Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy said former President Donald Trump made “last-minute changes” to his January 6, 2021 address from the Ellipse as he listened to a rally attended by far-right extremists gathered near the Ellipse on the evening of January. White House were held. 5, 2021.
“Based on documents we’ve received from the National Archives, including multiple versions of the presidents’ speech, and from witness testimony, we understand how that speech has evolved into a call to action and a call to fight,” Murphy said.
Murphy said Trump edited his speech to add language he later tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, including: “We don’t want our election victory stolen by the emboldened radical left. Our country has had enough. We won’t take it. more. We also added, together we will stop the stealing.”
Murphy said Trump continued editing his speech into the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, and had a 25-minute phone call with this lead speechwriter and senior adviser Stephen Miller.
After his phone call with Mr. Miller, President Trump added a line in his speech for the first time that said, ‘And we’ll see if Mike Pence goes down in history as a truly great and courageous leader. All he has to do is redirect the illegally submitted electoral votes back to the states that have been given false and fraudulent information where they want to recertify.” No previous versions of the speech addressed Vice President Pence or his role during the January 6 joint session,” Murphy noted.
She said: “These last-minute adjustments by President Trump to his speech were part of the president’s press campaign against his own vice president.”
Murphy said Miller removed the rules about Pence after speaking with White House attorney Eric Herschmann, who objected to the president’s changes, according to Miller’s testimony.
Miller recalled Hershmann saying “something along the lines of thinking it would be counterproductive, I think, to — discuss the matter in public.”
Murphy said the speechwriters were advised to add the Pence lines back to the speech after a “heated” phone call Trump had with Pence at 11:20 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Murphy said.
Trump speechwriter Vincent Haley also recalled that a “harsh sentence about the vice president” had been added. When Trump delivered the speech, it contained several more references to Pence, according to the commission’s presentation.
“I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOS and the stupid people he listens to,” Trump said in one of the ad-libbed lines played by the committee.
In another impromptu line, Trump called on his supporters to give “weak” Republicans “the kind of pride and audacity they need to take back our country.”
The committee also played dueling testimonials with various stories about Ivanka Trump’s decision to attend the rally at the ellipse.
In her statement, as played out at the hearing, Ivanka Trump denied attending the meeting in hopes of cooling off her father as he was still overheated from his phone call with Pence.
However, Julie Radford, an aide to Ivanka Trump, told the committee that Ivanka “felt she could help calm the situation, at least before taking the stage”.
“She said he called the vice president a non-swear word,” Radford told the committee. “I think that bothered her. And I think based on the conversations and what happened in the office, she could see that he was angry and upset and that people were giving wrong information.”
Tierney Sne of DailyExpertNews contributed to this report.