A week after its final report, the House select committee continues to probe how the government handles the release of information. The panel’s latest hearing focused on efforts by Trump and his allies to exert pressure on state election officials in the hopes of overturning the presidential results, reports CBS News Congressional Correspondent Scott MacFarlane.
The committee’s new details come from emails and phone records the panel successfully fought to obtain in court. One such email shows that a Republican adviser to the campaign, Sidney Powell, talked to Trump on the phone the day after the election. The president’s “laughed at her crazy claims that foreign powers interfered in our election,” according to the new committee document. Powell also discussed the possibility of using “sophisticated means” to keep Trump in office, the committee said.
Other revelations in the 845-page document include evidence that Trump personally oversaw his allies’ plan to put forward fake slates of electors in states he lost, despite legal advice that doing so could violate the Constitution. The committee has referred Trump and others involved in the effort to the Justice Department for possible prosecution on charges of conspiracy to incite an insurrection and aiding an enemy of the United States. The report also recommends that congressional committees of jurisdiction create a formal mechanism for evaluating whether people who violate the Constitution should be barred from future federal or state office.
In another part of the investigation, the committee heard from an election official in Fulton County, Georgia, who said she and her colleagues were subjected to “extensive” pressure by Trump allies to find ways to fudge the vote count. In addition, the panel cited text messages between White House communications director Hope Hicks and Powell about her conspiratorial claims of foreign interference in the election at an outlandish post-election press conference. Powell texted Hicks that “the only way he’ll lose is if the Electoral College gets hijacked by fakes.”
The panel’s fourth and final public hearing will take place on Tuesday afternoon, when it will focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure state election officials and legislators into rejecting the certified presidential results. Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has promised to examine each of the prongs of Trump’s attempt to stay in power, including his bogus claims of voter fraud. He says each deserves the attention of Congress and the Justice Department.