On this edition of Your Call, we'll continue our discussion about the House committee hearings to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
According to interviews with Donald Trump's inner circle, there were competing factions in the Trump White House: one that tried to convince him that the election results were legitimate, and the other, led by Rudy Giuliani, who continually pushed the big lie. Former Attorney General Bill Bar described Trump as "detached from reality" in his efforts to overturn the election. In response, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer tweeted: Yet when Barr resigned, he praised Trump to the hilt, and never revealed he thought Trump was either “detached from reality” or willfully lying, or both.
The committee also followed the money and revealed that Trump and his allies scammed money from supporters over false claims of election fraud. The campaign raised $250 million after sending out relentless emails to supporters, sometimes 25 per day. The last fundraising email on the topic was sent a half-hour before the Capitol attack.
Guests:
Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters, and author of the monthly Nation column, Morbid Symptoms
Donald Sherman, senior vice president and chief counsel at Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, or CREW
Web Resources:
Rolling Stone: Trump Scammed Supporters Out of $250 Million for Nonexistent Fraud Fund
Vox: 4 things we learned from Monday’s January 6 hearing
The Nation: Trump's Coup Plot Relied on Guiliani's Inebriated Lies
The New York Times: Trump’s inner circle pushed back as he claimed the election was stolen
The Guardian: How a documentary film-maker became the January 6 panel’s star witness
The Nation: Where the January 6 insurrection hearings go next