Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Amazon Acquires One Medical in Push Into Health Care

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      The internet giant acquired One Medical, a national chain of primary care clinics, for $3.9 billion.Twitter’s shares fell after the social media platform, which is locked in a legal battle with Elon Musk over its future ownership, reported that it lost $270 million in the second quarter. Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Microsoft will report their earnings next week, with many forecasters expecting more disappointing results. Now delivering diagnoses.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJassy’s big bet on health careYesterday, Amazon announced its first major acquisition during Andy Jassy’s tenure as C.E.O., with the $3.9 billion purchase of One Medical, a national chain of primary care clinics that is backed by the private equity firm the Carlyle Group.Amazon’s ambitions in health care go back more than two decades, writes The Times’s Karen Weise. But none of its forays into the sector have had notable success, or have been as big as the One Medical acquisition. Its previous bets in health care include:Investing in Drugstore.com in 1999. (Jeff Bezos served on the company’s board.)Teaming up with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway in 2018 to start Haven, in an amorphous effort to explore new ways to deliver health care to their work forces. The venture formally ended last year.Buying the start-up PillPack, an online pharmacy that focuses on recurring monthly medications, in 2018 for $753 million. It later began Amazon Pharmacy, which, like PillPack, delivers medications, and it integrated discounts for customers with Prime memberships.Running its own primary and urgent care service, called Amazon Care, beginning in 2019, to treat its employees. Amazon Care has tried to get other employers to offer its service, with limited success.The One Medical deal gives Amazon access to more data. One Medical built its own electronic medical records system, and it has 15 years’ worth of medical and health-system data that Amazon could tap. Although individual patient records are generally protected under federal health privacy laws, the big data expertise that has fueled Amazon’s success can be powerful in health care — for predicting costs, targeting interventions and developing products and treatments.It could also test the new antitrust regime. Last night, Senator Amy Klobuchar said she was calling on the F.T.C. to “thoroughly investigate” the deal, citing Amazon’s previous investments in health care and its access to data. And while Amazon hardly dominates heath care, the Justice Department and the F.T.C. have sought to rewrite the rules for reviewing big mergers to broaden the scope for intervention. Lina Khan, who leads the F.T.C., has long contended that there is an antitrust argument against Amazon. She has not so far filed a suit against the company in her time as chair. Her agency reviewed and approved Amazon’s acquisition of the movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, though that was before Democrats held a majority on the commission.When asked by The Washington Post last month about Amazon’s push into health care, Khan said, “Our current approach to thinking about mergers still has more work to do to fully understand what it means for these businesses to enter into all these other markets and industries.”HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Turkey promises a deal to get grain out of Ukraine’s blocked ports. The Turkish presidency says that a signing ceremony will be held today for a deal between Ukraine and Russia aiming to allow millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to be exported, alleviating a global food shortage.President Biden has “very mild” Covid symptoms. Biden, 79, tested positive for the coronavirus yesterday. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said he would “continue to carry out all of his duties fully” while isolating.Snap shares plunge after a disappointing quarterly report. The company, which runs the social media platform Snapchat, said it would “substantially reduce” hiring and that revenue growth in its current uncompleted quarter was approximately zero. Jessica Lessin, the editor of the tech-focused news site The Information, said, Snap’s results “raise questions about digital advertising in the current macroeconomic climate.”The U.S. government files its first criminal case about crypto insider trading. A former Coinbase employee and two other men were charged with buying and selling digital assets based on confidential information from the cryptocurrency exchange. The three men, one of whom has fled to India, are said to have made $1.5 million on 14 trades over a 10-month period.China will faces severe heat waves over the next 10 days. Regions could be hit by temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher, forecasts suggest, and some cities in Zhejiang Province, which has many factories, issued red alerts today.Trump’s inaction in actionAs a mob of his supporters assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, Trump refused to stop them, according to former Trump administration officials, who testified yesterday to the House committee investigating the attack. Over 187 minutes, Trump sat in his dining room off the Oval Office, watching the violence on television, not just ignoring calls to respond, but repeatedly signaling that he did not want anything done.It was one of the most dramatic hearings of the inquiry, write The Times’s Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman. Still, the assertion that Mr. Trump was derelict in duty raised ethical, moral and legal questions, but it might not be the basis for a criminal charge, according to Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, who led much of last night’s proceedings. The media critic Brian Stelter, of CNN, called yesterday evening’s hearing “the most Fox-centric hearing yet — and none of it was shown live by Fox,” underscoring how divided the U.S. media landscape is.Here were the takeaways:Trump ignored a torrent of pleas from inside and outside the White House to call off his supporters. Members of Congress, aides and his own daughter, Ivanka, pleaded with Mr. Trump to call off the violence as it unfolded in front of him on television, The Times’s Michael S. Schmidt notes. Representative Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican who helped lead the hearing, said that the president, after learning of the Capitol breach, resisted putting out a tweet saying, “Stay peaceful.”Even the next day, Trump was not fully willing to concede the race. Outtakes from a taped address of the president’s speech on Jan. 7 showed the president saying he didn’t want to say “the election is over.”Members of Pence’s Secret Service security detail feared for their lives as protesters drew nearer. “I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth,” one official, whom the committee declined to name, said.Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, told the panel: “You’re the commander in chief. You’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America, and there’s nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?”More hearings are planned for September.YouTube’s policy on pulling abortion-related content has skeptics YouTube said on Twitter yesterday that it would be removing videos over the next few weeks that provided instructions for “unsafe abortion methods.” Citing its medical misinformation policies, it also said that it would be removing content that promoted “false claims about abortion safety” and that it would start including information from health authorities alongside abortion content.YouTube’s announcement was a step in the right direction, but it should have happened a long time ago, said Imran Ahmed, the C.E.O. and founder of the nonprofit organization the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “Even though we welcome any change in their rule, why on earth were home remedies for abortion ever permitted on their site?” he told DealBook, citing the medical risks associated with using dangerous methods. He recommended that YouTube provided a hotline to groups that offer accurate information on reproductive health care.Since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, abortion has been banned in at least eight states, and videos offering home remedies to induce abortions have spread on YouTube, TikTok and social media platforms. Experts have urged caution, saying these methods may be dangerous and there is no data on whether they work. A 2020 survey published in the journal JAMA Network Open estimated that 7 percent of American women would attempt a self-managed abortion at some point in their lives.For YouTube, the challenge will be enforcement, said Katharine Trendacosta, an associate director of policy and activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group. Trendacosta told DealBook that she questioned whether YouTube had the staffing and processes in place to pull this off. “I have trouble with these announcements because it doesn’t tell me if they’re going to hire enough people to implement it,” she said.THE SPEED READ DealsThe U.K. competition watchdog cleared a merger of the sports broadcasting businesses of BT Group and Warner Bros. Discovery. (Reuters)Malaysia’s AMMB, a financial services manager, is reportedly considering a sale of its asset-management unit. (Bloomberg)“Amazon Wants 100,000 Electric Vans. Can Rivian Deliver?” (NYT)The toymaker Mattel reported a 20 percent jump in sales. (NYT)PolicyRussia is keeping Germany guessing on gas shipments. (NYT)Truckers protesting a labor law have blocked roads that serve the Port of Oakland in California. (NYT)The E.C.B. has a new tool to keep bond markets in check. It doesn’t want to use it. (NYT)In good news for consumers, the economy and President Biden, gas prices are finally falling. (The Morning)Best of the restSwatch’s $260 MoonSwatch is helping to revive the brand. (Bloomberg Businessweek)A look at the PGA Tour’s lobbying effort against the Saudi-backed LIV golf league. (CNBC)A 35,000-acre forest fire in Spain was accidentally started by a Dutch carbon offset company. (Vice)Despite Putin’s efforts to destroy Ukraine’s economy, tech companies there are still thriving. (NYT)“Pro-Putin Biker Gang Rides Into E.U. Sanctions Roadblock” (FT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Bret Stephens: I Was Wrong About Trump Voters

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      Sean DongThe worst line I ever wrote as a pundit — yes, I know, it’s a crowded field — was the first line I ever wrote about the man who would become the 45th president: “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.”This opening salvo, from August 2015, was the first in what would become dozens of columns denouncing Trump as a unique threat to American life, democratic ideals and the world itself. I regret almost nothing of what I said about the man and his close minions. But the broad swipe at his voters caricatured them and blinkered me.It also probably did more to help than hinder Trump’s candidacy. Telling voters they are moral ignoramuses is a bad way of getting them to change their minds.What were they seeing that I wasn’t?That ought to have been the first question to ask myself. When I looked at Trump, I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another. What Trump’s supporters saw was a candidate whose entire being was a proudly raised middle finger at a self-satisfied elite that had produced a failing status quo.I was blind to this. Though I had spent the years of Barack Obama’s presidency denouncing his policies, my objections were more abstract than personal. I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called “the protected.” My family lived in a safe and pleasant neighborhood. Our kids went to an excellent public school. I was well paid, fully insured, insulated against life’s harsh edges.Trump’s appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called “the unprotected.” Their neighborhoods weren’t so safe and pleasant. Their schools weren’t so excellent. Their livelihoods weren’t so secure. Their experience of America was often one of cultural and economic decline, sometimes felt in the most personal of ways.It was an experience compounded by the insult of being treated as losers and racists —clinging, in Obama’s notorious 2008 phrase, to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”No wonder they were angry.Anger can take dumb or dangerous turns, and with Trump they often took both. But that didn’t mean the anger was unfounded or illegitimate, or that it was aimed at the wrong target.Trump voters had a powerful case to make that they had been thrice betrayed by the nation’s elites. First, after 9/11, when they had borne much of the brunt of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to see Washington fumble and then abandon the efforts. Second, after the financial crisis of 2008, when so many were being laid off, even as the financial class was being bailed out. Third, in the post-crisis recovery, in which years of ultralow interest rates were a bonanza for those with investable assets and brutal for those without.Oh, and then came the great American cultural revolution of the 2010s, in which traditional practices and beliefs — regarding same-sex marriage, sex-segregated bathrooms, personal pronouns, meritocratic ideals, race-blind rules, reverence for patriotic symbols, the rules of romance, the presumption of innocence and the distinction between equality of opportunity and outcome — became, more and more, not just passé, but taboo.It’s one thing for social mores to evolve over time, aided by respect for differences of opinion. It’s another for them to be abruptly imposed by one side on another, with little democratic input but a great deal of moral bullying.This was the climate in which Trump’s campaign flourished. I could have thought a little harder about the fact that, in my dripping condescension toward his supporters, I was also confirming their suspicions about people like me — people who talked a good game about the virtues of empathy but practice it only selectively; people unscathed by the country’s problems yet unembarrassed to propound solutions.I also could have given Trump voters more credit for nuance.For every in-your-face MAGA warrior there were plenty of ambivalent Trump supporters, doubtful of his ability and dismayed by his manner, who were willing to take their chances on him because he had the nerve to defy deeply flawed conventional pieties.Nor were they impressed by Trump critics who had their own penchant for hypocrisy and outright slander. To this day, precious few anti-Trumpers have been honest with themselves about the elaborate hoax — there’s just no other word for it — that was the Steele dossier and all the bogus allegations, credulously parroted in the mainstream media, that flowed from it.A final question for myself: Would I be wrong to lambaste Trump’s current supporters, the ones who want him back in the White House despite his refusal to accept his electoral defeat and the historic outrage of Jan. 6?Morally speaking, no. It’s one thing to take a gamble on a candidate who promises a break with business as usual. It’s another to do that with an ex-president with a record of trying to break the Republic itself.But I would also approach these voters in a much different spirit than I did the last time. “A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall,” noted Abraham Lincoln early in his political career. “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.” Words to live by, particularly for those of us in the business of persuasion.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Prosecutors Rest in Contempt Case Against Steve Bannon

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      The government, seeking to hold Mr. Bannon to account for defying a subpoena from Congress, wrapped up its case after calling just two witnesses.WASHINGTON — The prosecution rested its case on Wednesday in the trial of Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to President Donald J. Trump, as government lawyers sought to show that Mr. Bannon had repeatedly ignored warnings that he risked facing criminal charges in flouting a subpoena.Mr. Bannon was indicted in November on two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to provide information to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.The trial on Wednesday largely centered on the testimony of Kristin Amerling, the deputy staff director and chief counsel to the Jan. 6 committee, who offered a detailed accounting of the committee’s attempts to compel Mr. Bannon to testify last year.“There had been a number of public reports stating that Mr. Bannon had been in communication with White House officials, including former President Trump in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 events,” Ms. Amerling said. “We wanted to understand what he could tell us about the connection between any of these events.”Prosecutors continued to describe Mr. Bannon’s decision to stonewall the committee as a straightforward case of contempt. By declining to testify, Mr. Bannon not only “thumbed his nose” at the law, but he also may have withheld significant information about the coordinated effort to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election, Amanda Vaughn, a prosecutor, said.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 8Making a case against Trump. More

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      Bipartisan Senate Group Strikes Deal to Rewrite Electoral Count Act

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      The changes outlined by the senators are intended to prevent a repeat of the effort on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the presidential election in Congress.WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators proposed new legislation on Wednesday to modernize the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, working to overhaul a law that President Donald J. Trump tried to abuse on Jan. 6, 2021, to interfere with Congress’s certification of his election defeat.The legislation aims to guarantee a peaceful transition from one president to the next, after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol exposed how the current law could be manipulated to disrupt the process. One measure would make it more difficult for lawmakers to challenge a state’s electoral votes when Congress meets to count them. It would also clarify that the vice president has no discretion over the results, and it would set out the steps to begin a presidential transition.A second bill would increase penalties for threats and intimidation of election officials, seek to improve the Postal Service’s handling of mail-in ballots and renew for five years an independent federal agency that helps states administer and secure federal elections.While passage of the legislation cannot guarantee that a repeat of Jan. 6 will not occur in the future, its authors believe that a rewrite of the antiquated law, particularly the provisions related to the vice president’s role, could discourage such efforts and make it more difficult to disrupt the vote count.Alarmed at the events of Jan. 6 that showed longstanding flaws in the law governing the electoral count process, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, had been meeting for months to try to agree on the rewrite.“In four of the past six presidential elections, this process has been abused, with members of both parties raising frivolous objections to electoral votes,” Ms. Collins said on Wednesday. “But it took the violent breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6 of 2021 to really shine a spotlight on the urgent need for reform.”In a joint statement, the 16 senators involved in the talks said they had set out to “fix the flaws” of the Electoral Count Act, which they called “archaic and ambiguous.” The statement said the group believed that, in consultation with election law experts, it had “developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for president and vice president.”Though the authors are one short of the 10 Republican senators needed to guarantee that the electoral count bill could make it past a filibuster and to final passage if all Democrats support it, they said they hoped to round up sufficient backing for a vote later this year.Ms. Collins said she expected the Senate Rules Committee to convene a hearing on the measures before the August recess. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the panel, was consulted in the drafting of the legislation.The bills were announced on the eve of a prime-time hearing by the House committee investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack, including Mr. Trump’s multilayered effort to invalidate his defeat. They also came as an investigation intensified into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to have Georgia’s presidential election results reversed. A Georgia judge has ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani, who spearheaded a push to overturn election results on behalf of Mr. Trump, to appear before a special grand jury in Atlanta next month.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 8Making a case against Trump. More

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      Survey Looks at Acceptance of Political Violence in U.S.

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      One in five adults in the United States would be willing to condone acts of political violence, a new national survey commissioned by public health experts found, revelations that they say capture the escalation in extremism that was on display during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The online survey of more than 8,600 adults in the United States was conducted from mid-May to early June by the research firm Ipsos on behalf of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, which released the results on Tuesday.The group that said they would be willing to condone such violence amounted to 20.5 percent of those surveyed, with the majority of that group answering that “in general” the use of force was at least “sometimes justified” — the remaining 3 percent answered that such violence was “usually” or “always” justified.About 12 percent of survey respondents answered that they would be at least “somewhat willing” to resort to violence themselves to threaten or intimidate a person.And nearly 12 percent of respondents also thought it was at least “sometimes justified” to use violence if it meant returning Donald J. Trump to the presidency.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 8Making a case against Trump. More

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      Pence Backs Trump Loyalists and Skeptics in House Elections

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      WASHINGTON — As Representative Darin LaHood, Republican of Illinois, prepared to campaign with Mike Pence, the former vice president, in his district last month, he braced for a backlash from his party’s right-wing base.Just days before, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had re-created in chilling detail how Mr. Pence had resisted President Donald J. Trump’s orders to overturn his defeat in Congress — and how Mr. Trump’s demands had put the vice president’s life at risk.Mr. LaHood’s fears of MAGA protesters and hostility to Mr. Pence never materialized; the former vice president received a warm welcome from the crowd at a Lincoln Day dinner in Peoria and at a closed-door fund-raising lunch with the congressman in Chicago, according to people who attended. But the concerns about how Mr. Pence would be received highlighted the awkward dynamic that has taken hold as the former vice president quietly campaigns for Republican members of Congress ahead of the midterm elections.House Republicans helped Mr. Trump spread the election lies that brought Mr. Pence within 40 feet of a mob that stormed the Capitol clamoring for his execution, and the vast majority of them remain publicly loyal to Mr. Trump, still the biggest draw and the most coveted endorsement on the campaign trail.But privately, many of them hope their party might soon return to some version of its pre-2016 identity — when Mr. Pence was regarded on the right as a symbol of conservative strength, not cowardice — and want to preserve a relationship with him in that case.Mr. Pence, who served six terms as a congressman from Indiana, has been eager to campaign for congressional candidates, particularly in the Midwest. He is seeking to carve out a viable lane of his own for a potential presidential run in 2024, even if it means helping some lawmakers who continue to spout the election lies that imperiled him.Mr. Pence spoke at an event for Representative Darin LaHood, right, in Peoria, Ill., last month.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOver the past year, Mr. Pence has appeared at campaign events for more than a dozen members of Congress, happily attending steak fries, picnics and fund-raisers that have at times brought in half a million dollars apiece for candidates.Overall, his aides said, he has helped to raise millions of dollars for House Republicans, many of whom still see him as a well-liked former colleague who often played the role of Trump administration emissary to Congress. On Wednesday, his alliance with congressional Republicans will be on display when he speaks on Capitol Hill as a guest of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus.That followed an appearance Tuesday night at a “Young Guns” fund-raising dinner hosted by Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Washington. Mr. Pence’s appearance there was described by an attendee as akin to a homecoming for him. Mr. Trump was mentioned only in the context of discussing the “Trump-Pence accomplishments.”Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 5The state of the midterms. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Issues Subpoena to Secret Service in Hunt for Text Messages

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      The House committee is seeking messages that an inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security said had been erased.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the attack on the United States Capitol issued a subpoena to the Secret Service late Friday seeking text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, that were said to have been erased, as well as any after-action reports.In a statement, the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, said the panel was seeking records from “any and all divisions” of the Secret Service “pertaining or relating in any way to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”The development came after the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, met with the panel and told lawmakers that many of the texts were erased as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had requested them as part of his inquiry into the events of Jan. 6.The Secret Service has disputed parts of the inspector general’s findings, saying that data on some phones had been “lost” as part of a planned three-month “system migration” in January 2021, but none pertinent to the inquiry.The agency said that the project was underway before it received notice from the inspector general to preserve its data and that it did not “maliciously” delete text messages.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 8Making a case against Trump. More

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      Lo que sabemos sobre la reunión para que Trump siguiera en el poder

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      Incluso para los estándares de la Casa Blanca de Trump, la reunión celebrada el 18 de diciembre de 2020, que fue analizada en detalle esta semana por el comité que investiga los hechos del 6 de enero, fue extrema.In taped interviews, witnesses described a meeting in which President Donald J. Trump’s outside advisers proposed an executive order to have the military seize voting machines in crucial states Mr. Trump had lost.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLa reunión duró más de seis horas, pasada la medianoche, y terminó en gritos que se escuchaban afuera de la sala. Los participantes lanzaban insultos y casi llegaron a los golpes. Algunas personas se fueron llorando.Incluso para los estándares de la Casa Blanca de Trump, donde las personas solían gritarse y el presidente Donald Trump también les gritaba, la reunión del 18 de diciembre de 2020 es considerada como un evento “desquiciado” y un punto de inflexión en los esfuerzos desesperados de Trump por permanecer en el poder después de haber perdido las elecciones.Los detalles de la reunión han sido reportados previamente, incluso por The New York Times y Axios, pero en una audiencia pública del comité del 6 de enero que se celebró el martes, los participantes en el caos ofrecieron una serie de nuevos detalles impactantes de la reunión entre Trump y las facciones rivales de asesores.“Llegó un punto en el que los gritos se escuchaban afuera”, le dijo Eric Herschmann, un abogado de la Casa Blanca, al comité en un testimonio grabado en video. “Había gente entrando, era tarde en la noche, y fue un día largo. Y pensé que lo que estaban proponiendo era una locura”.La propuesta era que el presidente le ordenara al secretario de Defensa que incautara las máquinas de votación para examinarlas en busca de fraude y que también designara a un abogado especial para acusar potencialmente a las personas de delitos y fue urdida por tres asesores externos: Sidney Powell, una abogada que trabajó en la campaña de Trump y promovió teorías de conspiración sobre un supuesto complot venezolano para manipular las máquinas de votación; Michael T. Flynn, el asesor de seguridad nacional que Trump despidió durante sus primeras semanas en el cargo; y Patrick Byrne, ex director ejecutivo de Overstock.com.Del otro lado estaban Pat A. Cipollone, el abogado de la Casa Blanca; Herschmann; y Derek Lyons, el secretario de personal de la Casa Blanca.La discusión comenzó poco después de que Powell y sus dos acompañantes fueran admitidos en la Casa Blanca por un asistente subalterno y se dirigieron a la Oficina Oval sin tener cita.Estuvieron a solas con Trump, durante unos 15 minutos, antes de que otros funcionarios fueron alertados de su presencia. Cipollone contó que recibió una llamada urgente de un miembro del personal para que fuese a la Oficina Oval.“Abrí la puerta y entré. Vi al general Flynn”, dijo en una entrevista grabada en video que el comité divulgó en la audiencia del martes. “Vi a Sidney Powell sentada ahí. No estaba feliz de ver a las personas que estaban en la Oficina Oval”.Cuando se le pidió que explicara por qué, Cipollone dijo: “En primer lugar, la persona de Overstock, nunca la conocí, nunca supe quién era ese tipo”. Lo primero que hizo, dijo Cipollone, fue decirle a Byrne: “¿Quién es usted?”. “Y me contestó”, dijo Cipollone. “No creo que ninguna de esas personas le estuvieran dando buenos consejos al presidente”.Lyons y Herschmann se unieron al grupo. “No fue una reunión casual”, dijo Lyons al comité en un testimonio grabado en video. “A veces, había gente gritándose, insultándose unos a otros. No eran personas que estaban sentadas en un sofá charlando”.El testimonio en video de Sidney Powell, en el que dijo que los asesores de la Casa Blanca sentían “desprecio y desdén por el presidente”, fue presentado durante la audiencia del martes.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPowell, en su entrevista grabada en video, describió a Trump como “muy interesado en escuchar” lo que ella y sus dos compañeros tenían que decir, cosas que “aparentemente nadie más se había molestado en informarle”.Herschmann dijo que estaba estupefacto por lo que estaba escuchando.“Y yo le preguntaba, ¿estás afirmando que los demócratas están trabajando con Hugo Chávez, los venezolanos y otras personas? Y, en un momento, el general Flynn sacó un diagrama que supuestamente mostraba las direcciones IP de todo el mundo y las comunicaciones a través de las máquinas. Y algunos comentarios sobre, por ejemplo, que los termostatos Nest están conectados a internet”.Cuando los funcionarios de la Casa Blanca le dijeron a Powell que había perdido decenas de juicios que cuestionaban los resultados de las elecciones de 2020, ella respondió: “Bueno, los jueces son corruptos”.“Y le pregunté: ¿Todos?”, dijo Herschmann. “¿Cada uno de los casos que ha perdido en este país? ¿Cada uno de esos jueces es corrupto? ¿Incluso los que nombramos?”.Powell testificó que los asesores de la Casa Blanca de Trump “no mostraron más que desprecio y desdén por el presidente”.El plan, según supieron los asesores de la Casa Blanca, era que Powell se convirtiera en la fiscala especial. Eso no salió bien.“No creo que Sidney Powell diría que pensé que era una buena idea nombrarla como abogada especial”, testificó Cipollone. “No pensé que ella debería ser nombrada en ningún cargo”.Cipollone también testificó que estaba alarmado por la insistencia de Powell y los demás de que hubo fraude electoral sin tener ninguna prueba que lo demostrara. “Cuando otras personas seguían sugiriendo que sí, la respuesta es, ¿a qué se refieren? En algún momento, tienes que demostrar lo que dices o callarte. Esa es mi opinión”.Herschmann describió un momento particularmente intenso. “Flynn me gritó que yo era un desertor y todo, caminaba mientras me gritaba. En cierto momento, también le grité: ‘O te calmas o te sientas’”.Cassidy Hutchinson, una de las principales asistentes de Mark Meadows, el jefe de gabinete de la Casa Blanca, podía escuchar los gritos desde afuera de la Oficina Oval. Le envió un mensaje de texto a un subjefe de personal, Anthony M. Ornato, diciendo que el ala oeste estaba “TRASTORNADA”.Después de que comenzó la reunión, los asesores de la Casa Blanca llamaron a Rudolph Giuliani, el abogado personal de Trump, para argumentar en contra de Powell. Eventualmente, la reunión migró a la Sala Roosevelt y la Sala del Gabinete, donde Giuliani estuvo solo por unos momentos, lo que, según lo que le dijo al comité, le pareció “algo genial”.Finalmente, el grupo recaló en la residencia de la Casa Blanca.Powell creía que había sido nombrada fiscala especial, algo que Trump declaró que quería hacer, por lo que debería tener una autorización de seguridad. Pero el resto de los asistentes se opusieron. Ella testificó que otros dijeron que incluso si eso sucedía, la ignorarían. Ella dijo que los habría “despedido” en el acto por esa insubordinación.Powell aseguró que Trump le dijo algo como: “¿Ves con lo que tengo que lidiar? Tengo que lidiar con esto todo el tiempo”.Eventualmente, Trump se retractó y rechazó la propuesta de los asesores externos. Pero a la mañana siguiente, el 19 de diciembre, escribió en Twitter instando a sus partidarios para que fuesen al Capitolio el 6 de enero, el día en que se fijó la sesión conjunta del Congreso para certificar los resultados del Colegio Electoral.“¡Estar allí, será salvaje!”, escribió.Maggie Haberman es corresponsal de la Casa Blanca. Se unió al Times en 2015 como corresponsal de campaña y formó parte de un equipo que ganó un Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores de Trump y sus conexiones con Rusia. @maggieNYT More