capitol hill. you are right there in washington where this is going down. good evening to you. the stakes were incredibly high for the first hearing. what did the select committee accomplish tonight? reporter: what the committee hoped to do was essentially create a road map for a thesis that they have that donald trump is principally responsible for a plot to subvert the will of the voters and stand in the way of the peaceful transfer of power. they didn t give us all the information, but they set the stage for what is going to be a seven-part argument toward that end. the way they introduced this argument was by hearing from some of the people closest to the former president, including his own daughter. take a listen. this is the president s daughter commenting on bill barr s statement that the department found in fraud sufficient to overturn the election. how did that affect your perspective about the election when attorney general barr made that statement? it affec
no. g i don t know if that s nye tay on my part, but i remember thinking how does this happen. i remember after the race was called for joe biden, telling reporters saying when is he going to concede? i think he s going to go to mar-a-lago for thanksgiving and never come back. that s truly what i thought. i thought for sure he would at least allow the peaceful transition of power and move on and start building for the future. but that wasn t the case. i was wrong. many others were. and i think this is so different than anything. this is so different from any trump scandal. there s plenty of things i could criticize him for, but this to me is disqualifying on every possible level. as everyone knows, this program was one of the former president s favorite and least favorite at the same time because he would watch it all the time. do you think he s watching? i mean, he loves being at the center of the conversation.
closely listening to president trump and they were doing what they thought he was telling them to do. so the moment when they had the trump tweet on the video, and you heard one of the insurrectionists reading the tweet from the capitol through a blow horn, i mean, that s a very powerful let s play that and then we ll talk about it. here it is. menace didn t have the courage to do what should ve been done to protect our country and our constitution. giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate. to see the president s words and to hear them spoken by one of the rioters is a powerful combination of images. this whole event tonight and everything that s in the news this week is a chance for all of us to reflect on the absolute
power. a committee source laying out those seven points to cnn. here they are. president trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him. trump corruptly planned to replace the acting attorney general so that the doj would support his fake election claims. trump pressured vice president pence to refuse to count electoral votes. election officials and state legislators to change election results. other trump associates instructed republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit them to congress and the national archives. trump summoned and assembled a violent mob and directed them to march on the capitol. as the violence was under way, trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave. let s break this down with cnn s senior legal analyst, elie honig
and so because there isn t a minority voice, they re going to do everything they can to downplay the work of the committee and say that it shouldn t be listened to by a good portion of the memorandum. i don t know. can you say there s not a minority voice? adam kinzinger and liz cheney are republicans. it s just not people who are going to tell you it s not raining outside when it is. reporter: you know, don, it s important to point out that just because liz cheney and adam kinzinger don t necessarily agree that it was okay for donald trump to pedal a big lie about the election results, that somehow doesn t make them conservative. their voting records will tell you a complete opposite story. liz cheney voted with donald trump on, i think, 80% of the time when he was president and she was a member of congress. it s this specific issue that they found to have a problem with, and again, it gets back to the idea, if you have a problem with what the committee is saying, make that argume