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FL’s Rep. Murphy: Trump tricked and inflamed his followers to attack the Capitol [1]

['Laura Cassels', 'More From Author', '- July']

Date: 2022-07-12  

U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, co-leading the seventh hearing of the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol, said Tuesday former President Donald Trump deceived, summoned, and inflamed his followers in a battle to stay in power despite losing his re-election bid.

The committee went on to present evidence of Trump’s work to spread the “big lie” about the election being stolen and his efforts with others to thwart the electoral process.

“We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that then-President Donald Trump lost in a free and fair election. And yet, President Trump insisted that his loss was due to fraud in the election process, rather than to the democratic will of the voters,” Murphy said in the hearing held in the Capitol. “The president continued to make this claim, despite being told again and again, by the courts, by the Justice Department, by his campaign officials, and by some of his closest advisors that the evidence did not support this assertion.

“This was the big lie, and millions of Americans were deceived by it,” Murphy continued. “Too many of our fellow citizens still believe it to this day. It is corrosive to our country and damaging to our democracy. As our committee has shown in prior hearings, following the election the president relentlessly pursued multiple interlocking lines of effort, all with a single goal: to remain in power despite having lost.

“The lines of effort were aimed at his loyal vice president Mike Pence, at state election and elected officials, and at the U.S. Department of Justice. The president pressured the vice president to obstruct the process to certify the election result, he demanded that state officials find him ‘enough votes’ to overturn the election outcome in that state, and he pressed the Department of Justice to find widespread evidence of fraud.

“When Justice officials told the president that such evidence did not exist, the president urged them to simply ‘declare’ that the election was corrupt.”

On Dec. 14, when all the states certified their election results, confirming Joe Biden’s victory, Trump and his allies turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Congress would convene to certify the national electoral outcome for Biden.

“In their warped view, this ceremonial event was the next and perhaps the last inflection point that could be used to reverese the outcome of the election before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. As President Trump put it, the vice president and enough members of Congress simply needed to summon the courage to act. To help them find that courage, the president called for backup,” Murphy said, alluding to testimony still ahead that members of the paramilitary extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers answered the call.

“Early in the morning of Dec. 19, the president sent out a tweet urging his followers to travel to Washington, D.C., for January 6. ‘Be there. Will be wild,’ the president wrote. … This tweet served as a call to action and in some cases as a call to arms for many of President Trump’s most loyal supporters. It’s clear the president intended the assembled crowd on January 6 to serve his goal.

“We will describe some of the president’s key actions on the evening of Jan. 5 and the morning of Jan. 6, including how the president edited and ad-libbed his speech that morning [in his Stop The Steal rally] at the Ellipse, directed the crowd to march to the Capitol, and spoke offscript in a way that further inflamed an already angry crowd.”

The hearing is continuing this afternoon and it may be viewed in its entirety on the YouTube channel of the U.S. House select committee investigating the attack, including its planning and its aftermath.

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[1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/07/12/fls-rep-murphy-trump-tricked-and-inflamed-his-followers-to-attack-the-capitol/

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