Jan. 6 Hearings: Chaotic Trump Meeting On Election Fraud Revealed

WASHINGTON, DC — A meeting between White House aides and informal advisers of then-President Donald Trump in December 2020 was described as "unhinged" and devolved into a shouting match, video of witness interviews revealed at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot hearings on Tuesday.

Testimony from six witnesses in a video shown by the committee revealed the chaotic Dec. 18 meeting in the Oval Office in which White House lawyers pushed back against what they said were baseless claims of election fraud by Trump allies.

The meeting occurred hours before Trump sent out a tweet Dec. 19, 2020, regarding a "big protest" during the Jan. 6 joint meeting of Congress meant to be a formality in certifying the 2020 election results.

"Be there, will be wild," Trump said in the tweet, which also was a focus of the hearings Tuesday.

The December meeting lasted more than six hours and devolved into the rival factions of advisers hurling insults and profanities as Trump looked on, according to witness testimony. It started when former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security adviser Mike Flynn and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne were let into the White House by a junior aide and made their way to the Oval Office.

The trio met with Trump for around 15 minutes before former White House lawyers Eric Herschmann and Pat Cipollone and former White House staff secretary Derek Lyons were alerted to their presence.

According to testimony from Cipollone, the White House aides had one central question they asked often: "Where's the evidence?"

The outside advisers had a general disregard for the need to back up the election fraud claims with facts, Cipollone said.

"I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice," Cipollone said.

Powell testified Trump was interested in what their group was saying, which "nobody else was informing him of."

The group of White House aides pushed back on the fraud claims, which Herschmann testified included theories about Democrats working with Venezuelans, a map of IP addresses "all over the world" communicating with voting machines and comments regarding Nest thermostats being connected to the internet.

The group of informal advisers accused the aides of quitting on Trump.

"If it had been me sitting in his chair, I would've fired all of them that night and had them escorted out of the building," Powell said.

When challenged for proof, Powell simply countered that the judges ruling against Trump's election fraud claims were corrupt, according to Herschmann. He pushed back, asking if every judge was corrupt, even the ones appointed by Trump.

"I think it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there," Herschmann said. "It was late at night. It had been a long day, and what they were proposing I thought was nuts."

After the meeting had started, Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, was called in to argue against Powell.

The proposal from Trump's outside advisers was for Trump to issue an executive order to seize voting machines and examine them for fraud. Powell also pushed to be named special counsel to potentially charge people with crimes related to election fraud, measures the White House aides opposed.

One of the more intense moments of the meeting came in a yelling match between Flynn and Herschmann.

"Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter and everything, kept on standing up and standing around screaming at me," Herschmann testified. "At a certain point, I had it with him, so I yelled back, 'Either come over or sit your effing ass back down.'"

Ultimately, Trump decided against the plan, but sent his tweet the next morning.

"We landed where we started the meeting," Lyons testified. "Sidney Powell was fighting. Mike Flynn was fighting. They were looking for avenues that would result in President Trump remaining President Trump for a second term."