‘Trump’s tweet & an unhinged WH meet led to Capitol riot’

WASHINGTON : In a heated, “unhinged” dispute, Donald Trump fought objections from his White House lawyers to a plan, eventually discarded, to seize states’ voting machines and then, in a last ditch bid to salvage his presidency, summoned supporters to march on the Capitol for what turned into deadly riots, the House January 6 panel revealed on Tuesday.

During its seventh televised public hearing, the committee examined the impact of atweet that Trump sent on December 19 urging his supporters to descend on Washington on January 6 for a rally he promised would be “wild”. The tweet was sent a little more than an hour after Trump met at the White House with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former general Mike Flynn, and Sidney Powell, another attorney, for a meeting which one White House aide described as “unhinged”.

“Trump’s tweet electrified and galvanized his supporters, especially the dangerous extremists in Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and other racist and white nationalist groups,” said a committee member, adding that two of Trump’s closest backers, Flynn and political consultant Roger Stone, had connections to Oath Keepers. The panel said the march to the Capitol was planned in advance but Trump decided not to announce it until a speech on January 6 morning.