As a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and a parade of officials — from the most senior to junior aides — scrambled to respond to an attack on the U.S. government, former President Donald J. Trump sat in his dining room. next to the Oval Office, many of those officials told congressional investigators while watching the violence on television and refused to do anything to stop it.
The stunning accounts of the commander in chief who chose to take no action for more than three hours to protect the legislature took center stage on Thursday during a prime-time hearing of the House committee investigating the riots, the culmination of a series public sessions to set out its findings.
They were intended to provide a close-up, panoramic view of what the former president was doing during the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries — straight from the mouth of Trump’s top White House attorney, a top adviser for national security, his spokeswoman and his executive assistant.
The hearing was sort of a closing argument in the case the panel built against Mr. Trump, one whose central claim is that the former president had failed in his duty for not doing everything he could — or whatever, for 187. minutes – to call off the attack carried out in his name.
As evidence, the panel prepared outtakes of Mr Trump’s videotaped comments dated Jan. 7 that showed that, even after the mob violence, he struggled to condemn the attack or promise a peaceful transfer of power, according to one person. who is familiar with the Commission’s plans. .
The hearing barely marks the end of the commission’s work. The panel now plans to enter a second phase of investigation, prepare a preliminary report and possibly hold additional hearings in the coming weeks.
“The investigation is still ongoing, if not accelerating,” said Virginia Democrat Representative Elaine Luria, a member of the committee. “We’re getting so much new information.”
Lawmakers discussed using August, when Congress takes a long hiatus, to prepare a preliminary report of their findings, expected to be released in September. But a final report — complete with exhibits and transcripts — could wait until December, just before the committee is disbanded at the start of a new congress on January 3, 2023.
Before Thursday’s session, the panel turned to two military veterans — Ms. Luria, a Navy veteran, and Representative Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican and a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard — to lead the questioning.
Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chair of the committee, chaired the remote hearing after testing positive for Covid-19 this week.
Key Revelations from the January 6 Hearings
They recorded personal testimonies from two witnesses who resigned in disgust after observing Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6: Matthew Pottinger, a veteran of the Marine Corps who was the deputy national security adviser and the top White House official. to perform on January 6 and Sarah Matthews, a former White House press officer. Both abruptly quit their jobs after the riots.
In a preview clip of the hearing that Kinzinger posted on Twitter on Thursday, a series of former Trump White House officials described how he sat in a dining room in the west wing of the White House, watching television during the riot.
“He was always in the dining room,” Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House press secretary, told the panel.
Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who served as national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, told investigators that Mr. Trump, his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and others were transfixed by the on-screen images, but that Mr Trump was not. take action to intervene.
“Everyone was watching TV,” testified Mr. Kellogg.
When the panel’s investigators asked Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, whether the violence in the Capitol was on screen while speaking with Mr. Trump, he simply replied, “Yes.”
Mr Cipollone, who was in and out of the Oval Office that day, is expected to appear in the hearing several times, using clips from a videotaped interview he gave under subpoena. One of the testimonies he gave was an account of how paralyzed Mr. Meadows sometimes seemed.
At one point, Mr. Cipollone told the committee, he urged Mr. Meadows to either get Mr. Trump to make a public statement or to do so himself, according to a person familiar with his testimony.
Mr Cipollone also told the panel about receiving phone calls from members of the government who wanted to stop that day. He was asked about Mr. Trump’s tweet condemning Mr. Pence as the rioters raged through the Capitol, and about Mr. Trump’s final public statement shortly after 4 p.m., the person familiar with his testimony said.
At each of its hearings in June and July, the panel presented evidence that lawmakers believe could be used to bolster a criminal case against Mr Trump. The commission has provided evidence of a conspiracy to defraud the American people and Mr Trump’s own donors; plans to file false voter rolls that could lead to allegations of filing false documents with the government; and evidence of a plot to disrupt the electoral count on Capitol Hill, suggesting he could face charges for obstructing official Congressional proceedings.
Trump’s dereliction of duty may not be the basis for a criminal charge, Ms. Luria said, but it raised ethical, moral and legal questions.
The commission has spent nearly two months laying out its story about a president who, after failing in a series of attempts to undo his defeat, ordered a crowd of his supporters to march toward the Capitol after he delivered a speech. held in which he called out Mr. Pence for not interfering in the official count of Congressional ballots to elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to be confirmed as president.
His supporters have clung to the words he used in those comments when he told the crowd to go “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol. But the panel has revealed that Mr Trump knew his supporters were armed and threatened with violence.
On Thursday, the committee was due to set out its conclusion that Mr. Trump intervened only after it became clear that the mob’s efforts to disrupt the electoral count had clearly failed.
He refused to do so until after 4 p.m. that day—and then only after hundreds of officers at the Capitol responded to support the overwhelmed Capitol police, and the tide against the crowd had begun, making it clear that the siege would fail. .
Such evidence could add to a case the commission has built that Mr. Trump was supportive of the mafia’s actions that day, only speaking out against the violence under pressure from his advisers.
