Jan 6 hearing: Trump said ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in speech outtake one day after riot

One point Cheney made tonight was that it was often Donald Trump’s own appointees who spoke up against his actions on and leading up to January 6.

“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies. It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials … his own family,” she said.

But she also noted that the women who testified have had to brave especially vicious personal attacks. Of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who testified earlier, Cheney said: “She knew all along she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60-, 70-year-old men who themselves hide behind executive privilege.”

Similarly, Sarah Matthews, was attacked on the House Republican conference Twitter account – despite the fact that she has worked for the House Republican conference – in a post that has since been taken down.

– MS

The January 6 committee has just concluded its final scheduled hearing, but its work is far from over. The committee will hold more hearings in September, and vice-chairwoman Liz Cheney said “the dam has begun to break” on the details of what happened that day.

Here’s more about what took place at tonight’s hearing:

• A Democratic congresswoman who led the day’s presentation said Trump “was derelict in his duty” before and during the storming of the Capitol.
• Secret Service agents feared for their lives during the attack.
• Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who raised his fist in solidarity with the protesters that would go on to attack the Capitol, was shown fleeing through its halls.
• Republican Adam Kinzinger said Trump “kept resisting” actions demanded by his staff to end the violence.
• In speech outtakes, Trump struggled to say that the 2020 election was “over”.
• Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows called for the president’s daughter Ivanka to help convince him to stop the attack.
• House Republicans attacked the committee on Twitter, including one of their own staffers who was a witness. (They later deleted the tweet).

The video of Josh Hawley running away not long after he cheered on the January 6 mob is a moment that’s likely to endure for a while after this hearing.

There was audible laughter in the room after the clip played. And now online it’s being set to various soundtracks:

– Maanvi Singh

Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, who lead the committee, are now delivering closing remarks.

Cheney ended with this thought: “Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”

– Maanvi Singh

“Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this: Donald Trump’s conduct on Jan 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation,” Kinzinger said.

It’s unclear whether these hearings will break through and convince many fellow Republicans. Polls prior to this hearing finale found that while the majority of Americans think Trump is responsible for the deadly insurrection, stark party divisions remain.

A Monmouth poll found that fewer Republicans now see January 6 as an insurrection than did last year.

– Maanvi Singh

One of the most revelatory parts of this hearing are the outtakes from Trump’s video message on 7 January.

“I don’t want to say the election is over,” he says in one clip. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results.”

Here’s the clip:

The day after the attack, White House staff pressed Trump to give another speech to the nation condemning the attack on the Capitol, which committee member Elaine Luria said Trump was motivated to do “because of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th amendment, or by impeachment”.

The committee just showed video of him recording that speech and struggling to accept that the election was finished.

“But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” Trump said in the speech, before saying to his staff: “I don’t want to say the election’s over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election’s over, okay?”

“One day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie, President Trump still could not say that the election was over,” Luria said.

“Mike Pence let me down.” According to an unnamed White House employee, that’s what Trump said in the Oval Office following the attack, congressman Adam Kinzinger said.

Meanwhile, administration officials were condemning the day’s events and planning to resign.

“What happened at the Capitol cannot be justified in any form or fashion. It was wrong and it was tragic. And it was a terrible day. It was a terrible day for this country,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone told the committee.

As the hearing resumed, congressman Adam Kinzinger asked viewers to put themselves in the shoes of the president on the day of the attack.

“What would you have done if you had the opportunity to end the violence?” the Illinois Republican asked.

“You would’ve told the rioters to leave. As you heard, that’s exactly what the senior staff had been urging him to do. But he resisted, and he kept resisting for almost another two hours.”

Much of this hearing has focused on the efforts of various Trump administration official to get the president to act as the situation got ever more desperate at the Capitol.

Once again tonight, we’re being reminded of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s 180 flip after January 6.

Multiple witnesses have now recounted that. McCarthy first asked Donald Trump, and then Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, asking the president to call off the mob..

“Think about that. Leader McCarthy, who was one of the president’s strongest supporters, was scared and begging for help. President Trump turned him down,” Adam Kinzinger said.

A week later, McCarthy went to see Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

– Maanvi Singh

The hearing is now focusing on the tweets Trump sent as the Capitol was being stormed, which his former officials are testifying that they didn’t feel were strong enough to stop the violence.

The committee has played voice clips from the Oath Keepers militia groups, apparently between members who took part in the attack and those who were elsewhere.

After Trump tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”, one of the Oath Keepers remarked, “That’s saying a lot, but what he didn’t say, he didn’t say not to do anything to the congressman.” The speaker then laughed.

The committee showed Josh Hawley, the right-wing senator of Missouri, raising his fist in solidarity with the crowds on January 6 – and later fleeing as rioters breached the Capitol.

Here’s that video:

Reporters in the room said there was audible laughter after the video of Hawley running played. Hawley was the first senator to declare he would object to certifying the election.

– Maanvi Singh

The hearing has restarted with more from Pat Cipollone’s interview. He is describing White House officials as near-unanimous in wanting the rioters out of the Capitol as it was being attacked.

“I can’t think of anybody, you know, on that day, who didn’t want people to get out of the Capitol,” Cipollone said.

Asked what the president wanted, Cipollone appeared to invoke executive privilege.

“Get Ivanka down here”. That’s what chief of staff Mark Meadows said as White House officials tried to figure out how to get Trump to stop the rioters at the Capitol, according to testimony from then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

“I remember him getting Ivanka involved, said ‘get Ivanka down here.’ He felt that would be important”, Cipollone said.

Ivanka Trump is, of course, the president’s daughter, who was an adviser in the White House and told the committee she never believed Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen.

It seems the House GOP twitter account has deleted tweets attacking Sarah Matthews and describing tonight’s testimony was “heresy”.

Matthews, who has described herself as a “lifelong Republican” and has worked as a staffer for the House GOP, was previously derided as a “pawn” in Nancy Pelosi’s “witch hunt.”

The Twitter account is run by Representative Elise Stefanik’s staff.

– Maanvi Singh

The January 6 committee is now taking a 10-minute recess.

Just before they broke, several former top officials confirmed that they believed ensuring a peaceful transfer of power was among the president’s duties, including White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Ivanka Trump’s husband Jared Kushner and Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser.

“Rather than uphold his duty to the Constitution, president Trump allowed the mob to achieve the delay that he hoped with keep him in power,” congresswoman Elaine Luria said as the hearing’s first half concluded.

Secret Service agents feared for their lives as the Capitol was stormed, an unnamed White House security official testified to the committee.

“There’s a lot of yelling, a lot of… very personal phone calls over the radio,” the official said. Others “called to say goodbye to a family member”.

“I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming, but again, it is just chaos. They’re just yelling”, the official continued. “It sounds like that we came very close to either the service having to use lethal options, or worse.”