Hearing: Trump did not want to appease the mob on Capitol Hill

Despite desperate pleas from advisers, allies, a Republican leader and even his family, Donald Trump refused to appease the mob attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021, instead “pouring gasoline on the fire.” ” by aggressively tweeting his false claims that the election had been stolen and calling the crowd of supporters “very special,” the House investigative committee showed Thursday night.

The next day he declared again: “I don’t want to say that the elections are over.” That was in a cut scene from a speech he was to give, which was not aired at the time and was presented at the prime-time commission hearing.

The commission documented how for some 187 minutes, from the moment Trump left the stage of a rally sending supporters to Capitol Hill, to the moment he appeared on video from the White House Rose Garden, nothing he was able to make the defeated president change his attitude. Instead, he watched the violence unfold on television.

“President Trump did not stop acting,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, also a Republican but a frequent critic of Trump and a former fighter pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He chose not to act.”

After months of work and weeks of hearings, the prime-time session began the same way the commission did: blaming the deadly attack on Trump himself for rallying the crowd in Washington and sending it to Capitol Hill.

Trump weaponized (his supporters’) “love of country,” said the committee’s Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney.

Far from finishing its work after Thursday’s hearing, probably the last of the summer, the committee will resume its activity in September as new witnesses and information appear. Cheney stated that “the levee has begun to break” to reveal what happened that fateful day, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

“Donald Trump made an intentional decision to violate his oath of office,” Cheney stated. “Every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the decisions that Donald Trump made during the violence on January 6 ever have the confidence for a position of authority in our great nation?”

Trump, who is considering running for president again, called the commission a “kangaroo court” and singled out the committee and witnesses for their “many lies and misrepresentations.”

In its second prime-time session, the committee intended to present a “minute-by-minute” account of Trump’s actions with new testimony, including that of two White House aides, with radio transmissions from Secret Service agents reporting they feared for their lives as well as the discussions behind the scenes at the White House.

With the siege of the Capitol in full swing, Trump “gave the green light” to his supporters by expressing on Twitter his criticism of Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to follow his plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory, a former House aide said. White to the commission.

Two advisers resigned immediately.

“I thought that January 6, 2021 was one of the darkest days in the history of our nation,” Sarah Matthews, a former White House adviser, told the panel. “And President Trump was treating it like it was an occasion to celebrate. So that further cemented my decision to quit.”

The committee played audio of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, reacting with surprise to the president’s inaction during the attack: “You are the commander in chief. He has an assault underway on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there is nothing? No call? Any? Zero?”.

On Jan. 6, an irate Trump demanded to be brought to the Capitol after supporters stormed the building, well aware of the deadly attack, but his security team refused.

“Within 15 minutes of walking off the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was under siege and under attack,” said Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democrat from Virginia.

On Capitol Hill, the mob was shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” Matt Pottinger, a Trump deputy national security adviser, testified as the president tweeted his condemnation of the vice president.

Pottinger, who testified Thursday, said that when she saw Trump’s tweet she decided to resign immediately, as did Matthews, who said she was a lifelong Republican but could not endorse what was happening. She was the witness who said the tweet was a “green light” and “pouring gasoline on the fire.”

Meanwhile, recordings of Secret Service radio broadcasts revealed how some agents trying to get Pence to safety amid the chaos asked for farewell messages to be sent to their relatives.

The commission showed an unpublished text message from the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., to the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, urging the president to call off the rally.

And in a chilling moment, the committee showed Trump refusing to make a speech the next day declaring the election closed, despite being encouraged by his daughter, Ivanka Trump, heard off-screen, to read the script.

“The president’s words matter,” Luria added. “We know that many of the assailants were listening to President Trump.”

Luria said the panel has received testimony confirming former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s earlier powerful statement about an altercation in which Trump insisted the Secret Service take him to Capitol Hill.

Among those who testified Thursday in recorded videos was Mark Robinson, a retired sergeant with the District of Columbia Police Department, who told the commission that Trump was well aware of the number of armed people among his supporters but wanted to go anyway. .

“The only description I got was that the president was upset, and he insisted on going to Capitol Hill and there was a heated discussion about it,” Robinson said. The panel heard that Trump was “furious.”

Commission Chairman Bennie Thompson, who participated virtually due to COVID-19, opened Thursday’s hearing by indicating that the president “did everything he could to reverse the election” he lost to Biden, including actions before and during the attack on the Capitol.

“He lied, he abused and he betrayed his oath,” Thompson testified. “Our investigation is continuing … Responsibility must be taken.”

Although the commission cannot file criminal charges, the Justice Department is monitoring its work.

So far, more than 840 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riots, of which more than 330 have pleaded guilty, most to misdemeanors. Of the more than 200 defendants who have been convicted, around 100 received jail sentences.

No former US president has ever been prosecuted at the federal level by the Justice Department.

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