Washington — Rudolph W. Giuliani seemed drunk and was making a beeline for the president.
It was election night in 2020, and President Donald J. Trump saw his re-election bid delayed with each vote. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and Trump’s private lawyer, has spewed a conspiracy theory, according to video testimony produced by the House Commission investigating the January 6 raid on the Capitol.
According to Jason Miller, one of the president’s top campaign aides, Giuliani said when he found him, “they are stealing it from us.” That night. “Where do all the votes come from? I have to say I won.”
Several times that night, Mr. Trump’s own family and the closest adviser urged him to reject Giuliani’s advice. Mr Miller told him not to “declare victory” without better understanding the numbers. “It’s too early to make such a declaration,” said his campaign manager, Bill Stepien. Even his daughter Ivanka Trump told him the results were still being counted.
But in the end, Giuliani was the only one who told the president what he wanted to hear that night.
Giuliani’s anger over stolen ballots was reflected in the president’s own conspiracy theory of fraudulent elections, public and private, and cared for long before votes were counted. They caused a month-long assault on democracy and, in the Commission’s view, mercilessly led the mob who broke the Capitol in hopes of suspending the recognition of Joseph R. Byden Jr. as president.
Mr. Trump told Miller, Stepien and others that they were weak and wrong. In a conversation in the reception area of the White House settlement, he told them he was going “in the other direction.”
Shortly thereafter, Mr. Trump did just that and appeared on the camera at 2:21 am in the East Room in front of the American flag wall.
He denounced the election in his speech and called the vote “a fraud against the American people” and “a puzzle” to the country. “We were preparing to win this election,” he told his supporters and television viewers. “Frankly, we won this election.”
The White House’s internal accounts that night were collected by the Commission on January 6th. At the second hearing on Monday, the Commission played a vivid video of Mr. Trump denying warnings from his closest aides and advisors and going out to declare a winner.
Testimony from those closest to the former president effectively documented the formal beginning of Mr. Trump’s allegations that the election was stolen.
Read more about the January 6 House Committee hearing
Mr. Trump wasn’t shy about that expectation. A few weeks before the election day, he predicted “a scam you’ve never seen.” And even while the votes were being counted, Mr. Trump began to convey the message. However, the testimony provided at the hearing on Monday was the cornerstone of the debate the Commission was about to make. Mr. Trump knew that fraudulent election claims were not true and made them anyway.
“That’s the ultimate benefit,” said Mississippi Democrat Benny Thompson, chairman of the Commission. “We held an election in which Mr. Trump was defeated, but he refused to accept the consequences of the democratic process.”
In the weeks following election night, Mr. Trump was repeatedly told by top aides that his allegations of fraud were groundless.
A long video by former Attorney General William P. Barr said the commission would defeat the president’s alleged fraud “Avalanche” “it’s like hitting a mole because something will come out someday.” I emphasized that fact with a clip. The next day, it will be another matter. “He said the fraudulent allegations from Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani were” completely false and stupid, and usually based on completely false information. “
But the depiction of the White House committee on Election Night was the most compelling story of the day. And the testimony by Trump’s aide that he was suspicious of Mr. Trump’s allegations of fraud was impressive. In particular, some of the same aides publicly supported the president and questioned the outcome of the election.
Shortly after 11:15 pm, Fox News called Mr. Biden to Arizona. This had a huge impact on Mr. Trump’s campaign. In the commission’s video, using interviews with Ivanka Trump, her husband, Jared Kushner, and several of the president’s campaign aides, the sense of congratulations in the White House’s dwelling is tough from an optimistic perspective. I caught the change in anxiety.
“I was disappointed with Fox and worried that the data and numbers might not be accurate,” Miller testified, explaining the mood of the president’s supporters.
After the Arizona call, Mr. Trump’s team was fine, according to previous reports about the night. Mr. Trump told Fox News to somehow reverse the course. Mr. Miller called the network contacts. Kushner contacted the owner of the network.
“Hey, Rupert,” said the president’s son-in-law to his cell phone when Rupert Murdoch, the head of the network’s parent company, answered the phone.
But soon, according to Stephen, another concern will arise for a group of aides, later called “Team Normal.” They received a disturbing warning: Giuliani drank too much and went upstairs to the settlement where he was watching the president return.
Some of Mr. Trump’s aides tried to carry out the interference, but Giuliani, who stared at the screen of the campaign war room and claimed that the president had beaten Michigan, was not upset.
He demanded to meet the president, according to a former aide familiar with the conversation.
Mr. Stepien confronted Mr. Giuliani. How do you win? He asked him. Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff, was also there and told Giuliani that it was wrong to say that Trump had beaten Michigan.
“That’s not true, Rudy!” He shouted, according to someone familiar with the conversation. (Mr. Meadows will almost immediately accept the president’s fraud charges, both publicly and privately, as documented in a text message discovered by the Commission.)
The White House Chief of Staff soon failed in efforts to keep Giuliani away from him. In a video presentation, Giuliani fired rivals who tried to prevent him from giving advice to the president.
“I spoke to the president,” he told a commission investigator. “They may have existed, but I talked to the president several times that night.”
Few White House Chiefs of Staff were made public with doubts about the president’s chances in the days following the election. In fact, it was the opposite. In a conference call with reporters the day after the election, Stepien said he believed Trump would win 30,000 votes in Arizona when the count was over.
Mr. Trump said he would win the election, even if Pauling showed him behind Mr. Biden in a political situation suffering from Mr. Trump’s moody and volatile performance during a coronavirus pandemic. I was saying months. But he still began to question the reliability of mail ballots, which became more widely available for pandemics, much earlier this year.
A few weeks before the election day, the president, who was warned to be counted later than the same day’s vote cast on Mr. Trump, along with the ballots cast in the early polls, simply went out and won. The declaration surprised the adviser. ..
“I want to stop all votes,” Trump said in a statement early in the morning of November 4. “I don’t want you to find the ballot and add it to the list at 4am. Okay?”
Later that day, Ivanka Trump sent the text “Keep fighting faith!” To the chain, including Mr. Meadows. Mr. Trump immediately began telling Giuliani to start collecting the information he could.
By Friday, the leading data leaders in the Trump campaign revealed that the numbers for his success were simply not there. The next day, Stepien, Miller, and other aides were sent by Kushner to tell Trump that the odds of success from an ongoing challenge were very low.
Mr. Trump was calm when the man arrived at the White House dwelling, but he wasn’t interested in paying attention to the warning. He continued to plot elections after the hearing on Monday, Random 12-page response In a simple conclusion:
“They were fooled!” He wrote.
