- Pakistan 'vigilantes' behind rise in online blasphemy cases
- Nearly 90, but opera legend Kabaivanska is still calling tune
- Smith experiment as Test opener over, Green out of India series
- With inflation down, ECB eyes faster tempo of rate cuts
- Is life possible on a Jupiter moon? NASA goes to investigate
- Dodgers crush Mets 9-0 in MLB playoff series opener
- South Korea military says 'fully ready' as drone tensions soar
- Cummins back, Marsh and Head out of Pakistan ODI series
- Shanghai stocks swing after stimulus briefing as most of Asia rises
- New Zealand's Latham promises 'no fear' as he takes charge for India Tests
- Kyrgios vows to 'shut up' doubters with December comeback
- Public hearings start into death of Brit by Russian nerve agent
- Ex-Stasi officer faces verdict over 1974 Berlin border killing
- Role of government, poverty research tipped for economics Nobel
- 'Stolen satire' feeds US election misinformation
- Rookie McCarty captures first PGA Tour title in Black Desert Championship
- Australia all-rounder Green ruled out of India Test series
- Seeing double in Nigeria's 'twins capital of the world'
- UK FM to attend EU foreign affairs talks for first time in 2 years
- Carter, Billups among 13 new Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
- Ravens rip Commanders as Lions lose NFL sacks leader in win
- Hezbollah drone strike kills four, wounds dozens at Israeli base
- China says launches military drills around Taiwan
- Stewart leads Liberty past Lynx to level WNBA Finals
- England return to winning ways in Nations League, Austria thrash Norway
- UN chief says attacks on UNIFIL 'may constitute a war crime'
- Ravens outlast Commanders while Bucs batter Saints in NFL
- Dozens hurt in Israel as Hezbollah claims drone strike
- England deserve 'world class' coach: Carsley
- Burkina Faso win to become first qualifiers for 2025 AFCON
- AC Milan's Pulisic among five out for USA match in Mexico
- France's Amandine Henry retires from international football
- Centre-left set to win pro-Ukraine Lithuania's vote
- India's World Cup hopes in Pakistan hands after Australia defeat
- Zelensky says NKorea sending troops to Russian army
- England beat Finland to get back on track
- King and Lewis propel West Indies to T20 triumph over Sri Lanka
- Pre-Halloween 'Terrifier' lands atop North America box office
- 'I still plan to compete and play next season,' says Djokovic
- Harris, Trump seek advantage in knife-edge election battle
- Chepngetich shatters women's marathon world record in Chicago
- Kamindu and Asalanka power Sri Lanka to 179 against West Indies
- Chepngetich shatters women's marathon world record as Korir wins in Chicago
- Spain send injured Yamal home 'to prioritise player's health'
- In milestone, SpaceX 'catches' megarocket booster after test flight
- Iraq walks fine line with pro-Iran factions to avoid war
- Race four abandoned after New Zealand breeze into 3-0 lead in America's Cup
- West Indies win toss, put Sri Lanka in to bat in first T20
- Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market
- Netanyahu tells UN to move Lebanon peacekeepers out of 'harm's way'
Trump was told fraud claims behind Capitol riot were false: aides
Donald Trump ignored repeated warnings from top aides against claiming the 2020 election was stolen, according to testimony unveiled Monday by the congressional panel probing the 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
The second of a series of June hearings was shown videotaped accounts from the former president's aides, including campaign manager Bill Stepien, saying they advised him not to declare victory on election night because he hadn't won -- but that Trump went ahead anyway.
"He thought I was wrong, he told me so, and that they were going to go in a different direction," Stepien said.
Monday's hearing followed a prime-time session last week in which the panel began making its case that the January 6, 2021 insurrection was the culmination of a conspiracy by Trump and his aides to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden.
"This morning, we will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost the election -- and knew he lost the election -- and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy," Democratic panel chairman Bennie Thompson said in his opening remarks.
Trump's closest campaign aides, his attorney general Bill Barr and White House officials revealed in video testimony shown to the hearing how they had repeatedly warned Trump his election voting fraud narrative was bogus.
"I told him that it was crazy stuff," Barr said.
- 'Far flung conspiracies' -
Thompson's Republican deputy Liz Cheney said Trump instead listened to the advice of "apparently inebriated" Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York and one of the former president's closest allies, "to just claim he won, and insist that the vote counting stop -- to falsely claim everything was fraudulent."
After crucial swing states were called for Biden, Giuliani and his associates pushed a campaign of debunked theories about massive voter fraud that put them at odds with the White House lawyers that Stepien referred to as "Team Normal."
"The Trump campaign legal team knew there was no legitimate argument -- fraud or irregularities or anything -- to overturn the election," said Cheney.
The Wyoming congresswoman highlighted "far-flung conspiracies" -- pushed by Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell, but dismissed as "nonsense" by Barr -- of fraud involving voting machines "with a deceased Venezuelan Communist allegedly pulling the strings."
The claims are the subject of a multibillion-dollar lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.
The committee had planned to hear in-person testimony from Stepien but he canceled an hour before the hearing after his wife went into labor.
Trump started pushing what came to be known as his "Big Lie" around 2:30 am on November 4, 2020, making baseless allegations of fraud and prematurely declaring victory on the night of an election he ultimately lost to Joe Biden by seven million votes.
Barr told the committee in previously unseen video testimony that Trump claimed there was major fraud underway "right out of the box on election night... before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence."
- Conspiracy -
The committee says that initial claim grew quickly into a conspiracy to cling to power by Trump and his inner circle -- and a fundraising campaign that raised $250 million between election night and the insurrection.
The panel hopes to demonstrate that the clips from Stepien, Barr and others prove Trump should have known that what he was being told by Giuliani and Powell wasn't true.
But legal analysts are split on whether that is sufficient to argue intent, as Trump would likely argue in his defense that he took extreme measures to cling to power because still genuinely believed he had won.
Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic committee member, said the defeated president laid the groundwork for spreading his false allegations about the election months in advance.
"As early as April 2020, Mr Trump claimed that the only way he could lose an election would be as a result of fraud," she said.
"We'll also show that the Trump campaign used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts but the Trump campaign didn't use the money for that," Lofgren added.
"The big lie was also a big rip-off."
L.Miller--AMWN