Trump a '76

2/2© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A video of former U.S. President Donald Trump is played as Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the Trump administration, testifies during a House Select Committee public hearing that inv2/2

By Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. lawmakers accused then-President Donald Trump on Tuesday of inciting a mob of followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a last-ditch bid to remain in power as Congress was formally certifying his election loss.

Members of a House of Representatives select committee investigating the attack said Trump had been told by advisers in his administration and his campaign that he had lost the 2020 presidential election and should concede to Joe Biden, but he chose to disregard their advice.

In video testimony, witnesses described a tense, six-hour meeting in December 2020 where Trump disregarded their advice and sided with outside advisers who urged him to keep pressing his baseless claims of election fraud.

Trump was ultimately responsible for the chaos that followed, they said.

"President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. ... He is responsible for his own actions and his own choices," said Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the panel's vice chairperson.

"The strategy is to blame people his advisers called 'the crazies' for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense," Cheney said.

Committee members said Trump incited the riot through his refusal to admit he lost the election and through comments like his Dec. 19, 2020, call on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) for supporters to flock to Washington for a "big protest," saying, "Be there, will be wild."

The committee's seven Democrats and two Republicans have used the hearings to build a case that Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat in the November 2020 election constitute illegal conduct, far beyond normal politics.

Trump, a Republican who has hinted he may seek the White House again in 2024, denies wrongdoing and has falsely asserted that he lost only because of widespread fraud that benefited Biden, a Democrat.

'NOT TOUGH ENOUGH'

The hearing also was to look at links between right-wing militant groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the QAnon internet conspiracy movement, Trump and his allies.

The hearing featured video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump's former White House counsel, who spoke to committee investigators for eight hours behind closed doors on Friday.

Cipollone said he had urged Trump to concede.

The committee played recorded testimony from Cipollone and other Trump administration figures describing an angry meeting on Dec. 18 where a handful of Trump's outside advisers, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, attorney Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, chief executive of Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK), encouraged him to fight the election result.

"I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. I didn't understand how they had gotten in," Cipollone said.

The meeting lasted more than six hours, ending after midnight. Giuliani, who was escorted out of the White House grounds, said in video testimony his argument had been, "You guys are not tough enough. Or maybe I put it another way: You're a bunch of pussies, excuse the expression. I'm almost certain the word was used."

The attack on the Capitol, following a speech Trump gave at a rally outside the White House, delayed certification of Joe Biden's election for hours, injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths.

The committee also played testimony from a former employee of Twitter describing his fear after Trump's December tweet.

"It felt as if a mob was being organized and they were gathering together their weaponry and their logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight," the employee said.

About 800 people, including members of both right-leaning groups, have been charged with taking part in the Capitol riot, with about 250 guilty pleas so far.

Trump and his supporters - including many Republicans in Congress - dismiss the Jan. 6 panel as a political witch hunt, but the panel's backers say it is a necessary probe into a violent threat against democracy.

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