Donald Trump ignored repeated pleas from his family and closest advisers to end the Jan. 6 riots and instead spent hours watching the violence unfold on Fox News, a House committee has heard. congress
In the final session of a summer of hearings, the court investigating the insurgency used a prime-time broadcast Thursday night to detail how the president refused to make a statement asking a crowd of his supporters who resigned.
Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chair, sent a clear signal to American voters that Trump’s actions during the siege should disqualify him from running for president again in 2024.
“Donald Trump made a determined decision to violate his oath of office, to ignore the current violence against law enforcement, to threaten our constitutional order,” he said.
Describing the former president’s actions as “indefensible,” Cheney added, “All Americans must consider this: Can[he]. . . will you ever again entrust any position of authority to our great nation?
The panel detailed how the former president refused to make a statement calling on the mob to stand down. Instead, the committee heard, Trump watched the events on television and made calls to senators who were supposed to certify the election results.
Meanwhile, Trump officials received messages from the Capitol warning that Mike Pence was in such danger that members of the former vice president’s security detail feared for their lives.
The packed congressional meeting room heard live testimony from two White House aides present that day: Matt Pottinger, who worked as deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, a former press aide.
They also played video evidence from several people who worked at the White House on Jan. 6, all of whom said the president did not call for increased law enforcement while the mob stormed Congress.
Mark Milley, the head of the US military, told the committee his alarm in taped testimony. He said, “You’re the commander in chief and there’s an attack on the United States Capitol. And there’s nothing? No calls? Zero?”
The committee heard that Trump expressed sympathy for his supporters, even as they chanted: “Hang Mike Pence.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide at the time, recounted a conversation between Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. “Mark replied something to the effect of, ‘You heard, Pat, he thinks Mike deserves it, he doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.’
Several witnesses expressed alarm at a tweet Trump sent at 2:24 p.m. when White House officials believed Pence’s life was in danger: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what he should have to have done to protect our country and our Constitution”.
Hutchinson said she was “disgusted” by the tweet, while Pottinger said she decided at the time to resign. Matthews called Trump’s actions “indefensible.”
Those around Trump continued to push him to impeach his supporters, including Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives.
The text messages showed Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s son, telling Meadows: “You must condemn [sic] this shit As fast as possible.”
Trump finally posted a video shortly after 4 p.m. telling the rioters to go home, adding: “We love you, you’re very special.”
The committee played previously unseen footage of an enraged Trump filming a Jan. 7 speech condemning the violence. He repeatedly interrupted the recording because he didn’t want to say that his supporters had broken the law or that he had lost to Joe Biden.
“I don’t want to say the election is over,” Trump said at the time. He was later seen hitting the lectern in frustration.
The hearings have shown how many of Trump’s closest advisers told Trump he had lost the election, but continued to pressure the Justice Department and individual states to stop processing the results.
When he failed, he encouraged his supporters to protest in Washington, DC on January 6, the date Congress officially certified the result.
The hearings have damaged the former president’s approval ratings and raised the prospects of those who could challenge him for the Republican nomination in 2024.
There are gaps in the committee’s evidence related to what happened on Jan. 6 because of the lack of text messages sent by Secret Service agents.
The service deleted those messages just weeks after the unrest due to what it said was a “system migration process.” Only one text has been recovered and shared with the committee, aides said.
Cheney released a joint statement Wednesday with Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the committee, urging the Secret Service to recover the lost data and warning that laws may have been broken.
Elaine Luria, a Democrat on the committee, said Thursday that they expected members of the Secret Service to testify in the coming weeks. More hearings are expected in September.