Trump ‘chose not to act’, hearing told
WASHINGTON — Despite desperate pleas from aides, Republican congressional leaders and even his family, Donald Trump refused to call off the Jan 6 mob attack on the US Capitol in Washington, instead “pouring gasoline on the fire” by aggressively tweeting his false claims of a stolen election and telling the crowd of supporters in a video address how special they were.
The next day, the Republican president declared anew, “I don’t want to say the election is over”. That was in a previously unaired outtake of a speech he was to give, shown at Thursday night’s primetime hearing of the House of Representatives investigating committee.
The committee documented how for some 187 minutes, from the time Trump left a rally stage sending his supporters to the Capitol to the time he ultimately appeared in the Rose Garden video, nothing could move the defeated president, who watched the violence unfold on TV.
Even a statement prepared for Trump to deliver — which said “I am asking you to leave the Capitol Hill region NOW and go home in a peaceful way” — could not be delivered as written, without Trump editing it to repeat his baseless claims of voter fraud that sparked the deadly assault.
He also had wanted to include language about pardoning the rioters in that speech, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson had testified previously.
“President Trump didn’t fail to act,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, a fellow Republican but frequent Trump critic who flew fighter jets in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He chose not to act.”
Detailed accounting
Plunging into its second primetime hearing on the Capitol attack, the committee aimed to show a “minute by minute” accounting of Trump’s actions that fateful day, how he summoned the crowd to Washington with his false claims of a stolen election and then dispatched them to fight for his presidency.
With the Capitol siege raging, Trump poured “gasoline on the fire” by tweeting condemnation of vicepresident Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with his plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, former aides told the hearing on Thursday night.
Two Trump aides resigned on the spot.
“I thought that Jan 6, 2021, was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,” former White
House aide Sarah Matthews said in testimony before the panel. “And president Trump was treating it as a celebratory occasion. So it just further cemented my decision to resign.”
Earlier that day, an irate Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol after his supporters had stormed the building, well aware of the deadly attack, but then returned to the White House and did nothing to call off the violence, despite appeals from family and close advisers, witnesses testified.
Thursday’s hearing was probably the last for the summer, but the panel said it will resume in September as more witnesses and information emerges.
Ahead of the hearing, the committee released a video of four former White House aides testifying that Trump was in a private dining room with the TV on as the violence unfolded.
So far, more than 840 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Over 330 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors. Of the more than 200 defendants to be sentenced, about 100 received terms of imprisonment.