House January 6th committee is closing its set of summer hearings with its most detailed focus on the main target of the investigation: Ex-President Donald Trump,
The panel is investigating Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, as hundreds of his supporters broke into the US Capitol, guiding spectators through the deadly afternoon to show minute-by-minute how the former president had to fight rioters. How long did it take to shut down? The panel is focusing on the 187 minutes that day, between the end of Trump’s speech calling on supporters to march to the Capitol at 1:10 p.m. and a video he released at 4:17 p.m. showing rioters Was told they were “very special”, but they had to go home.
January 6 investigation: Trump ‘didn’t want to say election was over’ a day after Capitol riot
Mississippi Representative Benny Thompson, chairman of the committee, said Trump was “the only person in the world who could shut down the crowd,” but he refused to do so for several hours, attending the hearing remotely. COVID-19 Diagnosis. “He couldn’t be moved.”
White House Dining Room
The panel focused on where Trump came across as violence — in the dining room of the White House, sitting at the top of the table, watching the Capitol’s violent violations on Fox News. He went back to the dining room at 1:25 p.m., according to Representative Ellen Luria, D-Va., one of the two members who led the hearing. This happened after some rioters had already broken barriers around the Capitol – and Trump was told about the violence within 15 minutes of returning to the White House.
Fox News was showing live shots of rioters pushing past police, Luria said, showing excerpts of coverage.
In video testimony played at the hearing, former White House aides talked about his frantic efforts to get the president to ask his supporters to turn around. Trump’s top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, told the panel that several aides — including Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump – Advised the President to say something. To leave “the people must be told”, Cipollone recalled telling the people, urging Trump to make a public announcement.
“Trump couldn’t be moved,” said Thompson, to rise from his dining room table and walk a few steps from the White House hallway to the press briefing room where cameras eagerly and desperately shoot his message armed and violently. Waiting to be picked up. The mob brutally beat up and killed the law enforcement officers.”
In this US Capitol police security video, rioters enter the Capitol, a video shows the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol holding a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 21, 2022.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
The committee said that when he sat in the White House, Trump made no effort to call for increased law enforcement assistance to the Capitol. Witnesses confirmed that Trump did not call the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Attorney General.
The committee played audio of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, reacting with surprise at the former president’s reaction to the attack. “You are the Commander-in-Chief. Your attack on the United States Capitol is underway. Nothing else? No calls? Nothing zero?” Mille said.
As Trump refuses to call for help, Vice President mike pence He was hiding in the Capitol just a few feet from the rioters who were about to disrupt the Senate chamber. The committee played audio from an unnamed White House security official, who said Pence’s Secret Service agents at the Capitol “feared for their own lives” and called on family members to survive.
Soon after, at 2:24 p.m., Trump tweeted that Pence did not have the “courage” to withhold or delay the election results as Congress was attesting. Joe BidenPresidential victory.
Matt Pottinger, who was then Trump’s deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, then deputy press secretary, testified at the hearing. Both resigned from their White House jobs soon after the rebellion.
Both Pottinger and Matthews told the committee about their disgust at Trump’s tweets about Pence.
Pottinger said he was “distressed and concerned to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for performing his constitutional duty,” which he said was “the opposite of what we needed at the time.”
“That was the moment I decided I was going to resign,” Pottinger said.
Matthews said the tweet was “essentially giving those people the green light,” and added that Trump supporters “really stick to every word and every tweet.”
As some of the worst fighting at the Capitol was still going on, and went on for hours, Trump put up the video at 4:17 p.m.
The committee showed video of Trump’s statement filming and a copy of the script, which they ignored. “I’m asking you to leave the Capitol Hill area and go home peacefully,” the script said.
But the president didn’t actually say so, instead reiterating baseless claims of voter fraud without condemning the violence. “So go home. We love you. You’re so special,” Trump said. “I know how you felt.”
In a video testimony, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said he was there as soon as filming ended, and “I think he was basically retiring for the day.”
The committee showed video from the Capitol siege at exactly the same time – rioters trying to violently push through the main doors beat officers who had been fighting for hours. Police radio traffic relay, “Another officer unconscious.”
The committee showed never-before-seen outtakes of a prepared speech for Trump on January 7, in which he was supposed to say that the election was over. But he told a room of his supporters, “I don’t want to say that the election is over.”
At the outtake, Trump was clearly furious – hitting his hand on the podium at one point – as he worked through prepared remarks, heard his daughter Ivanka and others chime in with suggestions.
In the final video, Trump denounced the violence and said: “Congress has certified the results, and the new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My focus is now on ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.” “
‘We have a lot to do’
At the start of the hearing, the committee’s Republican vice president, Thompson and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, announced that the panel would “reconstitute” in September to continue with its findings.
“The doors have opened, new summons have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said of the committee’s investigation. “We have a lot to do. We have even more evidence to share with the American people and to gather.”
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Associated Press journalists Eric Tucker, Farnoush Amiri, Kevin Freaking, Chris Megerian and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.
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