January 6 hearing: Donald Trump spent hours in front of the TV ignoring pleas to call capitol riot off

The former president ignored repeated requests to call off the rioters - and at times encouraged them, according to testimony at a prime-time hearing.

Former deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews is sworn in during a hearing by the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack. Picture: AFP

President Donald Trump spent hours in front of a television at the White House watching the attack on the Capitol unfold on Jan. 6, 2021, ignoring pleas from staff, supporters and family to call off the rioters -- and even at times encouraging them -- according to testimony Thursday at a prime-time hearing of the House committee investigating the attack.

“The case against Donald Trump, in these hearings, is not made by witnesses who are his political enemies,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.), the committee’s vice chair, the close of the hearing, the eighth and last of the current series. “It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family.” In more than two hours of recorded and live testimony, led by Reps. Elaine Luria (D., Va.) and Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.), the committee portrayed a president sitting idly by, watching the events on television as he contemplated his own fate, while aides, family members and security officials grew increasingly fearful and pleaded for him to take action to quell the violence. The violence continued for 187 minutes between Mr Trump’s speech at the Ellipse and the release of his video message asking protesters to go home.

Liz Cheney presided over the hearing. Picture: AFP

The committee played a recording of an interview with an unnamed security official working at the White House on Jan. 6 who testified that the Secret Service detail for Mr. Pence grew increasingly worried as the attack escalated in the afternoon, and some feared for their own lives. Some agents radioed in goodbyes to family members, he said. The security detail “thought this was about to get very ugly,” he said. “It was just chaos.” Previous hearings have focused on Mr Trump’s efforts to pressure government officials, including his own vice president, Mr Pence, and senior members of the Justice Department, to take steps to help him overturn the election. Mr. Trump and lawyers advising him, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, had argued that Mr Pence could reject electoral votes from several battleground states in an attempt to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

US Representative Elaine Luria. Picture: AFP

“Donald Trump’s own White House counsel, his own White House staff, members of his own family all implored him to immediately intervene to condemn the violence and instruct his supporters to stand down,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.), vice chairwoman of the committee, who presided over the hearing, as its chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), joined Thursday’s hearing remotely after he tested positive for Covid-19.

In not acting, Ms Cheney said, Mr Trump “refused to defend our nation and our Constitution.” “There was a desperate scramble for everyone to get President Trump to do anything,” Mr Kinzinger said. “All this occurred, and the president still did not act.” Ms. Cheney said the committee would spend August continuing its investigation before convening in September for additional hearings.

The committee played a recording of a deposition of Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commenting on Mr Trump’s lack of action on Jan. 6. “You’re the commander in chief, you’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America, and there’s nothing?” he said. “No call? Nothing? Zero?” The unnamed White House security official testified that there were multiple reports of weapons in the crowd. He said security officials were “in a state of shock” after hearing Mr Trump direct the mob toward the Capitol. “We all knew that it would move from a normal democratic public event into something else,” he said.

A video of former US President Donald Trump is displayed on a screen during the hearing. Picture: AFP

Ms Luria said that 15 minutes after Mr. Trump left the stage at the Ellipse he was informed that the Capitol was under attack. At 1:25 p.m., she said, Mr. Trump went into the private dining room off the Oval Office, where he watched Fox News, and didn’t leave until about 4 p.m.

While Mr Trump sat in the dining room, Ms Luria said, he called a number of senators to encourage them to take action to delay the certification of the election of Joe Biden as president. He also called his personal lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, she said Ms. Luria said the White House security official described a conversation between White House attorneys Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann regarding a pending call with the Pentagon about coordinating a response to the attack. Mr Herschmann told Mr. Cipollone that “the president didn’t want to do anything,” the national security official told the committee, according to Ms. Luria.

Mr Trump has said he did nothing wrong and has called the Jan. 6 committee a partisan witch hunt. He continues to claim falsely that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though his campaign and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits around the country challenging the 2020 results. The Justice Department said there were no signs of widespread fraud, and a bipartisan consortium of local, state and federal election officials declared the 2020 race the most secure US election in history.

The committee also presented testimony that on Jan. 6, as Mr. Trump watched live video of the Capitol attack inside the White House, he didn’t call his defense secretary, order the National Guard to assist police at the Capitol or contact any federal law-enforcement agency. Mr Pence, meanwhile, did make such calls, Ms. Cheney has said.

Several tweets by Mr Trump from Jan. 6 were the focus at the hearing, including one at 2:24 p.m. in which he asserted Mr Pence of lacking the courage to block the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The committee previously showed video of rioters responding angrily to the tweet. “Bring out Pence. Bring out Pence,” one rioter said in response to the tweet, according to a video the committee played at its third hearing on June 16.

Minutes after the tweet, Mr Pence was evacuated to a secure location on Capitol Hill. The committee previously said Mr Pence came within about 40 feet of the rioters.

Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary who resigned on Jan. 6, testified that as she watched coverage of the attack she thought the president needed to take immediate action. “The president needed to be out there immediately to tell these people to go home and condemn the violence that we’re seeing,” she told the committee.

‘I was disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty,’ testified Matthew Pottinger.

The Justice Department is conducting its own parallel investigation of Jan. 6, which has largely focused on rioters who entered the Capitol or fought with police.

While there has been no public indication that its probe has moved to target Mr Trump, the House hearings have coincided with the Justice Department expanding its investigation beyond the day’s violence and into efforts by Trump allies to overturn the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter. The department is adding prosecutors and resources to that investigation.

The committee plans to issue a report based on its findings later this year and could hold a string of hearings around that time, Mr Kinzinger recently told The Wall Street Journal. He said there could be other hearings before then as more witnesses come forward with information. The committee is also probing the Secret Service’s failure to retain text messages on agents’ phones from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021.

Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser under Mr Trump. Mr. Pottinger -- a former Journal reporter who also served in the Marines -- told the committee that he decided to resign on Jan. 6 after seeing the 2:24 p.m. tweet. “I was disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty,” he told the committee.

Erin Smith, the widow of DC Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, Capitol Police Sgt Aquilino Gonell, and Sandra Garza, the long-time partner of fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, hold hands as they listen. Picture: AFP

Thursday’s hearing also examined efforts by White House officials and members of Mr. Trump’s family to push Mr. Trump, for hours unsuccessfully, to make a statement condemning the attack. Keith Kellogg, former national security adviser for Mr Pence, told the committee that Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, spoke with her father at least twice about doing something to stop the attack on the Capitol, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Mr Trump refused to take action until about three hours after he left the stage at his Ellipse rally. At 4:17 p.m., he released a video taken in the White House Rose Garden telling rioters to “go home,” adding, “we love you, you’re very special.” Less than two hours later, Mr. Trump tweeted: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.... Go home with love & peace. Remember this day forever!” Near the conclusion of the hearing, the committee played out outtakes of a video recorded at the White House on Jan. 7, 2021, that family members and allies urged him to take to help fend off the threat that his cabinet could invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. The outtakes showed Mr Trump still refused to concede that he lost the election.

“I don’t want to say the election is over,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal