The Jan. 6 committee will focus on a decision made late at night in the White House that spurred the violence that erupted at the U.S. Capitol.
It's not clear who made the decision for Donald Trump to tweet out an invitation to his supporters to go "wild" in Washington, D.C., on the day Congress met to certify Joe Biden's election win, but The Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that investigators intend to show that post set the insurrection into motion.
"We left off [in the last hearing] with Republicans seeking pardons, John Eastman seeking pardons and Rudy Giuliani seeking a pardon," Lowell said. "Now we're going to focus today on the tweet that Trump sent, a call to extremist groups to storm the Capitol and the groups surrounding the protests surrounding Jan. 6. They're going to start with the 18th of December meeting at the White House, according to my reporting."
The former president sent out the tweet late at night after meeting for hours with fringe conspiracy theorists, and the committee hopes to shed light on the role they played in stirring up violent action.
"Mike Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock, and Emily Newman, this Trump aide, and Sidney Powell showed up at the White House uninvited, unannounced, and tried to get Trump to seize voting machines and install Sidney Powell as special counsel," Lowell said. "This [meeting] goes on for hours and hours, they go to the residence. At some point, a decision gets made, whether it's by Trump or whether it's been his aides, we're not entirely clear, but at some point, he makes the decision, and at 1:42 in the morning Trump sends this tweet on the 19th of December, saying, 'Big protest that will be wild, see you there on the 6th.'"
"All the machinery around Jan. 6 springs into action," he added. "Ali Alexander and Stop the Steal gets the permit, [activist] Cindy Chafian had a permit changes the date of her permit to Jan. 6. The Proud Boys start prepping and creating the group chats literally hours after Trump sends that tweet. It all sends us down the path toward Jan. 6. The committee is going to say Trump was responsible because he sent that signal and green-lighted the operation."
Watch the segment below or at this link.