JIM BRAUDE: Tonight on Greater Boston, what might be the final January 6 hearing is upon us, and part eight of the Select Committee's series will focus on just what was going on in the White House as Donald Trump refused to call off the Capitol rioters for a full 187 minutes.

But before we get to the possible finale, we learned a lot over the past six weeks of hearings, some things we knew in part, but got a much fuller picture of, and some were entirely new information.

So if you missed any of the big moments, here's a recap of our past recaps starting with day one, when we saw dramatic police body camera footage of the attacks that was never before made public.

And we heard from Capitol Officer Caroline Edwards, who described how she was knocked unconscious by rioters and then returned to witness some of fellow Officer Brian Sicknick's final moments.

- What I saw was just a war scene, it was something like I had seen out of the movies.

I, I couldn't believe my eyes.

There were officers on the ground, you know, they were bleeding, they were throwing up, they were, you know, they had...

I mean I saw friends with blood all over their faces, I was slipping in people's blood.

Um, you know, I, I was catching people as they fell, I... you know, I was... it was... carnage, it was chaos.

All of the sudden, I see movement to the left of me, and I turned and it was Officer Sicknick with his head in his hands, and he was ghostly pale.

He turned just about as pale as this sheet of paper.

And so I looked back to see what had hit him, what had happened.

And that's when I got sprayed in the eyes as well.

I was taken to be decontaminated by another officer, but we didn't get the chance because we were then tear gassed.

BRAUDE: In day two of the Committee hearings, the committee set out to show that the people closest to Donald Trump told him over and over again that he'd lost the 2020 election, and his voter fraud claims were nothing more than conspiracy theories, but the president kept peddling them anyway.

- This is a fraud on the American public.

This is an embarrassment to our country.

We were getting ready to win this election, frankly, we did win this election.

(cheers and applause) - I tried to, again, put this in perspective and to try to put it in very clear terms for the president.

And I said something to the effect of, "Sir, we've done dozens of investigations, "hundreds of interviews.

"The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed."

- I was somewhat demoralized, because I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with... he's become detached from reality.

BRAUDE: The committee focused on picking apart The Big Lie claim by claim, starting with the one about the Atlanta election workers counting thousands of illegal ballots brought in via suitcases.

We found that the suitcase full of ballots, the alleged black suitcase that was being seen pulled from under the table, was actually an official lock box where ballots were kept safe.

Nothing irregular happened in the county, and the allegations made by Mr. Giuliani were false.

Then there was the whole thing about a truck driver bringing in hundreds of thousands of fraudulent mail-in ballots from New York to Pennsylvania.

- We looked at both ends, both the people who load the truck and the people who unload the truck, and that allegation was not supported by the evidence.

BRAUDE: And as for Trump's claims about Dominion voting machines changing Trump votes to Biden votes, former Attorney General Bill Barr, he took on that one.

- I specifically raised that Dominion voting machines, which I found to be among the most disturbing allegations, disturbing in the sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations.

But they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption in the system, and that their votes didn't count, and that these machines, controlled by somebody else, were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense, and it was being laid out there, and I told him that it was, that it was crazy stuff, and they were wasting their time on that.

BRAUDE: And when it came to the stories of thousands of dead people voting in my hometown of Philadelphia, one of the city's former commissioners, the only Republican, by the way, he was clear.

- Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters (clears throat) voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn't evidence of eight.

BRAUDE: But beyond all the election lies, the committee also laid out how Trump and his allies essentially stole money from supporters, promising it would go toward fighting the 2020 results, but then funneling it to other places entirely.

Between Election Day and January 6, the Trump campaign sent millions of fundraising emails to Trump supporters, sometimes as many as 25 a day.

The emails claimed the "left-wing mob" was undermining the election, implored supporters to "step up to protect the integrity of the election," and encouraged them to "fight back," encouraging them to donate to something called the Official Election Defense Fund.

The select committee discovered no such fund existed.

On November 9, 2020, President Trump created a separate entity called the Save America PAC.

Most of the money raised went to this newly-created PAC, not to election-related litigation.

The select committee discovered that the Save America PAC made millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations, including $1 million to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows' charitable foundation, $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, a conservative organization which employs several former Trump administration officials, $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection, and over $5 million to Event Strategies Inc, the company that ran President Trump's January 6 rally on the Ellipse.

- All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats, which is what they're doing.

- The emails continued through Jan 6, even as President Trump spoke on the Ellipse.

- Free America!

- 30 minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached.

(rioting, shouting) BRAUDE: Day three of the January 6 hearings was all about Mike Pence, and the target put on his back, or neck, by the actions of Donald Trump.

But while the hearing was billed as focusing on the pressure the then-president put on Pence to illegally overturn the 2020 election results on his behalf, much of today's testimony focused on another man.

- John Eastman.

- Mr. Eastman.

- Dr. Eastman.

- Dr. Eastman.

BRAUDE: John Eastman, an attorney Trump found on Fox News, who, as the committee laid out today, was the driving force in trying to get Pence to overturn the election results and give Trump a second term in office.

- All we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at 1:00, he let the legislatures of the state look into this, so we get to bottom of it, and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not.

BRAUDE: It was John Eastman who, according to a bunch of witnesses we heard from today, first came up with the decertification idea, and relentlessly pushed it to anyone who would listen.

- There was no basis in the constitution or laws of the United States at all, for the theory espoused by Mr. Eastman at all, none.

- I said you're gonna turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that, your theory is, this is how you're gonna invalidate their votes because you think the election was stolen?

And I said, "They're not gonna tolerate that."

I said, "You're gonna cause riots in the streets."

And he said words to the effect of, "There's been violence in the history of our country "in order to protect the democracy or protect the republic."

BRAUDE: And so, as Pence set out to do his constitutional duty on January 6, 2021, the committee recapped the events that followed, starting with the president's address to that crowd.

- Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country.

And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you, I'm will tell you right now.

BRAUDE: But then came Trump's tweet at 2:24 that afternoon.

- "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution," setting off the real chaos.

- He's nothing but a traitor and he deserves to burn with the rest of them.

- It was clear that it was escalating and escalating quickly.

- (chanting): Hang Mike Pence!

- So then, when that tweet, the Mike Pence tweet, um, was sent out, I remember us saying that that was the last thing that needed to be tweeted at that moment.

The situation was already bad, and so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.

- 30 seconds later, rioters already inside the Capitol opened the east rotunda door, just down the hall.

And just 30 seconds after that, rioters breached the Crypt, one floor below the vice president.

- The Secret Service couldn't control the situation and do their job of keeping him safe.

- At 2:26 p.m., Secret Service rush Vice President Pence down the stairs.

- I think they were trying to figure out if they had a clear route to get us to where it was that they wanted to move us to - We moved pretty quickly down the stairs and through various hallways and tunnels to the secure location.

Upon arriving there, there was further discussion as to whether or not we were gonna leave the Capitol complex or stay where we were.

- Vice President Pence and his team ultimately were led to a secure location, where they stayed for the next four-and-a-half hours, barely missing rioters a few feet away.

Approximately 40 feet, that's all there was.

BRAUDE: On day four of the hearings, the focus was on how Donald Trump pressured Georgia and Arizona officials to illegally overturn their election results because of unproven fraud in the states.

- Whatever you can do, Frances, it would be, it's great thing, it's an important thing for the country, so important.

You have no idea, it's so important.

And I very much appreciate it.

So, look, all I want to do is this, I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.

And the truth, the real truth is I won by 400,000 votes, at least.

So what, so what are we going to do here, folks?

I only need 11,000 votes.

Fellas, I need 11,000 votes.

Give me a break.

BRAUDE: He only needed 11,000 votes.

But the officials under pressure were meticulous, refuting Team Trump's claims point by point.

- The numbers are the numbers.

The numbers don't lie.

We had many allegations, and we investigated every single one of them.

In fact, I challenged my team, "Did we miss anything?"

They said that there was over 66,000 underage voters, we found that there's actually zero.

You can register to vote in Georgia when you're seventeen-and-a-half, you have to be 18 by Election Day.

We checked that out, every single voter.

They said that there was 2,423 non-registered voters.

There were zero.

They said that there was 2,056 felons.

We identified less than 74, less that were actually still on felony sentence.

Every single allegation we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.

BRAUDE: And Trump's response to the secretary of state's litany of facts?

- I watched you this morning and you said, "Well, there was no criminality," but I mean all of this stuff is very dangerous stuff when you talk about no criminality, I think it's very dangerous for you to say that.

BRAUDE: And indeed it was, as far too many people found out, including top election officials, and their families.

- My cell phone was doxed and so I was getting texts all across the country.

And then eventually, my wife started getting texts.

And hers typically came in as sexualized texts, which were disgusting.

And then some people broke into my daughter-in-law's home.

- We started to hear the noises outside my home, and that's when my stomach sunk.

BRAUDE: And then there were the election workers, ordinary people just trying to play a role in the democratic process, but whose lives were ultimately upended.

People like Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who we heard from today, detailing what happened after Trump and friends released a surveillance video that the campaign falsely claimed showed the pair bringing suitcases full of fraudulent ballots to the vote in Fulton County, Georgia.

- I received a call from my grandmother, screaming at the top of her lungs, like "Shaye, Shaye!

Oh my God, Shaye!"

just freaking me out, saying there were people at her home and they, um, you know, they knocked on the door and of course she opened it, seeing who was there, who it was, and they just started pushing their way through, claiming that they were coming in to make a "citizens arrest."

They needed to find me and my mom.

I haven't been anywhere at all.

I've gained about 60 pounds.

I just... don't do nothing anymore.

I don't wanna go anywhere.

I second-guess everything that I do.

Um, it's affected my life in a major way.

In every way.

All because of lies.

For me doing my job, same thing I've been doing forever.

- I've lost my name and I've lost my reputation, I've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting, with number 45, and his ally, Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.

BRAUDE: In day five, the Select Committee laid out the evidence, in detail, about how then-President Donald Trump applied intense pressure on dozens of people, from low-level election officials to the top of the Department of Justice, to help him steal the 2020 election.

Just about an hour before today's hearing began, we learned that federal investigators searched the home of former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark.

He's the man Trump was trying to get to replace then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, after Trump had appointed Rosen to that role just a couple of weeks before.

Clark is also the man who was pushing a plan for the Department of Justice to lie to election officials in Georgia about having non-existent evidence that would force the state to change its election results, a plan that Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann summed up pretty well when he shared with the committee how he responded to Clark after a slightly more explicit insult.

- A-hole-- congratulations, you just admitted your first step or act you'd take as Attorney General would be committing a felony and violating rule 6E.

You're clearly the right candidate for this job.

BRAUDE: I wanna talk to that guy.

Clark, by the way, also pushed conspiracy theories, like Chinese spies using thermometers to tamper with U.S. voting machines.

But back to his main, moronic plan-- a plan also pushed by Trump, according to former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue's testimony, recalling his hand-written notes, recalling how the then-president told him: "Just say that the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressman."

and that the department had "An obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election."

But it wasn't just once.

- Between December 23 and January 3, the president either called me or met with me virtually every day.

BRAUDE: But as Donoghue made clear today, even if the claims about something going wrong with Georgia's election process were true, the DOJ had zero authority to do anything about it.

- Both the acting AG and I tried to explain to the president on this occasion and on several other occasions, that the Justice Department has a very important, very specific, but very limited role in these elections.

States run their elections.

We are not quality control for the states.

We are obviously interested in and have a mission that relates to criminal conduct, in relation to federal elections.

Uh, we also have related civil rights responsibilities, so we do have an important role, but the bottom line was if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct.

It is not for the Justice Department to step in.

BRAUDE: Yet still, the president pressed on, publicly calling for a special counsel investigation, putting forth wild conspiracy theories he found on the internet, threatening to fire whoever wouldn't carry out his orders - And the president said, "What do I have to lose?"

And it was actually a good opening because I said, "Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose."

At some point, the conversation turned to whether Jeff Clark was even qualified, competent to run the Justice Department, which, in my mind, he clearly was not, and it was a heated conversation.

I said, "Mr. President, "you're talking about putting a man in that seat "who has never tried a criminal case, "who has never conducted a criminal investigation.

"He's telling you "that he's gonna take charge of the department, "115,000 employees, including the entire FBI, "and turn the place on a dime, "and conduct nationwide criminal investigations "that will produce results in a matter of days.

"It's impossible, it's absurd, it's not going to happen, "and it's going to fail.

"He has never been in front of a trial jury, a grand jury.

He's never even been to Chris Wray's office."

I said at one point, "If you walked into Chris Wray's office, "one, would you know how to get there, and two, if you got there, would you even know who you are?"

BRAUDE: The sixth day of January 6 hearings centered on Cassidy Hutchinson, the former principal aide to Trump's final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who in a combination of pre-taped and live testimony, walked the committee through what she saw, in her front-row seat to the events of January 6, starting with what Donald Trump, and insurrection advisors Rudy Giuliani and Hutchinson's boss, Mark Meadows, knew of advanced intel about potential violence days before rioters stormed the Capitol.

- I remember leaning against doorway and saying, "I just had an interesting conversation with Rudy, Mark.

Sound like we're going to the Capitol."

He didn't look up from his phone, and said something to the effect of, "There's a lot going on Cass, but, I don't know, things might get real, real bad on January 6."

BRAUDE: But not only did Team Trump do nothing to quell what they saw coming on the 6th, Hutchinson told the committee that when heavily armed protesters showed up to the president's rally that morning, some with pistols, others with AR-15s, Trump demanded the Secret Service let them past the security checkpoints, which Hutchinson refers to as "mags," and allow them into the crowd right in front of him.

- When we were in the offstage, in-bounds area tent behind the stage, he was very concerned about the shot, meaning the photograph that we would get, because the valley space wasn't full.

He wanted it full and he was angry that we weren't letting people through the mags with weapons, what the Secret Service deemed as weapons, and what are weapons.

(chuckles) I overheard the president say something to the effect of, you know, I don't effing care that they have weapons, they're not here to hurt me, take the effing mags away.

Let them in, let my people in.

They can march to the Capitol after the rally's over, they can march from... they can march from the Ellipse.

Take the effing mags away, then they can march to the Capitol.

BRAUDE: A short time later, as we know, Trump went on to deliver this message to those very same protesters: - And I'll be there with you.

We're gonna walk down, we're gonna walk down, anyone you want, but I think right here, we're gonna walk down to the Capitol!

BRAUDE: And we also learned today Trump did try to go with them.

He tried so hard that he got physical with his head of security, Bobby Engle.

- The president said something to the effect of, "I'm the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now."

To which Bobby responded, "Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing."

The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel.

Mr. Engle grabbed his arm and said, "Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel, "we're going back to the West Wing, we're not going to the Capitol."

Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engle, and when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.

BRAUDE: When they finally got back to the White House, Hutchinson testified that she overheard Trump first, then Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone discussing how the rioters were getting increasingly agitated, including calls for violence against the vice president.

- In the background I had heard conversations in the Oval dining room at that point talking about the "Hang Mike Pence" chants.

I remember Pat saying something to the effect of, "Mark, we need to do something more, "they're literally calling for the vice president to be effing hung."

And Mark had responded something to the effect of, "You heard it, Pat, he thinks Mike deserves it, he doesn't think they're doing anything wrong."

BRAUDE: He thought he deserved it-- which would explain why Trump pushed back on suggestions that he intervene.

- When he was... convinced to put out a video on the 7th, he...

I understand that he had a lot of opinions about what the context of that announcement were to entail.

I had original drafts of the speech where there were several lines that didn't make it in there about prosecuting the rioters, or calling them violent.

He didn't want that in there.

He wanted to put in there that he wanted to potentially pardon them.

BRAUDE: And pardons were apparently on the minds of many, on top of the Congresspeople we learned about just the other day.

- Did Rudy Giuliani ever suggest he was interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to January 6?

- He did.

- Miss Hutchinson, did White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ever indicate that he was interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to January 6?

- Mr. Meadows did seek that pardon, yes ma'am.

BRAUDE: On the seventh day of hearings, the committee walked through Trump's scheme to issue an executive order, directing the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines, and appoint attorney and professional vote fraud conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell as a special counsel with the power to charge people with crimes over non-existent election interference.

Here's what former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said he told the president about that plan.

- I was vehemently opposed.

I didn't think she should have been appointed to anything.

To have the federal government seize voting machines, that's a terrible idea for the country.

That's not how we do things in the United States, there's no legal authority to do that and there is a way to contest elections, I don't understand why we even have to tell you why that's a bad idea for the country, it's a terrible idea.

BRAUDE: Still, Trump pushed on, which ultimately led to what several witnesses described as a curse-laden screaming match in the oval office, with the president, Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and General Michael Flynn demanding they move forward with the plan.

- She said, "Well, the judges are corrupt."

And I was like, "Every one?

Every single case that you've done in the country, you guys lost-- every one of them is corrupt?

Even the ones we appointed?"

And I'm being nice, I was much more harsh to her.

What they were proposing, I thought was nuts.

Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter and everything, and kept on standing up and turning around and screaming at me.

And at a certain point I had it with him.

So I yelled back... either come over or sit your effing ass back down.

BRAUDE: And it was immediately after that meeting that Trump fired off this tweet, at 1:42 A.M. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.

Be there, will be wild!"

And his supporters clearly got the message.

- He is now calling on we the people to take action and to show our numbers.

- We're going to only be saved by millions of Americans moving to Washington, occupying the entire area if, if necessary, storming right into the Capitol.

- It's gonna be a red wedding going down January 6.

There's gonna be a million-plus geeked-up, armed Americans!

- The time for games is over, the time for action is now.

Where were you when history called?

Where were you when you and your children's destiny and future was on the line?

BRAUDE: Among the many inspired by Trump's call and voter fraud conspiracy theories was Stephen Ayres, who spoke before the committee today about why he was among those who stormed the Capitol, and the one thing that ultimately made him stop.

- What made you decide to leave?

- Um, basically when President Trump put his tweet out.

We literally left right after that come out.

Um, you know, to me, if he would have done that earlier in the day, 1:30, I, you know, we wouldn't be in this, maybe wouldn't be in this bad of a situation.

BRAUDE: But as bad as it was on January 6, another of today's witnesses a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers militant group, who left the organization years before the riots, says we were lucky it wasn't worse, thanks to the extremists he once worked with, who he believes have been emboldened by Donald Trump.

I think we've gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen, because the potential has been there from the start.

What it was gonna be was an armed revolution.

I mean, people died that day.

Law enforcement officers died this day.

There was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol.

This could have been the spark that started a new civil war.

What else is he gonna do if he gets elected again?

All bets are off at that point.

BRAUDE: On that note, that's it for our pre-finale recap show.

The eighth, and possibly final, January 6 Select Committee hearing is tonight at 8:00.

You can watch it live on GBH 2, GBHNews.org, or listen live on GBH Radio 89.7.