Jan. 6 committee focuses on Trump's election lies in Day 2 of hearings

The Trump campaign used the claims of election fraud to fundraise for a new Trump super PAC and other Trump-related entities all while promising supporters the money was going to go a "election defense fund" that didn't exist, the committee said Monday.

The committee played a video of Amanda Wick, a senior investigative counsel for the panel, explaining how between Election Day and Jan. 6, 2021, the Trump campaign sent "millions of fundraising emails" to supporters claiming that the "left-wing mob" was undermining the election and urging them to "fight back."

"The Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false yet they continued to barrage small dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called the official Election Defense Fund. The Select Committee discovered no such fund existed."

The video contained part of an interview the committee conducted with Gary Coby, the Trump campaign's digital director, who said that the defense fund was a "marketing tactic." Trump used this effort to generate $250 million.

Large chunks of the money wound up being allocated to different organizations, including the Save America PAC that Trump created right after the election and the Trump hotel collection, Wick said.

Wick said the Trump campaign sent out fundraising emails even on Jan. 6, during Trump's speech at the White House ellipse, before the riot at the Capitol unfolded.

A handful of GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill reacted to the Jan. 6 hearing Monday, with most tweeting about other issues throughout.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted a link to an article on a conservative site in which Jordan claims the committee altered a text message exchange between him and Mark Meadows when he was White House chief of staff.

Jordan and other Republicans tweeted during the hearing about high gas prices. Other tweeted about a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tweeted, "For the 3rd time in a week, I’m calling for a vote for stronger security for Supreme Court Justices—ALL of them. This isn’t partisan. The threat is real. Why is Speaker Pelosi blocking something that the Senate has already passed unanimously?"

The House Jan. 6 committee ended its second hearing on Monday by playing video clips of Jan. 6 participants explaining how Trump's voter fraud lies fueled their actions.

The first individual featured in the video was not named in the presentation, but he's Zachary Johnson, a Proud Boy from Florida who was known to online sleuths as #GogglesMan. Johnson, a 33-year-old from St. Petersburg, Florida, was arrested in January 2022. A federal grand jury indictment alleged that Johnson possessed both a sledge hammer and pepper spray, which he used to aid and abet an attack on officers.

"Fake election! They're gonna cheat us out of our vote?" he said on camera. "It ain't f------ happening."

Another man complains about Dominion voting machines, saying he "can't really trust" the software, and a woman said she's "standing up" because she believed her voting machine was hacked.

In police body camera footage, a man confronts an officer and repeats Trump's talking points about the election.

"200,000 people that weren't even registered voted," the man claims.

"I don't want to say that what we're doing is right," says a man who appears to be filming himself inside the Capitol. "But if the election is being stolen, what is it going to take?"

Cheney, in her closing statement, outlined what the next committee hearings will focus on.

"Today’s hearing was narrowly focused, and we will move on in the coming days to President Trump’s broader planning for January 6th, including his plan to corrupt the Department of Justice, and his detailed planning, with lawyer John Eastman, to pressure the vice president, state Legislatures, state officials and others to overturn the election." 

It was among the first mentions of John Eastman, the lawyer who wrote memos arguing then-Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election. Eastman has attempted to shield records from the committee, though days earlier he was ordered by a federal judge to turn over about 170 documents.

Schmidt said that Trump’s tweet about his work as an election official in Philadelphia escalated the threats made against him.

In November 2020, Trump tweeted that Schmidt "refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty" in Philadelphia's election.

Before the tweet, Schmidt said he received more generic threats; afterwards, the threats intensified in nature and target.

“After the president tweeted at me by name — calling me out the way that he did — the threats became much more specific, much more graphic and included not just me by name, but included members of my family, by name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home, just every bit of detail that you can imagine,” Schmidt testified on Monday. “That was what changed with that tweet.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., echoed Ben Ginsberg's testimony that there were no cases, out of 62, in which Trump's campaign was able to convince a court that there were widespread irregularities in the election.

"Over and over, judges — appointed by Democrats and Republicans alike — directly rebutted this false narrative," Lofgren said. "They called out the Trump campaign’s lack of evidence for its claims. The judges did this even in cases where they could have thrown out the lawsuit without writing a word."

Lofgren quoted a Trump-appointed judge in Pennsylvania who said, "Charges require specific allegations and proof. We have neither here."

"Another Trump-appointed judge warned that if cases like these succeeded, 'Any disappointed loser in a presidential election, able to hire a team of clever lawyers, could flag claimed deviations from election results and cast doubt on election results,'" Lofgren said.

She added, "The rejection of President Trump’s litigation efforts was overwhelming. Twenty-two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents — including 10 appointed by President Trump and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges — dismissed the president’s claims."

Ben Ginsberg, a prolific GOP election attorney who worked on President George W. Bush's post-election legal effort in 2000, testified that Trump had his opportunity to contest the results of the election in court and showed no "real" evidence of voter fraud.

“They did have their day in court," Ginsberg testified during questioning from Lofgren.

Referencing the more than 60 court cases Trump's campaign filed, Ginsberg said: "In no instance did a court find that the charges of election fraud were real."

Former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican election official, said they carefully investigated even the most "absurd" claims of voter fraud in their administration of the 2020 in election, including the claim that more than 8,000 dead people had voted in Philadelphia.

“Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Philadelphia, there wasn’t evidence of 8," Schmidt said. "We took seriously every case that was referred to us — no matter how fantastical, no matter how absurd — and took every one seriously."

Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., who is attending Monday’s hearing, said she was struck by the sheer number of officials and advisers, including then-Attorney General William Barr, who told Donald Trump that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.  

"What struck me most is the number of people around Donald Trump who told him the truth, who told him all of his claims of fraud and all of the things people were trying to throw out there were not substantiated, no evidence,” Dean told NBC News during a break in the hearing. 

Instead of listening to "Team Normal," Dean said, Trump pushed them out and heeded the advice of Rudy Giuliani and other figures on the right who were pushing the false claims of voter fraud.

There was a "disintegrating group of advisers and the corrupt craziness of Rudy Giuliani’s team," Dean said. "The rest were sort of dismissed or quit because he [Trump] grew increasingly unhappy with that they were saying. They were saying the truth and he didn’t want to hear it.”

Dean served as an impeachment manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate and was part of the group of Democratic lawmakers who were trapped in the gallery above the House floor during the Jan. 6 attack.

She has attended both Jan. 6 hearings.