Donald Trump refused for hours to call off the deadly attack perpetrated by a group of his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the House select committee investigating the insurrection declared in its primetime hearing on Thursday.
The committee shared testimony from former White House aides indicating that Trump repeatedly rejected pleas from his senior advisers and even his own family members – including his eldest daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump – to immediately issue a statement calling off the mob swarming the Capitol.
As Trump watched news coverage of the Capitol attack from the comfort of the White House dining room, the mob carried out violence that ultimately left several people dead, the committee said.
“In the end, this is not, as it may appear, a story of inaction in a time of crisis, but instead it was the final action of Donald Trump’s own plan to usurp the will of the American people and remain in power,” said Democrat Elaine Luria, who co-led the Thursday hearing with Republican and fellow committee member Adam Kinzinger.
More than three hours passed between the end of Trump’s speech to supporters at the Ellipse near the White House and his tweet telling insurrectionists to “go home”.
In that time, a group of Trump’s supporters violently attacked law enforcement officers tasked to protect the Capitol and vandalized the building. Members of Congress, who had gathered at the Capitol to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, hid from the rioters and feared for their lives as the president stood by.
“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act,” Kinzinger said.
Trump only decided to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol once it became clear that their attempts to disrupt the congressional certification of the election would prove fruitless, the committee argued. In a now infamous video message shared to Twitter on the afternoon of 6 January, Trump told the rioters to disperse while also praising them.
“Go home. We love you. You’re very special,” Trump said in the video.
“Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this: Donald Trump’s conduct on January 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation,” Kinzinger said. “It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service of our democracy.”
Sarah Matthews, a former White House press aide who resigned after witnessing the insurrection, testified on Thursday that Trump rejected earlier efforts to bring an end to the violence. Trump was even resistant to the idea of calling for “peace” in a tweet until his daughter Ivanka talked him into it, Matthews said.
“To me, his refusal to act and call off the mob that day and his refusal to condemn the violence was indefensible,” Matthews said. “And so I knew that I would be resigning that evening.”
Even the day after the insurrection, Trump refused to acknowledge he had fairly lost the election. The committee played outtakes of Trump’s address to the nation on January 7, in which the then-president took issue with various aspects of the script written by his team.
“I don’t want to say the election is over,” Trump said in one clip. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election is over.”
Appearing before the committee on Thursday, Matthew Pottinger, who served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser, said the former president’s election lies and the resulting insurrection had weakened America’s global standing.
“January 6 helped feed a perception that, I think, emboldens our adversaries,” Pottinger told the committee on Thursday. “I heard from a lot of friends in Europe, in Asia – allies, close friends, supporters of the United States – that they were concerned about the health of our democracy.”
While Trump’s advisers pleaded with him to take action on 6 January, a horrifying scene was unfolding at the Capitol. Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, was escorted out of the Senate chamber due to safety concerns and was demanding that the US military come to the Capitol to end the violence.
Despite Pence’s efforts, Trump still refused to act.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy called Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, asking them to help stop the violence, former White House officials testified.
The committee played a clip of Kushner telling investigators that Republicans on Capitol Hill, including McCarthy, seemed “scared” when he spoke to them.
In the face of those life-threatening conditions, congressional leaders persevered with their efforts to certify the election results. The committee showed never-before-seen footage and images of House and Senate leaders inquiring about when they could return to their work, even as they hid from the rioters in a secure location.
“Other leaders upheld their oaths to do the right thing,” Luria said. She later added, “President Trump did not then and does not now have the character or courage to say to the American people what his own people know to be true. He is responsible for the attack on the Capitol on January 6.”
Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee who appeared virtually at the Thursday hearing because of a coronavirus diagnosis, announced the panel will hold additional hearings in September.
The announcement comes amid increased speculation that Trump will soon announce another bid for the White House in 2024. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, argued that Trump’s actions on 6 January should disqualify him from office.
“Every American must consider this: can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?” Cheney said Thursday.
