WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee closed out its set of summer hearings with its most detailed focus yet on the investigation’s main target: former President Donald Trump.
The panel on Thursday examined Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, as hundreds of his supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol, guiding viewers minute-by-minute through the deadly afternoon to show how long it took for the former president to call off the rioters. The panel focused on 187 minutes that day, between the end of Trump’s speech calling for supporters to march to the Capitol at 1:10 p.m. and a video he released at 4:17 p.m. telling the rioters they were “very special” but they had to go home.
Trump was “the only person in the world who could call off the mob,” but he refused to do so for several hours, said the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who participated in the hearing remotely due to a COVID-19 diagnosis. “He could not be moved.”
THE WHITE HOUSE DINING ROOM
The panel emphasized where Trump was as the violence unfolded — in a White House dining room, sitting at the head of the table, watching the violent breach of the Capitol on Fox News. He retreated to the dining room at 1:25 p.m., according to Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., one of two members who led the hearing. That was after some rioters had already breached barriers around the Capitol — and after Trump had been told about the violence within 15 minutes of returning to the White House.
Fox News was showing live shots of the rioters pushing past police, Luria said, showing excerpts of the coverage.
In video testimony played at the hearing, former White House aides talked about their frantic efforts to get the president to tell his supporters to turn around. Pat Cipollone, Trump’s top White House lawyer, told the panel that multiple aides — including Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump — advised the president to say something. “People need to be told” to leave, Cipollone recalled telling the president, urging Trump to make a public announcement. “Fast.”
Trump “could not be moved,” Thompson said, “to rise from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the White House hallway into the press briefing room where cameras were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to the armed and violent mob savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers.”
NO CALLS FOR HELP
As he sat in the White House, Trump made no efforts to call for increased law enforcement assistance at the Capitol. Witnesses confirmed that Trump did not call the defense secretary, the homeland security secretary or the attorney general.
The committee played audio of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reacting with surprise to the former president’s reaction to the attack. “You’re the commander-in-chief. You’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there’s Nothing? No call? Nothing Zero?” Milley said.
As Trump declined to call for help, Vice President Mike Pence was hiding in the Capitol, just feet away from rioters who were about to breach the Senate chamber. The committee played audio from an unidentified White House security official who said Pence’s Secret Service agents “started to fear for their own lives” at the Capitol and called family members in case they didn’t survive.
Shortly afterward, at 2:24 p.m., Trump tweeted that Pence didn’t have the “courage” to block or delay the election results as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
“He put a target on his own vice president’s back,” said Luria.
FORMER WHITE HOUSE AIDES
Matt Pottinger, who was Trump’s deputy national security adviser at the time, and Sarah Matthews, then the deputy press secretary, testified at the hearing. Both resigned from their White House jobs immediately after the insurrection.
Both Pottinger and Matthews told the committee of their disgust at Trump’s tweet about Pence.
Pottinger said he was “disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty,” which he said was “the opposite of what we needed at that moment.”
“That was the moment I decided I was going to resign,” Pottinger said.
Matthews said the tweet was “essentially him giving the green light to those people,” and said Trump’s supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet.”
She also described a debate within the press office about whether the violence should be condemned — and her frustration that such a debate was even happening, and that they were debating the politics of a tweet.
Matthews said she pointed to the television. “Do you think it looks like we are effing winning? Because I don’t think it does,” she said.
DESPERATE TEXTS
The committee showed some of the texts that were sent to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as White House aides tried to get the president to act. Meadows turned the texts over to the panel before he stopped cooperating.
“This is one you go to the mattresses on,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, texted Meadows. “They will try to f— his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.”
“Mark, he needs to stop this, now,” texted Mick Mulvaney, Meadows’ former GOP House colleague and the former director of the Office of Management and Budget.
“Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” texted Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham.
FINALLY, A VIDEO MESSAGE
As some of the worst of the fighting at the Capitol was still underway, and had been going on for hours, Trump put out the video at 4:17 p.m.
The committee showed video of Trump filming the statement, and a copy of the script that he ignored. “I am asking you to leave the Capitol Hill region NOW and go home in a peaceful way,” the script said.
But the president did not actually say that, instead repeating baseless claims of voter fraud without condemning the violence. “So go home. We love you. You’re very special,” Trump ended up saying. “I know how you feel.”
In video testimony, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said he got there as the filming ended, and “I think he was basically retiring for the day.”
The committee showed video from the Capitol siege at that exact moment — rioters trying to violently push through the main doors, battering officers who had been fighting for hours. Police radio traffic relayed, “Another officer unconscious.”
THE NEXT DAY
The committee showed never-before-seen outtakes of a speech prepared for Trump on Jan. 7 in which he was supposed to say the election was over. But he bristled at that line, telling a roomful of supporters, “I don’t want to say the election is over.”
In the outtakes, Trump was visibly angry — at one point hitting his hand on the podium — as he worked through the prepared remarks, with his daughter Ivanka and others heard chiming in with suggestions.
In the final video, Trump condemns the violence and says: “Congress has certified the results, and new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”
‘WE HAVE CONSIDERABLY MORE TO DO’
At the beginning of the hearing, Thompson and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chair, announced that the panel would “reconvene” in September to continue laying out their findings.
“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said of the committee’s probe. “We have considerably more to do. We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather.”
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Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker, Jill Colvin, Farnoush Amiri, Kevin Freking, Chris Megerian and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the Jan. 6 committee hearings at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege.
Jan. 6 probes: What’s next for Congress, criminal cases
WASHINGTON (AP) — This isn’t the end of the Capitol riot story.
The House committee investigating the deadly events of a fateful, chilly January day — now a year and a half in the past — has wrapped up its hot summer series of televised hearings, each featuring revelatory details about the day of violence itself or the weeks of efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss.
But the Jan. 6 committee is preparing for more hearings in September, and investigations persist in multiple jurisdictions and venues. New details will be unearthed. Additional criminal cases against the rioters who stormed the Capitol are a safe bet. Other prosecutions — Georgia Republicans were recently warned they could face charges — could be on the horizon, too.
A look at what lies ahead:
THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT:
In keeping with department protocol, federal prosecutors haven’t said anything publicly about scrutiny of Trump himself.
Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters Wednesday that “we do not do our investigations in public.” But he left no doubt about the scope of the probe, calling it “the most important investigation that the Justice Department has ever entered into.”
He also said “no person is above the law” and has vowed to hold wrongdoers “at any level” accountable as signs point to an investigation that is intensifying rather than winding down.
Officials have so far arrested more than 855 people in connection with the riot, and the work to identify those who broke into the building continues. Yet the investigation goes beyond that, as prosecutors in recent weeks have made clear their interest in broader efforts by Trump allies to undo the election results.
Last month, the FBI opened a new front of investigative activity by seizing records from a group of Republicans who served as fake electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and his allies pushed officials in those states to replace Biden’s duly selected electors with ones who supported him as they advanced claims that his victory had been stolen.
As for Trump, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, it remains unclear whether prosecutors might seek to bring criminal charges.
Legal experts have said damaging testimony from the hearings, including the assertion that he sought to join his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or that he dismissed warnings that many had weapons, gives prosecutors territory to explore. Some have said his overall campaign to cast aside the election results, and his desire to interfere with the congressional certification of the count, could amount to a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.
As Democrats pressure Garland to act, he and his team say their decisions are based on the facts, the evidence and the law. There are other considerations, though, that could conceivably come into play even if prosecutors assemble strong evidence.
Any prosecution of Trump is likely to further inflame tensions in an already deeply polarized country. And if the former president were to soon announce another run for office, a decision to charge him could inject the department into presidential politics.
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AT THE CAPITOL:
The committee’s investigation isn’t over, and the panel plans to hold new hearings in September. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chairwoman, says the nine-member panel “has far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather.”
“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said Thursday. “We have considerably more to do.”
One unresolved question is whether the committee will call Trump or former Vice President Mike Pence to testify. Members have debated whether to summon Trump, the main focus of their probe but a witness who has railed against the investigation, denied much of the evidence and whose credibility would be open to attack.
The panel could also invite Pence for closed-door testimony or ask him to answer written questions. Members have debated whether he is needed since many of his closest aides have already testified. His top lawyer at the White House, Greg Jacob, testified at one of the committee’s hearings in June and characterized much of Pence’s thought process during the time when Trump was pressuring him to block or delay Biden’s win.
Another timing factor: If Republicans take over the House in November’s midterm elections, the committee is likely to be disbanded in January. Its Democratic chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, has said it will issue a report before the end of the year.
The committee is also expected to weigh in on possible legislative changes to the Electoral Count Act, which governs how a president is certified by Congress. A bipartisan group of senators this week released proposed changes to the law that would clarify the way states submit electors and the vice president tallies the votes. Trump and his allies tried to find loopholes in the law ahead of Jan. 6 as the former president worked to overturn his defeat to Biden. Pence refused to go along.
The committee has not been shy about referring for potential prosecution witnesses who refuse to cooperate. Though the Justice Department has not taken up all such referrals, it won a conviction Friday against longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who had defied the panel’s subpoena.
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GEORGIA:
The inquiry that perhaps poses the most immediate peril to Trump is based in Fulton County, Georgia, where District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating efforts by the former president to get state officials to undo his election loss by imploring them to “find” votes he — falsely — claimed had been stolen from them.
Willis has said she is contemplating subpoenaing Trump for his testimony, a move that would seek to force him to cooperate with a criminal probe even as he lays the groundwork for another run for office.
Prosecutors have already sought the testimony of several Trump associates, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. They’ve also advised 16 Georgia Republicans that they are at risk of being indicted. Those Republicans signed a certificate asserting Trump had won the election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors, even though Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors had been certified.
The investigation’s scope includes a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. During that call, Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in the state.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call. “Because we won the state.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing. He has repeatedly described his call to Raffensperger as “perfect.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of the Jan. 6 committee hearings at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege.