Welch: “Let me say this clearly, let me say it slowly, and let me say it directly: President Trump has, since January 6th, pursued an all-out effort to continue his dispute that he lost that election.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a subcommittee hearing today, U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, pushed back on Republicans’ sham hearing on the Arctic Frost investigation, led by independent special counsel Jack Smith, which they argue targeted President Trump and Republicans in Congress. Republicans’ star witness, Jeffrey Clark, led Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow the 2020 election.
Welch’s opening statement set the record straight, outlining how President Trump incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol and overthrow the free and fair 2020 election, and the president’s continued efforts to dispute his 2020 election loss.
“Some of my colleagues still refuse to accept that Arctic Frost was a legitimate investigation following the illegal insurrection that occurred when the mob attacked the Capitol on January 6th. This very Committee has heard the testimony of countless Trump nominees who still can’t admit that President Biden won the 2020 election. ‘He was certified.’ They won’t acknowledge what the American people decided,” said Ranking Member Welch.
“It’s an effort, a continuing effort, by President Trump to rewrite the history of January 6th. Today, the Majority has called Mr. Clark as a witness. My Republican colleagues want to discuss the weaponization of the Justice Department, and so do I. And I can’t think of a more apt witness than Mr. Clark. He pushed the DOJ to falsely—falsely—tell states that the Department had significant concerns about voter fraud in the 2020 elections. That was an absolute lie. And President Trump’s own Attorney General, Bill Barr, had already publicly stated what those at the Department knew: There was no evidence of voter fraud that would have changed the results of the 2020 election. Republican and political appointees at the Department threatened to resign en masse if Mr. Clark’s false allegations were acted upon,” said Welch.
Welch continued: “And Mr. Clark, you did this in an attempt to influence state-level election certification to advocate for fraudulent electors to be brought in to declare that President Trump was the winner of the 2020 election. This is a corrupt effort, it was a corrupt effort to overturn the election, and it’s why Mr. Clark was indicted in Georgia on two felony charges and why the D.C. Bar concluded that he should be disbarred. Let me say this clearly, let me say it slowly, and let me say it directly: President Trump has, since January 6th, pursued an all-out effort to continue his dispute that he lost that election.”
Watch Senator Welch’s opening remarks here:
Dan Schwager, a former non-partisan corruption prosecutor and current counsel at Verdi & Ogletree testified on behalf of the Democratic minority. Witnesses for the Republican majority included Daniel Epstein, Vice President of America First Legal, and Jeffrey Clark, Vice President of Litigation for the Oversight Project. Mr. Clark is a notorious conspiracy theorist and election denier. Clark was indicted in Georgia for his election interference schemes, and pushed out of the Department of Justice (DOJ) for his unethical conduct.
Read excerpts from Ranking Member Welch’s opening statement here and below:
“Mr. Chairman. This will never happen again if we never have a president who, after he loses the electoral college vote and the popular vote, calls for people to come to Congress—to come to the Capitol—in an effort to use violence to overthrow the election by the American people.
“The question here that you laid out recites normal investigatory steps that are taken. The effort by the president, since January 6th, is to rewrite history. I was in the House chamber that day. I was about 20 feet from where the shot was fired. I was there when the mob was breaking the glass on the doors in an effort to invade the House of Representatives and ‘hang Nancy Pelosi.’ At the time, I couldn’t believe it was happening—that it could happen—in America, because in America we have always enjoyed the benefit of the peaceful transfer of power.
“The truth here is that this insurrection occurred as a result of President Trump, who incited it. Even though he had privately acknowledged that he lost the election, painful as it was for him to say. Roughly a week after the election he said: ‘Can you believe I lost to this f-ing guy?’ But later on, during his January 6th speech at the Ellipse, to the people that he invited to come to Washington, Trump told the audience: ‘We must stop the steel. We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania. We’re going to the Capitol.’ Trump knew he had lost, but he wanted to incite, and he did incite, an insurrection anyway.
“And that’s what happened. Following that speech, more than 2,000 people illegally breached the Capitol after their attack. At least 140 officers were physically injured defending our Capitol from a violent mob. Five officers died in the aftermath. It’s my colleagues’ view that the officers who defended the Capitol and the prosecutors who sought accountability for those actions and for the folks who incited those actions—are the ones that should be prosecuted, not the mobsters who attacked it.
“Some of my colleagues still refuse to accept that Arctic Frost was a legitimate investigation following the illegal insurrection that occurred when the mob attacked the Capitol on January 6th. This very Committee has heard the testimony of countless Trump nominees who still can’t admit that President Biden won the 2020 election. ‘He was certified.’ They won’t acknowledge what the American people decided.
“It’s an effort, a continuing effort, by President Trump to rewrite the history of January 6th. Today, the Majority has called Mr. Clark as a witness. My Republican colleagues want to discuss the weaponization of the Justice Department, and so do I. And I can’t think of a more apt witness than Mr. Clark. He pushed the DOJ to falsely—falsely—tell states that the Department had significant concerns about voter fraud in the 2020 elections. That was an absolute lie. And President Trump’s own Attorney General, Bill Barr, had already publicly stated what those at the Department knew: There was no evidence of voter fraud that would have changed the results of the 2020 election. Republican and political appointees at the Department threatened to resign en masse if Mr. Clark’s false allegations were acted upon.
“And Mr. Clark, you did this in an attempt to influence state-level election certification to advocate for fraudulent electors to be brought in to declare that President Trump was the winner of the 2020 election. This is a corrupt effort, it was a corrupt effort to overturn the election, and it’s why Mr. Clark was indicted in Georgia on two felony charges and why the D.C. Bar concluded that he should be disbarred. Let me say this clearly, let me say it slowly, and let me say it directly: President Trump has, since January 6th, pursued an all-out effort to continue his dispute that he lost that election.”
“Just last week, the Department of Justice requested a federal appeals court to dismiss the seditious conspiracy charges against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. These people are far-right extremists. They were convicted by a jury of their peers of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power. A federal judge described Oath Keepers’ founder, Stewart Rhodes, who received an 18-year sentence, as an ongoing threat and peril to this country and to democracy. Enrique Tarrio, founder of the Proud Boys, had a terrorism enhancement applied to his sentence by a conservative federal judge appointed by President Trump.
“Mr. Chairman, at the heart of today’s hearing is the question of whether a prosecutor can seek information from people, including Members of Congress, who have information that is, in fact, relevant to the commission of a crime. This is not an investigation of Members of Congress. Members of Congress who have information about a crime can be called to provide to the prosecutors what information they have.
“My Republican colleagues, many of them, have claimed they were illegally wiretapped as a part of Mr. Smith’s investigation. This is untrue. There were subpoenas for toll records. That’s not wiretapping. It’s phone metadata that includes the time, duration, and phone numbers of an outgoing call. Collecting this information is all in the normal course of a criminal investigation. When a case involves evidence from Members of Congress, of course, concerns about the separation of powers in the Speech and Debate Clause are very important, but it’s not a violation of these constitutional protections to seek information to prosecute a case. Especially when there was a mob attack on our nation’s Capitol.
“The legislators who are involved in this investigation argued that the decision to target them was rooted in animosity to President Trump. That is absolutely not true. A federal grand jury made up of our fellow citizens—they indicted President Trump because crimes were committed, not because prosecutors or judges were out to get them.
“Mr. Chairman, let’s have a public hearing with Jack Smith testifying. We can come in and answer our questions and explain what he did and he can be challenged. That happened in the House. Anything other than that, in my view, is an effort to obscure what’s really at stake for the American people: The insurrection on January 6th was an effort to take away their right to decide who their leaders are and have it be decided by violence. I yield back.”
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