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

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      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:02:07One 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. – MSThe 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:Josh Hawley running away to a variety of soundtracks. Pt. 1: Chariots of Fire #January6thCommitteeHearing pic.twitter.com/tVCf2R5tUD— Mallory Nees (@The_Mal_Gallery) July 22, 2022
      – Maanvi SinghBennie 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 SinghOne 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:02:07The 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 SinghThe 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: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — who raised his fist in support of the Capitol insurrectionists earlier in the day — runs for his life from the rioters inside the building in never-before-seen video. pic.twitter.com/GU1L8ttN8u— The Recount (@therecount) July 22, 2022
      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 SinghThe 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.Ivanka Trump says she does not believe father’s claim 2020 election was stolenRead moreIt 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 SinghThe 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.” More

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      Pence’s security detail wanted to call family, feared for their lives during Capitol riot

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      Pence’s security detail wanted to call family, feared for their lives during Capitol riotA White House national security official said, ‘for whatever reason … the VP detail thought this was about to get very ugly’ In chilling new testimony about the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the investigating House committee showed that members of the Secret Service detail for the vice-president, Mike Pence, so feared for his and their safety that they “screamed” that other officials should say goodbye to their families.Jan 6 hearing live updates: Trump ‘was derelict in his duty’, Republican Kinzinger saysRead moreA White House national security official whose identity and voice was obscured described the calls in testimony played by the January 6 committee in a public hearing on Thursday night.The official was asked why, after a mob that Donald Trump sent to the Capitol attacked Congress in an attempt to stop Pence certifying Joe Biden’s election win, staff at the White House officially recorded that, “Service at the Capitol does not sound good right now”.The official said: “The members of the VP detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There was a lot of yelling. There were a lot of very personal calls over the radio, so it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it.“There were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth … for whatever reason it was on the ground, the VP detail thought this was about to get very ugly.”Such terrified and panicked messages were relayed from the Capitol around the time Trump tweeted to his supporters a now infamous 2.24pm message in which he did nothing to calm the riot.The then president said: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary.”News that members of the Secret Service thought they were going to be killed by the pro-Trump mob comes amid considerable tension between the Secret Service and the January 6 committee.The committee served the agency with a subpoena for all text communications on the day before the Capitol attack and the day itself. The Secret Service said the messages had been wiped. It subsequently delivered just one message to the committee.Nine deaths have been linked to the Capitol riot, including law enforcement officers who died by suicide. Nearly 900 people have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy. The committee is attempting to show grounds for criminal charges against Trump himself. The Department of Justice would have to bring any charges.In the primetime Thursday hearing about events on January 6, the national security official said: “I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming but again it was just chaos, they were just yelling.“If they’re getting nervous and they’re running out of options, it sounds like we came very close to either Service having to use lethal options or worse.“At that point I don’t know? Is the VP compromised? I don’t know. We didn’t have visibility. But if they’re screaming and saying things like ‘Say goodbye to the family’, the floor needs to know this is going to whole ’nother level soon.”Referring to controversy over the missing Secret Service texts, the presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted: “For all of those Secret Service agents who seem to love and venerate Trump, look at how he did nothing to defend Mike Pence’s agents on January 6 as they called their frightened families to say goodbye forever.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsSecret ServiceMike PenceUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Jan 6 hearing live updates: panel to show Trump broke the law by refusing to stop riot

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      Good afternoon, US politics blog readers. In a few hours, the January 6 committee will hold its final scheduled hearing, in which House lawmakers will make the case that former president Donald Trump may have violated the law by not stopping the assault on the Capitol. As if that wasn’t a packed news agenda by itself, president Joe Biden announced earlier today he had tested positive for Covid-19 – joining his vice president Kamala Harris, much of Congress’s Democratic leadership and yes, Trump, in contracting the virus.Here’s what else has happened today:
      The House of Representatives passed a bill to guarantee access to contraception after supreme court justice Clarence Thomas mulled revisiting a decades-old ruling concerning the right. All Democrats voted for it, along with eight Republicans.
      Much of America is facing extreme heat. Some Democrats have called on Biden to declare a climate emergency, but he has yet to do so.
      Biden’s Covid-19 diagnosis has delayed the announcement of a plan to fight crime.
      Democratic senators have introduced a bill to legalize cannabis nationwide. More

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      The January 6 hearings are a brilliant spectacle. That’s also their danger | Stephen Marche

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      The January 6 hearings are a brilliant spectacle. That’s also their dangerStephen MarcheIf the hearings end without consequences for Trump, the main takeaway will be: this is how much you can get away with in 2020s America You have to say this for America in 2022. They know how to put on a show. The January 6 hearings in Washington have made for riveting viewing. Someday the last days of Trump will be turned into a movie, and it will make a worthy successor to films about political collapse like Downfall or The Damned. The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a surprise witness – just like in the movies! – offered one hit scene after another: the president of the United States saying he didn’t much care whether his own vice-president was hanged; Trump lunging for the steering wheel; the ketchup dripping down the wall after he threw his lunch. The last planned public hearing is scheduled for Thursday. CNN describes the event as having “all the makings of a potential blockbuster”. But the hearings already have been a massively successful work of political spectacle; and that’s where their danger lies.The organizers of the January 6 hearings had no choice but to resort to showmanship. They clearly learned the lesson of the Mueller report. When Mueller gathered the findings of his investigation into the Trump campaign’s expectation to “benefit electorally” from Russian disinformation campaigns, he released them as a book. He may as well have put his findings in a bottle and thrown them into the sea. Americans don’t go to books to understand the world any more. They go to their screens. That’s one of the most prominent truths revealed by the Trump years: spectacle wins. The sheer capacity to gather attention is, by far, the most important force in US politics.On that level, the January 6 hearings have been a resounding success. The ratings have been superb. Nearly 20 million people watched the first prime time hearing, which puts it roughly on the level of Sunday Night Football. Not only have the hearings managed a large audience, but the narrative they are telling has registered. Republican megadonors no longer find Trump as appealing as they once did, at least this week, and several conservative legal scholars have declared that the hearings have changed their minds on his culpability, whether that matters or not.But as the hearings come to a close, the very success of their presentation presents a very real danger to the republic they purport to be saving. With every display of some new idiocy or corruption, whether it’s the random presence of the former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in the events leading up to the near-fall of the United States, or Jason Van Tatenhove’s description of “armed revolution”, the same question rears its threatening head: So what?If the January 6 hearings turn out to be mere spectacle, they will have been a complete disaster. The Trump years revealed something other than that spectacle wins. They also revealed that the American system of government is basically a collection of habits and expectations. The actual structure of American government is crumbling plaster and cobwebs. Anyone who wants to can shred it with a gesture. American democracy is hanging on by the skin of its norms. And the hearings are, quite by accident, shifting those norms.American tolerance for political illegitimacy grows by way of exposure. Weekly, sometimes daily, the American public is shown some new completely unacceptable abuse of power. The revelations don’t make any difference or have any consequences. And as the American tolerance for political illegitimacy grows, the size of the monstrosity the country will accept swells. The January 6 committee has gathered the attention of the American people admirably. But now the country and the world are learning from what they’re watching. It’s not just liberals eagerly anticipating the exposure of the grifters and buffoons surrounding the president in his final days in office. Republican officials and white power movements are watching, too. And both sides are asking themselves one principal question: What can you get away with in America in the 2020s?Every time the January 6 committee reveals a new crime and the committee members spread their arms to the American public as if to say “Are you willing to have this done in your name?” they are not asking a rhetorical question. Every crime the committee shows that goes unpunished moves the line of acceptable political behavior in the United States a little lower.They have now put themselves in a situation where action is required: Arrest Donald Trump or accept a political future without standards or guardrails. But you can’t arrest Donald Trump with a camera.In our screen-addled culture, political spectacle is a requirement; no one can attain or wield power without it. In the end, if the spectacle doesn’t result in change, it only adds to the despair and futility dragging the American political system down. Trump was the reality television president. His term in office turned the United States into a four-year-long episode of The Real Housewives of Washington. The January 6 Committee has used the master’s tools against him; they have shown that spectacle can be used against misinformation. But a show is not a system of government. And when the show comes to an end, what will be left behind? This article was amended on 21 July 2022. An earlier version incorrectly described Patrick Byrne as the CEO of Overstock; he resigned and sold his ownership in 2019.
      Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS CongresscommentReuse this content More

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      January 6 hearings return to recount 187 minutes of chaos at the Capitol

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      January 6 hearings return to recount 187 minutes of chaos at the CapitolCapitol attack committee plans to provide detailed account of insurrection and suggests this will not be final hearing The January 6 committee is returning to primetime. The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection will hold its eighth and final – for now, at least – public hearing on Thursday night.Like the first hearing, Thursday’s event will take place in the evening, as the panel seeks to capture the widest possible audience for its presentation. The first hearing, which was held last month, was watched by at least 20 million people.The eighth hearing will detail the 187 minutes that passed between the start and the end of the insurrection on that winter afternoon in 2021, as a mass of Donald Trump’s more extreme supporters overran the US Capitol in a vain attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 presidential election.Democrat Elaine Luria, who will co-lead the Thursday hearing with fellow panel member and Republican Adam Kinzinger, said the committee will provide a “minute-by-minute” account of the insurrection, as Trump failed to quell the violence that left several people dead.“He didn’t act. He had a duty to act. So we will address that in a lot of detail,” Luria said Sunday. “And from that, we will build on the information that we provided in the earlier hearings.”One central committee member, Democratic chair Bennie Thompson, will not be attending the hearing in person. Thompson tested positive for coronavirus on Monday, but will chair the hearing remotely, a committee aide said.Two former Trump White House aides who resigned shortly after January 6, Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, are expected to testify on Thursday.Pottinger served in the Trump administration for four years and resigned as a deputy national security adviser, while Matthews was a White House press aide.When she announced her resignation last year, Matthews expressed dismay about the events of January 6, and she has continued to criticize Trump.After former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson appeared before the select committee last month, Matthews came to her defense, even as some of Trump’s allies dismissed the shocking testimony as “hearsay”.“Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson’s role or her access in the West Wing either doesn’t understand how the Trump [White House] worked or is attempting to discredit her because they’re scared of how damning this testimony is,” Matthews said on Twitter at the time.Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson’s role or her access in the West Wing either doesn’t understand how the Trump WH worked or is attempting to discredit her because they’re scared of how damning this testimony is.— Sarah Matthews (@SarahAMatthews1) June 28, 2022
      Hutchinson’s testimony is expected to feature prominently in the Thursday hearing. In her appearance before the committee, Hutchinson, a former adviser to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, painted a damning picture of an increasingly chaotic White House led by a president determined to hold on to power, even after he was repeatedly told he had fairly lost the election, including by his own attorney general, William Barr.According to Hutchinson, Trump was aware that some of his supporters were armed on January 6, yet he still encouraged them to march to the Capitol after he spoke at a rally near the White House.Hutchinson also provided a secondhand account of Trump grabbing for the steering wheel of a vehicle in a desperate attempt to go to the Capitol with his supporters, having said at the rally “I’ll be there with you”. Instead he returned to the White House.01:42Some of Hutchinson’s testimony relied on comments she heard from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House counsel. Cipollone privately spoke to the January 6 investigators shortly after Hutchinson testified, and the committee is expected to show more of his interview during the Thursday hearing.The committee had also hoped to gather more information from the US Secret Service before the Thursday hearing, about Trump and Pence’s movements on the day, but that effort is proving far more difficult than anticipated. After receiving a subpoena for all agency communications on January 5 and 6, the Secret Service turned over just one text message to the select committee, an aide to the panel confirmed.The committee has promised to continue collecting information from important witnesses as it works to compile a comprehensive report on the Capitol attack by this fall, and additional hearings are still possible later in the summer.“There is no reason to think that this is going to be the select committee’s final hearing,” a committee aide said Wednesday. “The multi-step plan, overseen and directed by the former president, to overturn the results of the election and block the transfer of power couldn’t be clearer from the information that we’ve laid out. We expect that [the panel] is going to continue telling that story.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Trump as tyrant and Cheney’s cliffhangers: key moments from the January 6 hearings

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      Trump as tyrant and Cheney’s cliffhangers: key moments from the January 6 hearingsFrom Trump’s lack of concern about armed rioters to possible witness tampering, the revelations have been startling The hearings of the House January 6 committee have presented some extraordinary testimony about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his supporters’ deadly assault on the US Capitol. Ahead of the primetime TV hearing on Thursday night, here are some of those pivotal moments so far.Hutchinson’s bombshellsSome said that in Cassidy Hutchinson the committee had found its John Dean, the White House counsel who turned on Richard Nixon during Watergate.01:42Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, delivered her dramatic testimony with notable calm. She made headlines by describing how Trump struggled physically with a Secret Service agent who would not let him march to the Capitol himself, and how the president, furious, hurled his dinner at the White House wall.More importantly, Hutchinson described how Trump knew some in the crowd who heard him speak on January 6 were armed – and told them to march on the Capitol anyway. Many observers said such testimony could be crucial to establishing criminal intent, and therefore central to any criminal charges against Trump.Van Tatenhove’s warningJason van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the far-right group the Oath Keepers, testified about links between Trump and the far right. Van Tatenhove said the president attempted to mount “armed revolution”. He also said the Oath Keepers leader once asked him to create a deck of cards showing key targets, among them Hillary Clinton.01:10“People died [on 6 January 2021],” Van Tatenhove said. “Law enforcement officers died, there was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol.“This could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no one would have won there. That would have been good for no one.”Cheney’s cliffhangersLiz Cheney has been the star of the hearings. A hardline Wyoming Republican nonetheless at odds with her party, she has offered successive cliffhangers, each setting up the next session. One was about Trump advisers and allies in Congress seeking pardons. But what she said about possible witness tampering made, perhaps, the biggest impact. In the Hutchinson hearing, Cheney revealed that Trump associates had contacted a witness to say the former president would be watching the hearings and reading transcripts. The witness turned out to be Hutchinson. After the hearing on far-right links to Trump, Cheney said Trump himself had attempted to call another witness, not yet seen.Trump’s enablersThe committee’s reconstruction of an 18 December 2020 meeting at the White House between Trump’s official and unofficial advisers was for the ages. Witnesses including Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, described shouts and threats from members of so-called “Team Crazy”, which included Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn.Giuliani remembered calling the White House advisers “pussies”. Powell said it was the official aides who were crazy, for not backing a scheme to seize voting machines. She also drank a lot of Dr Pepper.Eric Herschmann, a former Trump Organization lawyer who testified by video in front of a baseball bat with “justice” written on it, said Flynn, a retired general, “screamed at me that I was a quitter and kept standing up and turning around and screaming at me. I’d sort of had it with him so I yelled back, ‘Either come over or sit your fucking ass back down.’” More

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      January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attack

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      January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attackThe committee will demonstrate the ex-president was ‘derelict in his duty’ to protect the US Congress as supporters mobbed building The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsRead moreThe panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.The former president instead only reluctantly posted a tweet in the afternoon of January 6, hours after his top advisors at the White House and Republicans allies in Congress repeatedly implored him to intervene, the select committee will show.And the panel is expected to reinforce that Trump’s inaction directly contributed to the extended battle between the US Capitol police and rioters, who outnumbered them, since many rioters dispersed after he tweeted the now-infamous video asking them to leave the Capitol.The sources described what the select committee sees as potential legal culpability for the former president, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the prime time hearing.Among the witnesses for the eighth hearing – characterized by the panel’s members as a “season finale” with more hearings after the summer recess – include Trump’s former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Trump press aide Sarah Matthews.The two witnesses with inside knowledge of how the West Wing operated on January 6 are expected to narrate how that day unfolded, starting with how desperately Trump did not want to return to the White House after delivering his speech at the rally at the nearby Ellipse, where he had urged supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat.Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified in a previous hearing that Trump was so determined to go to the Capitol alongside his supporters that at one point, infuriated, he attempted to wrestle control of the steering wheel from the Secret Service in the presidential vehicle as they insisted he return to the White House.The Guardian has learned, according to a person directly familiar with the matter, that in a previously unreported incident, the fracas about going to the Capitol, after Trump told his supporters at the rally to go to Congress and “I’ll be there with you”, continued when he arrived back at the White House, and the argument spilled into the West Wing driveway.Pottinger and Matthews are expected to testify about what happened when Trump was back at the White House, including details on Trump in his dining room off the Oval Office, where he watched the Capitol attack erupt on TV, transfixed by the images as rioters overran police and rampaged through the halls of Congress, the sources said.The select committee will show through videotaped testimony from the Trump White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and other aides, that the former president ignored repeated entreaties from advisers to help stop the Capitol attack, the sources said.Hutchinson previously testified that she tried to get Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to lobby Trump – only for him to tell her that the former president “wanted to be left alone”.The select committee will also show that Trump never once called the national guard or other law enforcement, the sources said.With Trump unwilling to act, the panel is expected to describe how the duties of commander in chief were effectively assumed by then vice-president Mike Pence, who was sheltering in a loading-dock on the Senate-side of the Capitol after lawmakers had to flee the chamber amid the violence.“Trump gave no order to deploy the national guard that day, and made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets,” the panel’s vice-chair, Liz Cheney, previously said. “But Mike Pence did each of those things.”The Guardian has also learned, according to another person directly familiar with the matter, that then First Lady, Melania Trump, appeared to choose not to intervene with her husband or try and stop the Capitol attack herself.That day, the person said, Melania Trump was conducting a photoshoot for a new rug for the White House residence and when her then chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, asked if she wanted to tweet condemning the attack, Melania responded curtly: “No.”Meanwhile, Cipollone told top aides that Trump might have legal liability, the sources said. And the hearing may present more details of the calls that mounted after the insurrection for Pence to convene the Cabinet and remove Trump from office through the 25th Amendment.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpMelania TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearings

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      Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsAs the eighth public hearing begins, know the people who helped understand Trump’s efforts to overturn the election The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has introduced Americans to a cast of characters critical to understanding then president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn a free and fair democratic election. Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting TrumpRead moreThe committee interviewed hundreds of witnesses during its yearlong investigation into the 2021 insurrection and the events that led to it. Some appeared in person, others taped depositions that were played during the hearings. Some pled the fifth or refused to cooperate.Here are the major players who have defined the January 6 hearings.Bennie ThompsonMississippi Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson, 74, was chosen by House speaker Nancy Pelosi to lead the panel, the capstone of a career devoted to protecting voting rights. He grew up in the racially-segregated south, an experience he has cited as a reminder that antidemocratic forces are as old as the nation itself.With his solemn, reverent tone, the chairman has essentially acted as narrator of the story of a democracy in peril. Thompson will chair Thursday’s hearing remotely due to a Covid-19 diagnosis. Liz CheneyWyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has led the charge against erstwhile colleague Donald Trump, acting as the panel’s top prosecutor. Unsparring and matter-of-fact, the committee vice-chair has provided some of the hearing’s most shocking revelations, among them that Trump appeared to endorse his supporters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence” for the then vice-president’s refusal to try to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, and that the former president had sought to contact a committee witness.Cheney, the 55-year-old daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, is one of the few in her party willing to criticize the former president, though her dogged efforts to hold Trump accountable for the insurrection could cost her a seat in Congress as she faces a Trump-backed primary challenge. Cassidy HutchinsonA former aide to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson provided the committee – and the country – with damning testimony.Hutchinson described a president spiraling out of control as he clung to power. She recalled Meadows, who refused to cooperate with the committee, warning that “things might get real bad” on 6 January.Hutchinson described violent outbursts by Trump and testified under oath that he knew some of his supporters were armed when he directed them to march to the Capitol.Hutchinson has been likened to John Dean, a key witness in the Watergate hearings. But her turn from junior White House staffer to star witness has drawn harsh scrutiny from those she once worked alongside, including Trump. She has stood by her testimony.Pat CipollonePat Cipollone, Trump’s second and final White House counsel recently appeared before the January 6 committee, after it subpoenaed him following Hutchinson’s testimony. Cipollone resisted Trump’s schemes to reverse the election and believed he should concede.Cipollone attended meetings at which Trump’s efforts to subvert the election were discussed, including a December 2020 confrontation just before Trump sent a tweet the committee described as a “call to arms” to extremist supporters. Cipollone said he asked informal advisors pushing wild claims of voter fraud: “where is the evidence?” They never provided it.Rudy Giuliani and Sidney PowellRudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Trump’s 2020 campaign, led the unsuccessful legal campaign to overturn the 2020 election based on spurious claims of voter fraud. Called “Team crazy” by White House officials, Giuliani, Powell and a group of others promoted outlandish conspiracy theories and tactics, including citing far-fetched plots involving hacked thermostats, a deceased former leader of Venezuela and a push to seize voting machines.As a result of their efforts to subvert the election, Giuliani had his law license in New York suspended and is ensnared in a Georgia investigation. Powell is facing disbarment in Texas. John EastmanJohn Eastman was a conservative law professor in California before he became a key figure in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Eastman devised a brazen plan that vice-president Mike Pence could unilaterally block or delay Congress’ certification of the electoral college results, which finalized Biden’s victory.In a legal memo, Eastman mapped out the actions Pence could take to thwart Congress from counting the electoral votes, an unprecedented deviation from the vice-president’s ceremonial role in the process. A June hearing revealed that Eastman warned Trump that the plan was illegal.A federal judge determined that he and Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress.Jeff ClarkA former mid-level justice department official, Jeff Clark worked closely with Trump to undo the 2020 election. He proposed sending a letter to Georgia and other closely-contested states that falsely claimed the justice department had “identified significant concerns” with the results.In a June hearing, his superiors at the department testified that any assertion the department had substantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election were brazenly false. Clark sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, to persuade Trump to install him as the acting attorney general. Last month, Clark said federal agents searched his home as part of the separate Department of Justice investigation into the 6 January 2021 attack and election subversion efforts.Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss and Ruby FreemanShaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, poll workers in Fulton county, Georgia, had their lives upended when Giuliani placed them at the center of an election-rigging conspiracy. Though the claims were baseless, the women’s testimony described in wrenching detail the very real consequences of Trump’s lie that he had won the 2020 election.Freeman, known as Lady Ruby, told the committee she had lost her sense of security. Her daughter, who testified publicly, said she received a torrent of racist and “hateful” messages on social media. Election-result deniers even showed up at her grandmother’s house claiming they could make a “citizen’s arrest” of the poll workers.Moss was awarded the John F Kennedy profile in courage award for her “hard and unseen work to run our democracy”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpRudy GiulianifeaturesReuse this content More