Trump tried to call Jan. 6 committee witness, Cheney says

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., introduced what he called a "heated and profane clash" in the Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, when White House officials were angered to learn that election conspiracy theorists including Sidney Powell and Ret. Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn were meeting with Trump.

"What ensued was a profane clash between this group and President Trump's White House who traded personal insults, accusations of disloyalty to the president, and even challenges to physically fight," Raskin said of the six-hour meeting, before playing a series of clips of Trump's inner circle describing the meeting.

Cipollone said, "The three of them were really attacking me verbally," and that he and White House attorney Eric Herschmann were asking for what evidence they had to challenge the election, adding there didn't seem to be much concern for facts.

Herschmann said Powell continued to say in the meeting that judges across the country were "corrupt."

"Even the ones we appointed?" Herschmann said he fired back, saying he was "harsh" to her. "I think it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there. What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts."

Cipollone pushed back on the idea that the Trump administration could have seized voting machines, testifying there was no legal basis to do so.

"There was a real question in my mind, and a real concern, particularly after the attorney general had reached a conclusion that there wasn't sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election, when other people kept suggesting that there was, the answer is, what is it? And at some point, you have to put up or shut up."

"To have the federal government seize voting machines?" he added. "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."

The committee said Trump got the idea to seize voting machines after a meeting with outside advisers, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were chief proponents of the conspiracy theory that Trump was robbed of electoral victory by widespread voter fraud.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr testified that he told Trump that the government could not seize voting machines.

"Well, some people say we can get to the bottom of this if the department seized the machines," Barr testified Trump told him.

"I said, 'absolutely not, there's no probable cause, and we're not going to seize any machines,'" Barr said he responded.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., revealed for the first time publicly that then-Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia "called President Trump in mid-December and advised him to concede."

She went on to play a video clip of Scalia's testimony.

"I put a call to the president. We spoke on the 14th, in which I conveyed to him that I thought that it was time for him to acknowledge that President Biden had prevailed in the election," he said in a taped deposition.

"I communicated to the president that, when that legal process is exhausted, and when the electors have voted, that that is the point at which the outcome has to be expected," he said, hitting on the committee's argument that Trump was made well aware that he lost.

The Jan. 6 committee aired the first clips from then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone's highly-anticipated videotaped deposition, which took place behind closed doors on Friday.

Cipollone told committee members he agreed with assessments from then-Attorney General Bill Barr and others that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn Trump's election loss.

Cipollone also testified that he believed Trump should have conceded the election, and that Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows assured him that Trump would eventually make a graceful exit.

"I would say that is a statement and a sentiment that I heard from Mark Meadows ... It wasn't a one-time statement," Cipollone said.