Former President Donald Trump knew his supporters were at the Capitol, saw the violence on television and actively resisted pleas from his staff – and others – to call off the attack, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol made clear in its hearing Thursday.
The hearing, which marks the eight public session of the series, centered on what Trump was doing after he left the stage where he rallied his supporters to march to the Capitol, and in the intervening 187 minutes before he infamously told them in a video message to go home.
But perhaps the most damaging disclosure was nothing Trump did on Jan. 6, but something he said a day later – as advisers worked with him to heal the nation by acknowledging his loss and moving on.
“I don’t want to say the election’s over,” Trump petulantly says in an outtake of his address, refusing to accede to a peaceful transfer of power – even after the prior day’s assault on American democracy.
Among the abundance of information displayed in Thursday’s hearing were behind-the-scenes details about how Trump responded – or chose not to respond – as a mob of his supporters approached the Capitol. It suggested that within 15 minutes of giving his speech, the president was aware of what was going on mere miles away.
The hearing detailed how Trump resisted using the word “peace” in a tweet when asked to do so as a mob stormed the Capitol. And how his staff later reacted when he decided to tweet that Mike Pence lacked the “courage” to overturn the election results, with testimony from two former staff members explaining that it was like “fuel being poured on the fire” and a “green light” to rioters.
The committee made clear – through testimony from multiple Trump staffers, that the former president did not see a problem with the actions of his supporters at the Capitol. And according to testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump was the only one at the White House who didn’t want the mob cleared from the seat of democracy.
Additionally, the panel presented new evidence supporting Cassidy Hutchinson’s stunning testimony that detailed how Trump reportedly lunged at a Secret Service agent as he tried to get his security detail to drive him over to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse.
The hearing also featured the first recorded testimony presented from an interview with Donald Trump Jr., who testified about his text messages to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, in which he told Meadows that his father should condemn the violence “ASAP.”
Cheney also suggested on Thursday that the U.S. Secret Service may be willing to speak with the committee in the future, saying that they have recently retained new counsel.
The committee was additionally looking to feature in Thursday’s hearing Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, following accusations last week from a government watchdog that the agency had deleted texts from those days. On Friday, the select committee subpoenaed the agency for the missing information. But by Tuesday, it became clear that the committee would receive little – if any – additional text messages from the agency.
GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming also announced during Thursday’s hearing that the American public had not seen the last of the committee. After a month of further investigation, the lawmakers will reconvene in September for additional hearings.
Cheney, in her opening statements, pointed to new subpoenas being issued, saying that the “dam has begun to break,” referencing how Trump has formerly insulated himself, but after a slew of hearings and more than a year of investigation that the committee is slowly but surely breaching his inner circle.
Through eight public hearings to date, the committee’s findings have creeped inexorably closer to the former president himself, with Cheney dramatically ending last week’s session with the disclosure that Trump tried to call a witness, who declined to answer. For his part, Trump himself appears to be growing increasingly rattled as the committee pierces his inner circle.
“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies,” Cheney said in her concluding remarks Thursday. “It is instead a series of confessions from Donald Trump’s own appointees – his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked with him for years – and his own family.”
