Donald Trump personally admitted to aides that he had lost the 2020 election and demanded that they hide that truth from the US public, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has told the January 6 committee.
Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on that issue was played by the committee for the first time on Thursday as the panel presents its latest findings pubicly and is reportedly planning to subpoena the former president himself for testimony.
According to Ms Hutchinson, Mr Trump spoke to Mr Meadows in December of 2020, shortly after the Supreme Court declined to take up his challenge to the election results in several battleground states.
Mr Trump, she testified, "had said something to the effect of, 'I don't want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don't want people to know that we lost.'"
That comment was paired with testimony from Alyssa Farah, a former member of Mr Trump’s White House communications team. Ms Farah testified that in one post-election meeting with Mr Trump in Oval Office, the president quipped out loud while watching coverage of Mr Biden: “Can you believe I effing lost to this guy?”
The committee had previously laid out how many of Mr Trump’s closest advisers has acknowledged the reality of his defeat long before Jan 6, and that his top insiders such as Roger Stone and Steve Bannon had known of a plan for the president to simply declare victory before the results were counted or if it appeared he was losing on election night. But to hear two of Mr Trump’s top White House aides testify that the words came directly from his mouth are new.
Knowledge that he had lost adds a new layer of potential criminality to the actions of Mr Trump and his team to draw thousands of his supporters, many armed, to the US Capitol on January 6 where many argue they were incited to riot by the president’s words. But it also provides ammunition to those in Fulton County, Georgia, investigating the efforts of the Trump legal team (and potentially ex-president himself) to pressure state officials to interfere in the election there.
