What we learned on Day 7 of the Jan. 6 hearings

Judy Woodruff:

The January 6 Committee hearing this afternoon, the seventh public meeting, ended with a dramatic revelation.

Vice Chair Liz Cheney said former President Trump recently called a witness the committee was talking to, an action the committee referred to the Department of Justice as potential witness tampering.

Over the course of three hours, the committee also laid out in detail a series of events leading up to the insurrection on January 6. That began weeks earlier in a mid-December White House meeting that one former aide called unhinged, as allies of then-President Trump repeated baseless claims about election fraud and urged action to overturn the results.

Later that night, Mr. Trump sent a tweet that one committee member called a call to arms for his supporters. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there. Will be wild," he wrote. As the committee showed, supporters of the former president, including members of a far right militia group, heeded his call.

One person even predicted a Red Wedding. That's a pop culture reference to a massacre on January 6.

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, drew the connection and concern for the future.

Jason Van Tatenhove, Former Oath Keepers Spokesperson:

If a president that is willing to try to instill and encourage, to whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and deceit and snake oil, and regardless of the human impact, what else is he going to do if he gets elected again? All bets are off at that point.

Judy Woodruff:

Representative Stephanie Murphy of Florida read from a text exchange between two Trump campaign advisers, including one-time campaign manager Brad Parscale, who, after the events of January 6, blamed his former boss.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL):

Mr. Parscale said — quote — "This is about Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country, a sitting president asking for civil war."

And then when he said: "This week, I feel guilty for helping him when," Katrina Pierson responded: "You did what you felt right at the time, and, therefore, it was right."

Mr. Parscale added, "Yes, but a woman is dead" and, "Yes, if I was Trump and I knew my rhetoric killed someone."

When Ms. Pierson replied, "It wasn't the rhetoric, Mr. Parscale said, "Katrina, yes, it was."

Judy Woodruff:

And for more on what we learned from the hearing, I'm joined by our congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, and White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez.

Good evening to both of you.

Lisa, you were in the hearing room. Let's start by talking about that dramatic confrontation inside the White House. It was December 2020. It was all about whether and how to overturn the election. Tell us more.

Lisa Desjardins:

We're now at the point today where the committee is going chronologically right up to January 6.

And this important moment happened in the middle of December, after the attorney general had already said there was no reason to believe there was fraud worth overturning the election, already had dismissed what the president, then Trump, had been saying.

So let's take him inside who was in this meeting. Four people in particular in this meeting were surprise guests to many of the staffers in the White House, Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney at different times. And there you also see four other — three other people, including Michael Flynn, former security adviser, but then he did not have a position in the White House.

There, you also see all of the people there who were advising him, Sidney Powell included — them, and then Patrick Byrne on the end, who's the CEO of Overstock.com. Those four people, the testimony today was that it wasn't clear they actually had been invited to the White House. They somehow at the last minute were able to get into the Oval Office.

They all presented, the testimony today said, conspiracy theories that ran the gamut, pushing the president even to do things like declare martial law, to seize election machines, those kinds of things.

Also coming into the Oval Office during this meeting then were actual White House staffers. There you see some of them who were involved. You have Eric Herschmann, the attorney, the staff, secretary, Lyons. You see Mark Meadows, chief of staff, in and out, and the president's White House counsel, Pat Cipollone.

They were — Cipollone. They were pushing back at the four others in what was described in an extensive montage of bites as a very hostile confrontation. Let's listen to how they played it out in the hearing today.

Pat Cipollone, Former Trump White House Counsel:

I opened the door and I walked in. I saw General Flynn, I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. I was not happy to see the people in the Oval Office.

Question:

Was the meeting tense?

Derek Lyons, Former White House Staff Secretary:

Oh, yes. It was not a casual meeting.

Question:

Explain.

Derek Lyons:

At times, there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other. It wasn't just sort of people sitting around on a couch, like, chitchatting.

Sidney Powell, Former Attorney For President Trump:

Cipollone and Herschmann and whoever the other guy was showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the president.

Eric Herschmann, Former White House Attorney:

I think that it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there.

Again, people walk in. It was late at night. It had been a long day. And what they were proposing, I thought, was nuts.

Rudy Guiliani, Former Attorney For President Donald Trump:

I'm going to categorically describe it as, you guys are not tough enough, or maybe, put it another way, you're a bunch of (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Excuse the expression. But that's — I'm almost certain the word was used.

Lisa Desjardins:

That was essentially a battle for the soul of the White House, as that hours-long meeting ran on and on.

After it ended, Judy, around 1:42 in the morning came the tweet that you talked about earlier tonight, that idea of the president asking people to come to January 6 for a wild protest. That tweet was sent out right after that contentious meeting.

Judy Woodruff:

And, Lisa, the committee is charging that the president did more than just send out that tweet about a wild protest. What more are they saying?

Lisa Desjardins:

That's right.

As you get closer to January 6, here's some more of what the committee said. Steve Bannon, the president's adviser, longtime adviser, was on the phone with the president, they said White House call logs showed, the morning of January 5. Now, also on January 5, I want to remind viewers what Steve Bannon said on his broadcast show. Listen to this quote.

Steve Bannon, Former White House Chief Strategist:

All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.

It's all converging. And now we're on, as I say, the point of attack, right, the point of attack tomorrow. I will tell you this. It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen, OK? It's going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is, strap in.

Lisa Desjardins:

So, Steve Bannon had spoken with President Trump before he made that statement. He spoke with President Trump again that evening.

Also, the evening of January 5, the committee wanted to point out there was a rally down the street from the White House, one that some of the advisers of President Trump was full of the crazies, people that had extreme views.

There, you see video that we saw in the hearing today. Also, testimony we have heard was that President Trump opened the doors of the Oval Office to try and hear that rally from where he sat.

So, again, leading up to January 6, the very day before, you have his advisers talking to him and talking about sort of an extreme day ahead on the 6th.

Judy Woodruff:

And, Lisa, we know there were two witnesses today, one of them a member of the — or former member, I should say, of this extremist white nationalist group the Oath Keepers, the other one, someone who took part in the Capitol attack.

Lisa Desjardins:

That's right.

You played that concern earlier from the former member of the Oath Keepers, who was not present at the Capitol on January 6. He wasn't with the group then. But he said, this was, in fact, not just a militia group, but a violent militia group.

Then we heard from another man, Stephen Ayres. He's from Ohio. He said he was watching social media leading up to January 6, and he believed that the election was stolen. He says he no longer sees it that way. But the committee asked him exactly why he did what he did on January 6, and here's what he said.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy:

So, why did you decide to march to the Capitol?

Stephen Ayres, Pleaded Guilty to Disorderly Conduct: Well, basically, the president got everybody riled up, told everybody to head on down. So we basically were just following what he said.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy:

Did you think that the president would be marching with you?

Stephen Ayres:

Yes, I think everybody thought he was going to be coming down. He said in his speech kind of like he's going to be there with us. So, I mean, I think — I believed it.

Lisa Desjardins:

And Mr. Ayers has yet to be sentenced.

He will be sentenced in September. To that question of whether the president wanted a riotous crowd to come to the Capitol, the committee today is trying to make the case it seems that this was not unintentional passions that he inflamed, but something very intentional.

I want to also call up, if we can, a draft tweet that the committee says it uncovered from that group of advisers who wanted things like martial law, and they said this tweet shows that the president signed off — this was never sent out, but something that the president, Trump, himself saw, claiming — before the January 6 rally, asking people to march to the Capitol.

So, the case they're trying to make in the committee here is that, in fact, this was an intentional march on the Capitol that President Trump wanted to lead.

Another note, Judy, this was actually an emotional day, I think, for some of the Capitol Police officers who were in there today. They did shake hands, two of the officers — one of the officers, shake hands with Mr. Ayers, with the Oath Keeper.

And talking to them afterward, they said that they — their lives are forever changed by January 6. Those men have lives that have been changed as well. One of the officers, Harry Dunn, told me — and I saw the look in his eyes, Judy, when he looked across at the man who had broken into the Capitol and attacked him and other officers who had broken into the Capitol.

Harry Dunn said: "I'm not sure what I felt, but it might have been anger. I'm still processing."

So it was an emotional day certainly at the end of that hearing.

Judy Woodruff:

It certainly had to be for them.

And, quickly, I want to bring in our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez.

So, Laura, how does what we learned today fit into this larger picture that the committee is pulling together of what President Trump did and any potential criminal charges against him?

Laura Barrón-López:

Those two things that Lisa just mentioned, the draft tweet that the president saw, as well as a testimony from Stephen Ayres, saying that he was just following former President Trump's lead, and then that was the reason he was there, that could potentially inform — if the Justice Department decides to charge the former president, it could inform an obstruction of congressional proceedings charge.

Now, that's because that would potentially prove that the president was trying to stop the lawful certification of the 2020 vote. Another one that was revealed today was that Congresswoman Liz Cheney said that, since the last hearing, the president tried to call a witness which we have not heard from yet, and that they have referred that to the Justice Department as potential witness tampering.

She said that the committee takes that very seriously. So that could potentially be another charge. But, again, we don't know if the Justice Department is going to pursue this. Now, one important piece of context here, as the hearings are happening, as these talk of potential charges against the former president, is that President Trump just as recently as June said that he would, if elected again, pardon these January 6 rioters, people involved in the insurrection, because he believes that they are patriots.

And Congressman Jamie Raskin said to the public that those — that potential for Republicans and that — the Republican Party along with Trump to continue down the road of authoritarianism could be a big problem.

One final thing is that "NewsHour" can report that, a week from Thursday, we expect what is going to be the final hearing in this series. There is the potential for more hearings, and it's going to be focused specifically on the 187 minutes of when President Trump was not putting out any statements as the insurrection was ongoing.

Judy Woodruff:

So these hearings are continuing.

Laura Barrón-López, Lisa Desjardins, we thank you both.