Jan. 6 committee: Trump allies say they did not believe voter fraud claims

June 10 (UPI) — Some of former President Donald Trump’s most ardent defenders — from daughter Ivanka Trump to former Attorney General Bill Barr — said they believed there was no massive fraud in the 2020 Presidential election that denied him a second term in the White House.

Video clips of their testimony to the Jan. 6 House committee investigating the attack on the US. Capitol were shown at a hearing Thursday night. Their views of the election, from Trump’s inner circle, contradict the former president’s ongoing push that the 2020 election was rigged and he should be president.

The committee showed various clips from some of Trump’s closest advisors appearing to dismiss voter fraud claims, along with dramatic new images from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack where a mob that supported Trump beat and bloodied police officers on their way to breaking into the Capitol.

In the video highlighting Barr’s testimony, the former attorney general under two Republican presidents called Trump’s fraud claims “complete nonsense” and was part of the reason he resigned before the end of his term.

“I told them that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that and it was doing a great, grave disservice to the country,” Barr said in the video.

Ivanka Trump said in her testimony that Barr’s previous public rebuke of her father’s claims impacted her.

“It affected my perspective,” Ivanka Trump said of Barr’s comments. “So, I accepted what he was saying.”

Trump’s campaign lawyer Alex Cannon told the committee he investigated claims of voter fraud and largely came up with no proof and passed that information directly to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

The committee attempted to use the statements from his inner circle and others to suggest that Trump knew from various sources that claims of voter fraud were false but persisted in ginning up the crowd of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to the attack.

A clip played at Thursday’s hearing of Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, who also acted as a presidential adviser, said he was aware that White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone had threatened to quit because of Trump’s voter fraud claims, but he took it at the time as “whining.”

That brought a stern rebuke from Rep. Liz Cheney, who sits on the Jan. 6 committee.

“There is a reason why people serving in our government take an oath to the constitution,” Cheney said. “As our founding fathers recognized, democracy is fragile. The people in positions of public trust are duty-bound to defend it, to step forward when action is required. In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual or a political party.”

Supporters of President Donald Trump riot against the Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021, in protest of Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden, prompting a lockdown of the Capitol Building. Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo