepien told the committee he had been part of “Team Normal” – a group of White House advisers who tried to push back against the president’s false accusations.

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