Investigation isn’t over, J6 committee makes clear
Thursday night’s “season finale” of public hearings from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol was anything but. Evidence continues to pour in, members made clear. They will return in September with more. But last night’s finale dished up plenty.
From the outset of this series of hearings, Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney made clear that responsibility for the deadly Jan. 6 violence lay with Donald Trump.
“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” she said on opening night, June 9.
A White House security official the committee did not identify testified (audio only) to being “in a state of shock” about Trump’s announcement that he would lead rallygoers in a march on the Capital. The constitutionally protected rally would become something much darker if Trump went to the Capitol.
Thursday’s hearings provided more corroboration of Cassidy Hutchinson’s secondhand story that an argument broke out between the president and his security detail about taking him to the Capitol following the rally on The Ellipse. An unidentified White House staffer confirmed her story via Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Tony Ornato that Trump was “irate” at being whisked back to the White House. Sgt. Mark Robinson (Ret.) of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department also heard that a “heated discussion” had taken place in the motorcade.
Trump learned that the march had become violent upon returning to the White House (Washington Post):
But instead of harnessing the power of the Oval Office by ordering military or police intervention or exhorting the rioters to go home, Trump continued to fan the flames of discord — and remained focused on trying to overturn the 2020 election,even as his aides implored him to stop the violence.
He demanded a list of senators’ phone numbers to cajole them not to certify the forthcoming electoral college count. He resisted aides’ entreaties that he make a public statement condemning the insurrection. And at 2:24 p.m., the same moment members of his national security staff were learning how close rioters had come to Vice President Mike Pence, Trump tweeted that his second-in-command was a coward.
The deadly violent insurrection that followed is already documented history.
The committee played radio exchanges between alarmed Secret Service agents protecting Pence as rioters overran the building and called for Pence to be hanged. Recordings included word of agents “saying goodbye to family members.”
Post again:
“President Trump sat in his dining room and watched the attack on television, while his senior-most staff, closest advisers and family members begged him to do what was expected of any American president,” said Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who led the questioning Thursday along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).
“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home,” Kinzinger said. “He chose not to act.”
What testimony also made clear was that during the violence, Pence was acting as president while Trump did nothing. From a loading dock below the Capitol, Pence called Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley and delivered orders to get the military and the National Guard engaged to “put down this situation,” in Milley’s words.
In his closing statement, Kinzinger was on fire. Only once it became clear that the insurrection had failed, said Kinzinger, did Trump engage “in the political theater of telling the mob to go home.”
Trump’s conduct, Kinzinger continued, was “a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation. It is a stain on our history, it is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service of our democracy.”
Perhaps most stunning revelations were the outtakes of Trump’s late afternoon taping in the Rose Garden of a message for rioters to go home, and his formal message regarding the attack the next day. He could not bring himself to admit the election was over and that he had lost.
Embarrassing details
As the rioters raged, Jared Kushner was taking a shower.
The committee played video of Sen. Josh Hawley’s infamous raised-fist encouragement to protesters before the riot, followed by clips of him running from the building once the riot began. The clips drew laughter from the committee room and instant mockery on the internet.
“I don’t know who put that Hawley hit out, but right now his tiny tiny testicles are a hood ornament on Liz Cheney‘s SUV,” tweeted former Republican adviser Rick Wilson.
Prior to testimony by former White House communications staffer Sarah Matthews, the House GOP account tweeted and deleted that she was “just another liar and pawn in Pelosi’s witch-hunt.”
House Republicans during the hearing also suffered an autocorrect faceplant.
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