WASHINGTON: With the Capitol siege raging, President Donald Trump poured “gasoline on the fire” by tweeting condemning Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with his plan to withhold the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, former aides said. Told the inquiry committee of Jan. A prime-time hearing on Thursday night.
Earlier, an enraged Trump demanded the Capitol be taken after the building was stormed by his supporters, who were well aware of the deadly attack, but then returned to the White House and called off the violence despite appeals from family and close advisers. did nothing to do. , the witnesses testified.
At the Capitol, the crowd was chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump’s deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger testified, as Trump tweeted condemning his vice president.
Meanwhile, recordings of a Secret Service radio broadcast showed agents asking their families to relay goodbye messages.
Pottinger said he immediately decided to resign when he saw Trump’s tweet, as did former White House aide Sarah Matthews, who described herself as a lifelong Republican but with what was going on. could not go She was the witness who called the tweet “petrol in the fire”.
The purpose of the hearing was to show a “minute by minute” account of Trump’s actions that day and how, instead of stopping the violence, he watched it all on television at the White House.
Witnesses said a furious Trump sought to take the Capitol after a siege sent by supporters who were well aware of the deadly attack and armed some of the crowd, but were refusing to fight to reverse his election defeat. Yes, witnesses told. January 6 Inquiry Committee Thursday night.
Trump sent the crowd to Capitol Hill in heated rally remarks in the Ellipse behind the White House, and “within 15 minutes after leaving the stage, President Trump knew the Capitol was besieged and under attack,” committee members Said Ellen Luria, D-Virginia.
She said the panel had received testimony that confirmed Trump’s powerful previous account of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson as he insisted the Secret Service take him to the Capitol.
“He lied, he bullied, he betrayed his oath”
Among the witnesses who testified on Thursday in a recorded video was a retired District Sergeant of the Columbia Metropolitan Police Department. Mark Robinson who told the committee that Trump was well aware of the number of weapons in his crowd of supporters, but wanted to go regardless.
“The only detail I found was that the president was upset, and he was adamant about going to the Capitol and there was a heated discussion about it,” Robinson said. The panel heard that Trump was “irritable.”
Rep. Luria said Trump “didn’t call to issue an order. He didn’t call to offer aid.”
President Benny Thompson began the committee’s prime-time hearing on Thursday, saying that as president, Trump “did everything in his power to reverse the election” he lost to Joe Biden, in which the deadly Capital Before and during the attack were also involved.
“He lied, he bullied, he betrayed his oath,” alleges Thompson, D-Mississippi
After months of work and weeks of hearing, Wyoming’s committee co-chair Liz Cheney has “began to break the dam” when she revealed what happened that day in violence at the White House as well as the Capitol.
It was probably the last hearing of the summer, but the panel said they would resume in September as more witnesses and information emerge.
“Our investigation goes on,” said Thompson, testifying from afar that he is in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19. “There must be accountability.”
Drowning in its second prime-time hearing on the Capitol attack, the committee vowed to closely examine Trump’s actions during the deadly riots, which the panel says did nothing to stop but were televised at the White House. “Gleefully” watched.
The hearing room was packed that day, including several police officers fighting the mob. The panel is diving into the 187 minutes that Trump failed to act on January 6, 2021, despite pleas from aides, aides and even his family. The panel is arguing that the defeated president’s lies about a stolen election and attempts to reverse Joe Biden’s electoral victory fueled the attack and left the United States facing enduring questions about the resilience of its democracy. .
“A profound moment of reckoning for America,” said Representative Jamie Ruskin, D-MD, a member of the committee.
live testimony
With live testimony from two former White House aides and excerpts from more than 1,000 interviews with the committee, Thursday night’s session will add a concluding chapter to the past six weeks of hearings that have at times captivated the nation and for history. provided a record.
Before the hearing, the committee released a video of four former White House aides — Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Security Aide General Keith Kellogg, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Executive Assistant to President Molly Michael — testifying that Trump was private. We were in the dining room with the TV as the violence unfolded.
“Everyone was watching television,” Kellogg said.
Returning to prime time for the first time since a series of hearings began, the panel intends to explain how close the United States came, which a retired federal judge testified this summer called the constitutional crisis.
The events of January 6 will be outlined “minute by minute,” said Representative Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, the panel’s vice president.
“You’ll hear that Donald Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help,” Cheney said.
“He didn’t call the military. His Secretary of Defense didn’t get an order. He didn’t call his attorney general. He didn’t speak to the Department of Homeland Security,” Cheney said. “Mike Pence did it all; Donald Trump did not. ,
The hearing will feature never-before-seen footage of a January 7 video that White House aides urged Trump to make as a message of national healing for the country. The footage will show how Trump struggled to denounce a crowd of his supporters who violently breached the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter and did not wish to be named to discuss it ahead of its public release. allowed to print.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson has testified that Trump wanted to include language about pardoning rioters in the speech, but White House lawyers advised against it. Trump reluctantly condemned the riot in a three-minute speech that night.
Testifying on Thursday are former White House aides. Matt Pottinger, who was the deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, who was the press aide at the time, both submitted their resignations on January 6, 2021, following what they saw that day. Trump has slammed the hearing on social media and considered most of the testimony to be fake.
Representative Benny Thompson, D-Mississippi, chairman of the committee, is in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 and will be attended by video. Representative Ellen Luria, D-Virginia, a former Navy officer who will lead the session with Representative Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, who has flown combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, said she expected White House aides Testimony “Just be really compelling.”
“These are the people who believed in their work, but did not believe in the stolen election,” Luria said.
840 rioters accused
White House aides weren’t the only ones to drop it that day. The panel is expected to provide a tally of Trump administration aides and even cabinet members, who resigned after Trump’s attack failed to shut down. Some cabinet members were so concerned that they discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
As the panel continues to collect evidence and prepares to release a preliminary report of the findings, it has amassed the most important public record ever that has led Americans to attack the seat of democracy.
While the committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Justice Department is monitoring its work.
So far, more than 840 people have been indicted for federal crimes related to the Capitol riots. More than 330 of them have confessed to their crime, most of them in rape cases. Of the more than 200 defendants to be sentenced, about 100 received sentences of imprisonment.
It remains uncertain whether Trump or the former president’s top aides will face serious charges. No former president has been federally prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday that January 6 is “the most comprehensive investigation and the most important investigation the Justice Department has ever conducted.”
“We have to get this right,” Garland said. “For those who are concerned, as I think every American should be, we have to do two things: we have to hold accountable everyone who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we It should be filled in a way with honesty and professionalism.”
While discussing the timeline, the panel aims to show what happened between the time Trump left the stage at his “Stop the Steel” rally after 1:10 p.m. to ask supporters to march to the Capitol. Later, and about three hours later, when he released a video address from the Rose Garden in which he told the rioters to “go home”, but also praised them as “very special”.
It also hopes to offer additional evidence about Trump’s confrontation with Secret Service agents who refused to take him to the Capitol — a witness account that disputed security details.
Five people died that day as Trump supporters fought hand-in-hand with police to attack the Capitol. One officer testified how she was “slipping in other people’s blood” as they tried to stop the crowd. A Trump supporter was shot dead by police.
“The president didn’t do much, but gleefully watched television during this time frame,” Kizinger said.
Cheney said Trump not only refused to ask the crowd to leave the Capitol, he did not call on other parts of the government for backup and gave no orders to deploy the National Guard.
That’s despite countless pleas from Trump’s aides and aides, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity, according to previous testimony and text messages obtained by the committee.
“You’ll hear leaders on Capitol Hill begging the president for help,” Cheney has said, including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who said he was “scared” and asked many of President Trump’s family members. The members were called because he could not persuade. President himself. ,
The panel has said that its investigation is on and further hearing is possible. It expects to compile a preliminary report this fall and a final report by the end of this session of Congress.