The House select committee investigating the 6 January riot reportedly obtained never-before-seen outtakes from Donald Trump’s video message to his supporters the day after the insurrection.
Those unaired versions of Mr Trump’s recorded message are expected to be entered as part of the evidence shown at the committee’s eighth hearing on Thursday night, the Washington Post first reported.
The prime-time hearing has been portrayed as a chance for committee members to showcase what the one-term president was doing during the pivotal hours on the day of the actual riot. That question is at the centre of the investigation, particularly because official White House records of his phone calls on that day included an eight-hour gap, from a little after 11am till about 7pm.
Rep Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who is one of two members leading Thursday’s hearing, indicated that he expects the final hearing will “open people’s eyes in a big way.”
According to the report from Washington Post, the video outtakes include moments where Mr Trump struggled to get through taping the message, while reportedly outright refusing to concede that the election results were a settled matter.
At one point in the tapes, the then-president reportedly attempted to label the rioters who descended on the Capitol – some of whom Mr Trump knew were armed with weapons with calls to “hang” his then-vice-president Mike Pence – as patriots while he also danced around saying that they were accused of doing anything wrong.
Speaking to CNN on Wednesday night, committee member Rep Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said that the panel intends to showcase the outtakes during Thursday’s hearing and believes that they will further underscore the former president’s inability to condemn the actions of the rioters actions on 6 January.
“The President displayed extreme difficulty in completing his remarks,” the Democratic congressman said on Anderson Cooper 360.
“It’s extremely revealing how exactly he went about making those statements, and we’re going to let everybody see parts of that,” he added.
Rep Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who also sits on the panel, said during a separate interview with CNN on Wednesday that the unaired video footage “will be significant in terms of what the president was willing to say and what he wasn’t willing to say”, adding that the true details will be revealed more in what he chooses not to say when encouraged by others to condemn the violence.
“You’ll hear more about how he was ultimately prevailed upon to say something and what he was willing to say and what he wasn’t,” Mr Schiff told Don Lemon.
The video tapes will make up part of what the panel members have already teased the Thursday’s prime-time hearing will zero in on, namely Mr Trump’s lack of willingness to call off the rioters.
“You will hear that Donald Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help,” Rep Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s Republican vice chairwoman, said as she previewed the hearing last week.
For 187 minutes, or nearly three hours, Mr Trump waited to make a statement about the violent mob making its way through the Capitol, with calls to execute and hang one of his administration’s own officials.
The hearing will air at 8pm ET on Thursday and will be led by Rep Kinzinger alongside Rep Elaine Luria, a Democrat from Virginia.
