Trump
called aides hours before Capitol riot to discuss how to stop Biden victory
Hugo Lowell in
Washington
Tue, November 30,
2021, 1:00 AM·8 min read
Hours before the
deadly attack on the US Capitol this year, Donald Trump made several calls from the White House
to top lieutenants at the Willard hotel in Washington and talked about ways to
stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win from taking place on 6
January.
Related: Trump challenges media
and Democrats to debate his electoral fraud lie
The former president
first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go
along with the plan to commandeer his largely ceremonial role at the joint
session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency
for a second term.
But as Trump relayed
to them the situation with Pence, he pressed his lieutenants about how to stop
Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January, and delay the
certification process to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to
Congress.
The former president’s
remarks came as part of strategy discussions he had from the White House with
the lieutenants at the Willard – a team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani,
John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Trump strategist Steve Bannon – about delaying
the certification.
Multiple sources,
speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, described Trump’s
involvement in the effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
Trump’s remarks reveal
a direct line from the White House and the command center at the Willard. The
conversations also show Trump’s thoughts appear to be in line with the
motivations of the pro-Trump mob that carried out the Capitol attack and halted Biden’s certification, until
it was later ratified by Congress.
The former president’s
call to the Willard hotel about stopping Biden’s certification is increasingly
a central focus of the House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol
attack, as it raises the specter of a possible connection
between Trump and the
insurrection.
Several Trump lawyers
at the Willard that night deny Trump sought to stop the certification of
Biden’s election win. They say they only considered delaying Biden’s
certification at the request of state legislators because of voter fraud.
The former president
made several calls to the lieutenants at the Willard the night before 6
January. He phoned the lawyers and the non-lawyers separately, as Giuliani did
not want non-lawyers to participate on legal calls and jeopardise
attorney-client privilege.
Trump’s call to the
lieutenants came a day after Eastman, a late addition to the Trump legal team,
outlined at a 4 January meeting at the White House how he thought Pence could
usurp his role in order to stop Biden’s certification from happening at the
joint session.
At the meeting, which
was held in the Oval Office and attended by Trump, Pence, Pence’s chief of
staff Marc Short and his legal counsel Greg Jacob, Eastman presented a memo
that detailed how Pence could insert himself into the certification and delay
the process.
The memo outlined
several ways for Pence to commandeer his role at the joint session, including
throwing the election to the House, or adjourning the session to give states
time to send slates of electors for Trump on the basis of election fraud –
Eastman’s preference.
Then– acting attorney
general Jeff Rosen and his predecessor, Bill Barr, who had both been appointed
by Trump, had already determined there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to
change the outcome of the 2020 election.
Eastman told the
Guardian last month that
the memo only presented scenarios and was not intended as advice. “The advice I
gave the vice-president very explicitly was that I did not think he had the
authority simply to declare which electors to count,” Eastman said.
Trump seized on the
memo – first reported by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert
Costa in their book Peril – and pushed Pence to adopt the schemes, which some
of the other lieutenants at the Willard later told Trump were legitimate ways
to flip the election.
But Pence resisted
Trump’s entreaties, and told him in the Oval Office the next day that Trump
should count him out of whatever plans he had to subvert the results of the
2020 election at the joint session, because he did not intend to take part.
Trump was furious at
Pence for refusing to do him a final favor when, in the critical moment
underpinning the effort to reinstall Trump as president, he phoned lieutenants
at the Willard sometime between the late evening on 5 January and the early
hours of 6 January.
From the White House,
Trump made several calls to lieutenants, including Giuliani, Eastman, Epshteyn
and Bannon, who were huddled in suites complete with espresso machines and
Cokes in a mini-fridge in the north-west corner of the hotel.
On the calls, the
former president first recounted what had transpired in the Oval Office meeting
with Pence, informing Bannon and the lawyers at the Willard that his
vice-president appeared ready to abandon him at the joint session in several
hours’ time.
The former president is said to have enjoyed
watching the insurrection unfold from the dining room
“He’s arrogant,”
Trump, for instance, told Bannon of Pence – his own way of communicating that
Pence was unlikely to play ball – in an exchange reported in Peril and
confirmed by the Guardian.
But on at least one of
those calls, Trump also sought from the lawyers at the Willard ways to stop the
joint session to ensure Biden would not be certified as president on 6 January,
as part of a wider discussion about buying time to get states to send Trump
electors.
The fallback that
Trump and his lieutenants appeared to settle on was to cajole Republican
members of Congress to raise enough objections so that even without Pence
adjourning the joint session, the certification process would be delayed for
states to send Trump slates.
It was not clear
whether Trump discussed on the call about the prospect of stopping Biden’s
certification by any means if Pence refused to insert himself into the process,
but the former president is said to have enjoyed watching the insurrection
unfold from the dining room.
But the fact that
Trump considered ways to stop the joint session may help to explain why he was
so reluctant to call off the rioters and why Republican senator Ben Sasse told
conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt that he heard Trump seemed “delighted”
about the attack.
The lead Trump lawyer
at the Willard, Giuliani, appearing to follow that fallback plan, called at
least one Republican senator later that same evening, asking him to help keep
Congress adjourned and stall the joint session beyond 6 January.
In a voicemail
recorded at about 7pm on 6 January, and reported by the
Dispatch, Giuliani implored
Republican senator Tommy Tuberville to object to 10 states Biden won once
Congress reconvened at 8pm, a process that would have concluded 15 hours later,
close to 7 January.
“The only strategy we
can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get
ourselves into tomorrow – ideally until the end of tomorrow,” Giuliani said.
A spokesperson for
Trump did not respond to requests for comment on this account of Trump’s call.
Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment. Eastman, Epshteyn and Bannon
declined to comment.
Trump made several
calls the day before the Capitol attack from both the White House residence,
his preferred place to work, as well as the West Wing, but it was not certain
from which location he phoned his top lieutenants at the Willard.
The White House
residence and its Yellow Oval Room – a Trump favorite – is significant since
communications there, including from a desk phone, are not automatically
memorialized in records sent to the National Archives after the end of an
administration.
But even if Trump
called his lieutenants from the West Wing, the select committee may not be able
to fully uncover the extent of his involvement in the events of 6 January,
unless House investigators secure testimony from
individuals with knowledge
of the calls.
That difficulty arises
since calls from the White House are not necessarily recorded, and call detail
records that the select committee is suing to pry free
from the National Archives over Trump’s objections about executive privilege, only
show the destination of the calls.
House select committee
investigators last week opened a new line of inquiry into activities at the
Willard hotel, just across the street from the White House, issuing subpoenas to
Eastman and former New
York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, an assistant to Giuliani.
The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson,
said in a statement that the panel was pursuing the Trump officials at the
Willard to uncover “every detail about their efforts to overturn the election,
including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress”.