In its second public hearing, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol delivered a relatively focused message on Monday: that Trump knew his claims of a stolen election were false but continued to push them widely, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars while seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“This morning, we’ll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election, and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told the audience in opening remarks.
Thompson characterized the effort to discredit the 2020 election as a “conspiracy” and a “scheme” that Trump oversaw and directed and that is “unprecedented in American history.”
