In previous hearings, the committee sought to link Trump to the violence on Capitol Hill, showing how he was warned by aides that his claims that he stole the election were baseless and that there was a risk of violence on Jan. 6, 2021. The committee’s latest hearing in this the series will try to show how the former president “refused to act to defend the Capitol as a violent mob stormed the Capitol,” according to committee aides. Like previous hearings, the committee is likely to rely on testimony from those who were around Trump on Jan. 6 or near the West Wing to tell the narrative of what happened through the words of Trump’s inner circle. The committee spoke with several people around Trump on Jan. 6 — including Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, Pence’s former national security adviser, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and his former adviser Trump White House, Pat Cipollone. Two witnesses are scheduled to testify in person Thursday, both of whom resigned shortly after the Jan. 6 attack: Trump’s former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and Trump’s former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews. has not testified before the committee — the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. But Meadows selectively turned over more than 2,300 text messages to the panel, obtained by CNN, and the texts provide key insight into the frantic messages the chief of staff received from Republican allies in Congress, even from Trump’s son, who urge the President to act. Here are some key questions and answers about the 187 minutes on January 6 ahead of the final hearing:
When do the 187 minutes start and end?
The 187 minutes started at 1:10 p.m. ET on Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump was wrapping up his speech at the Ellipse. That’s when he told his supporters to march on Capitol Hill to pressure lawmakers to overturn the election while they met for a joint session of Congress to officially certify President Joe Biden’s victory. “Well, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue … and we’re going to the Capitol,” Trump said. “We’re going to try to give our Republicans — the weak, because the powerful don’t need any of our help — we’re going to try to give them the pride and the courage they need to take back our country. Well, let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.” Exactly 187 minutes later, at 4:17 p.m. ET, Trump posted a video on Twitter. In the clip, he said for the first time that his supporters should leave the Capitol. He also heaped praise on the riots and repeated his debunked lies about the election, which had sparked the riots in the first place. “I know your pain. I know you’re hurt,” Trump said at the time. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everybody knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. class. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. It’s a very difficult time.”
Why do 187 minutes matter to the committee?
This schedule is central to the commission’s mission. Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s GOP vice chair, has repeatedly said the evidence the committee gathered about those 187 minutes provides a clear example of Trump’s “supreme dereliction of duty” throughout the insurgency. The committee’s Democratic chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said earlier this year, “The President said, ‘You’ve got to tell your people directly to go home, get out of the Capitol.’ And so, it took over 187 minutes to make that simple statement. There’s something wrong with that.” Thursday’s hearing will be chaired by Rep. Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois. Luria told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that the hearing “would go almost minute by minute” of what happened during the 187 minutes of the Capitol standoff. “The President didn’t do much but happily watch television during that time frame,” Kinzinger said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
What do we already know about 187 minutes?
After leaving the stage at the Ellipse, Trump entered his motorcade and angrily tried to get his drivers to take him to the Capitol, according to testimony from Trump’s White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson. The agents refused, telling him the scene was too dangerous and unstable. Trump then watched television news coverage of the chaos unfolding on Capitol Hill, according to a book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, and according to then-White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who said that Trump was “happy” to watch the news. . White House counsel Pat Cipollone told Trump’s chief of staff that Trump had to step in or “people are going to die,” according to Hutchinson’s testimony. Meadows responded by telling Cipollone that Trump “doesn’t want to do anything” and that he even agreed with the rioters seen calling for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged. Trump posted three tweets during this critical time frame. The first tweet criticized Pence for refusing to overturn the election. The second and third tweets told the rioters to “remain peaceful” and “respect the law” — but notably Trump did not order his supporters to leave the Capitol. He also spoke by phone with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who pleaded with Trump to withdraw the mob. But during the call, Trump sided with the rioters and said they care about the election more than McCarthy does, according to earlier reports. During the 187 minutes, a wide range of Republican lawmakers, former Trump officials and conservative media figures messaged Meadows, saying Trump needed to step in, CNN previously reported. That included Donald Trump Jr., Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, former Trump administration officials Mick Mulvey and Reince Priebus, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Georgia.
Who was with Trump and what did they say about it?
The committee has received video testimony from several people who were with Trump on Jan. 6 and is likely to use those interviews to try to explain what the President was doing when rioters breached the Capitol. In addition to Ivanka Trump, Kellogg, Cipollone and McEnany, the committee has played clips in previous video deposition hearings from a long list of White House aides, including former Trump personal assistant Nick Luna, former White House staff secretary Derek Lyons, of Trump’s former White House counsel Eric Hersman, Ivanka Trump’s former chief of staff Julie Radford and Meadows’ former deputy Ben Williamson. The testimony of many of those inside the White House is likely to be played to help tell the story of what Trump did on the afternoon of Jan. 6. The panel had previously played clips of both Pottinger and Matthews, the two witnesses in person on Thursday, reacting to Trump’s tweet attacking Pence. “I remember saying that was the last thing that should be tweeted at that time,” Matthews said in an excerpt from her video deposition. “The situation was already bad. And so he felt like he was adding fuel to the fire by tweeting this.” Pottinger told the panel that Trump’s tweet was what prompted him to resign. “I read that tweet and decided at that moment to resign,” he said in the video deposition. “That’s where I knew I was going that day as soon as I read that tweet.” At the end of the last committee hearing, Cheney previewed what the committee had planned for its upcoming session by playing a clip from Cipollone’s testimony, which the committee had just received a few days earlier. “Was it necessary for you to keep pushing for a statement that would drive people to leave throughout that period of time until it finally came through?” Cipollone was asked in the video deposition. “I felt it was my obligation to continue to push for it, and others felt it was their obligation as well,” the former White House adviser responded. The panel’s testimony — along with reports from CNN, other news organizations and several books about the Trump presidency — have filled in key details about what was going on in the West Wing. Kellogg told the committee, for example, how he encouraged Ivanka Trump to talk to her father on Jan. 6 about taking action, and that he did so several times that day, according to committee documents. The committee also spoke with several West Wing officials who were not directly in line with Trump as the violence unfolded, but were reacting to what was happening on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Williamson, a top aide to Meadows, told the committee how he texted Meadows encouraging Trump to tweet because things were “getting a little hairy” on Capitol Hill. Williamson told the panel he went to speak with Meadows in person, and the White House chief of staff then walked to the Oval Office, court records show.
What are the big unanswered questions?
While many details about Trump’s Jan. 6 response are already known, questions remain about what the former president did on Jan. 6. For example, Trump spoke with at least two Republican lawmakers during the early stages of the uprising: McCarthy and Alabama Sen. Tomi…
