At least ten Republican members of Congress attended a White House meeting on 21 December along with Donald Trump with an agenda to pressure Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election, a member of the Jan 6 committee said.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Democratic representative Stephanie Murphy of Florida explained that the meeting was attended by the then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, along with other top Republicans.
She said the 21 December meeting was part of an effort to “disseminate [Mr Trump’s] false claims and to encourage members of the public to fight the outcome on January 6”.
The members at the meeting discussed election theories pushed by former president’s lawyer John Eastman, who argued to various members of the inner Trump circle that Mr Pence had the power to send the electors back to the states.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson previously told the committee that some Republican members "felt that [Pence] had the authority to ... [send] the electors back to the States”.
For the first time on Tuesday, the committee aired much-anticipated testimony from the president’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who said he thought Mr Trump should have conceded after the Electoral College certification on 14 December 2020.
“If your question is ‘did I believe he should concede the election at a point in time’, yes, I did,” Mr Cipollone said.
“I believe [Republican Senate] Leader McConnell went on to the floor of the Senate, I believe in mid-December and basically said the process is done – that would be in line with my thinking on these things,” Mr Cipollone told the committee in pre-recorded testimony on Friday but which was first revealed publically on Tuesday.
Mr Trump’s former senior campaign adviser Brad Parscale also blamed the death of a woman in the Capitol riots on the former president’s heated rhetoric, text messages shared at the hearing revealed.
Mr Parscale appeared to be referring to the death of Ashli Babbit, who was fatally shot by law enforcement during the deadly insurrection.
In the messages he told a fellow Trump adviser that he “felt guilty” for helping Mr Trump win the White House, and described him as “a sitting president asking for civil war.”
