JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): While the Capitol was invaded by his supporters, Donald Trump remained out of sight at the White House.
Establishing what exactly he was doing is a central goal of the January 6 investigation in the House. The committee has demanded a mountain of confidential documents related to what Trump, his top aides and members of his family were up to during the riot.
On Friday, President Biden ordered the National Archives to turn over a batch of those documents. While presidents of both parties have long fought to protect executive privilege, which allows a president to keep deliberations with aides confidential, Biden’s White House counsel said, in this case: “President Biden has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States.”
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He believes it to be of the utmost importance for both Congress and the American people to have a complete understanding of the events of that day to prevent them from happening again.
KARL: Trump is vowing to fight in court, asserting the documents must remain confidential and issuing an angry statement against what he called a fake investigation.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl has a book coming out that he says has new information about what went on in the White House during the insurrection:
For my upcoming book “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” I spoke to several people who were in contact with Trump during the riot. Trump, the sources say, was watching TV in his private dining room.
He liked what he saw.
He boasted about the size of the crowd, and he argued with aides who wanted him to call in his supporters to stop the rioting.
He liked what he saw. I don’t doubt it. But I’ll be interested to see what evidence Karl brings that backs that up.
This is how I’ve always assumed Trump saw that crowd. He was proud, happy, excited by it. It showed how much they loved him and how they were taking matters into their own hands to overturn the election. That was his last coup strategy — violent overthrow. Obviously, he didn’t think through how that was going to end but he doesn’t do that. As he’s always said: when things don’t go as he wants them to he’ll just figure it out, he always has.
This time it didn’t go his way and he couldn’t make it work. Now, I suspect he’s glad of it. He can run again as a restoration leader and by the time it happens, people will have forgotten the worst atrocities, presumably the pandemic will be over and the Democrats will have cleaned up most of his messes. It’s all good.
Anyway, there’s more:
After the riot had been under way for some two hours, Trump finally agreed to make a video statement. In that message, he reluctantly agreed to ask his supporters to go home, but he also praised them.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We love you. You’re very special.
KARL: In “Betrayal,” I revealed that an aide who was present for the video recording told me: “Trump had to tape the message several times before they got it right. And in earlier rejected versions, Trump neglected to tell supporters to leave the Capitol.”
Those video outtakes are precisely the kind of thing that could help the committee establish Trump’s state of mind during the riot.
Video outtakes? Oh yeah. I don’t know if they exist or whether the January 6th commission can get its hand on them but it would be very interesting to see.
Here’s another looney tunes detail, and it’s one I haven’t heard already:
In an excerpt from the soon-to-be-released Betrayal by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, which was shared on Sunday’s edition of This Week, the former president was said to be “intrigued” by the theory – which was presented to him by Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to install as acting attorney general.
“[Clark] believed that wireless thermostats made in China for Google by a company called Nest Labs might have been used to manipulate voting machines in Georgia,” Karl wrote. “The idea was nuts, but it intrigued Trump, who asked Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to look into it.”
Gee, I wonder why the Pentagon leaders’ hair was on fire during this period. This is the kind of batshit crazy nonsense Trump was listening to.