Trump tried to contact witness, riot hearing told

Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, vice-chair of the House committee investigating the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, revealed on Tuesday during the committee's seventh hearing that former president Donald Trump called a witness after the last hearing on June 28.

"President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation－a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings," Cheney said in her closing statement. "That person declined to answer or respond to president Trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us."

Cheney said the committee supplied that information to the Justice Department, and then she issued a warning to anyone who might consider interfering with witnesses.

Cheney had previously said the committee had evidence of witness tampering in its investigation. At the committee's sixth hearing when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified on June 28, the committee showed excerpts of statements from witnesses alleging that they had been contacted by someone who tried to impact their testimony. There was no mention of Trump then.

In her opening remarks, Cheney said Trump's allies are now pushing a new narrative after six hearings: Trump was poorly served by his outside advisers.

"This of course is nonsense. Donald Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices," she said.

Tuesday's hearing revealed details of a lengthy late-night meeting at the White House with new video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump's former White House counsel. He recalled an explosive meeting at the White House when Trump's outside legal team brought a draft executive order for the military to seize states' voting machines. Trump's team included lawyers Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

According to Powell's testimony, Cipollone went racing into the Oval Office to try to intervene, which led to a six-hour meeting that ended after midnight, but not before turning into a screaming match between the outside Trump advisers promoting election fraud claims and White House advisers who were trying to convince the president that he lost and should concede.

"I remember the three of them were really sort of forcefully attacking me verbally," Cipollone said in describing the argument.

Cipollone said he called seizing voting machines a "terrible idea" and said at the meeting, "That's not how we do things in the United States."

The committee also heard from former right-wing militia group Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove and rioter Stephen Ayres who pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.

Tatenhove, who is now a critic of the organization, said groups like the Oath Keepers thrive off propaganda, particularly "the swaying of people who may not know better through lies and rhetoric and propaganda that can get swept up in these moments".

"And I'll admit, I was swept up at one point as well," Tatenhove said.

He said he fears the alliance between Trump and the Oath Keepers is not done.