Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/245

 On November 19th, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis held a press conference at the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters in Washington, DC. Powell asserted that there was "massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States." She pointed a finger at Dominion, claiming its software was "created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election," and Giuliani echoed her claims.

Hope Hicks told the Select Committee how that press conference was received in the White House. The day after the press conference, President Trump spoke by phone with Sidney Powell from the Oval Office. During the call, Powell repeated the same claims of foreign interference in the election she had made at the press conference. While she was speaking, the President muted his speakerphone and laughed at Powell, telling the others in the room, "This does sound crazy, doesn't it?"

A few days later, the Trump Campaign issued a statement claiming Powell was not part of the Trump Campaign's legal team. But Powell's outlandish claims were no different from those President Trump was making himself. On November 19th, the same day as Powell's appearance at the RNC, President Trump tweeted and retweeted a link to a segment on One America News Network (OAN) that was captioned, "Dominion-izing the Vote." The segment claimed that Dominion had switched votes from Trump to Biden. OAN featured a supposed cyber expert, Ron Watkins, a key figure in the QAnon conspiracy movement. On his own Twitter account, Watkins celebrated and thanked his supporters just minutes after President Trump tweeted the clip, and President Trump went on to share the clip again several times in the days that followed.

Officials inside the Trump administration continued to debunk the Dominion conspiracy theory, including during in-person meetings with President Trump. Attorney General Bill Barr met with President Trump face-to-face on three occasions after the election. Barr told the Select Committee, "every time I was with the President, I raised the machines as sort of Exhibit A of how irresponsible this was." During the first of these meetings, on November 23rd, Barr explained to the President that the conspiracy theory about Dominion's voting machines had "zero basis," and was "one of the most disturbing allegations." Barr stressed that this was "crazy stuff" and was poisoning Americans' confidence in the voting system for no reason. This "complete nonsense" was "doing [a] great, great disservice to the country," Barr said.

President Trump ignored Barr's grave concerns. On November 29th, President Trump was interviewed by Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. It was the