In the weeks following his reelection defeat, former President Donald Trump and his team drafted a memo to his administration calling for the termination of any staff member who didn’t believe there was massive fraud in the 2020 election, according to the latest release of transcripts from the Jan. 6 committee.
The handwritten draft was crafted in early December 2020 after Trump learned of statements made by former Attorney General William Barr that there was no systemic fraud in the administration of the presidential election, according to the committee. Shortly after hearing this, Trump had the memo drafted on Dec. 1 after he concluded a meeting with Barr in the Oval Office.
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The handwritten memo was reportedly written by then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, which was then handed over to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified she was instructed to bring the document to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s office for permission to relay to staff. Cipollone responded to the request by saying, “God, no,” Hutchinson testified.
“Anybody that thinks there wasn’t massive fraud in the 2020 election should be fired,” the memo read, according to transcripts of Cipollone’s deposition.
Cipollone told the Jan. 6 committee he did not have “any recollection” of that interaction and testified such a memo was never distributed to White House staff.
“I don’t have any recollection of this,” he said. “And by the way, I wasn’t fired.”
The memo was drafted just weeks before Barr resigned as attorney general amid reports that Trump was considering firing him from his position. Barr left office on Dec. 23, 2020, and Trump characterized the departure as amicable.
The transcripts detailing Cipollone’s deposition and the drafted memo were part of the Jan. 6 committee’s full report detailing its investigation into the Capitol riot, which was released in several iterations last week.
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The full report exceeds 800 pages, including four appendices that focus on security at the Capitol, the National Guard’s slow deployment, how foreign adversaries used Trump’s election claims to their advantage, and the financial backing of the “Stop the Steal” rally that devolved into the riot. The panel also voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.
Overall, the report seeks to prove Trump is liable for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters tried to halt Congress from certifying the electoral vote counting that formalized Joe Biden’s election as president.
