Specifically, select committee aides said Wednesday that the presentation will focus on what the former president did during the 187 minutes between the end of his speech in the Ellipse, south of the White House, at around 1:10 p.m., and when he finally released a video statement urging his supporters to go home, at about 4:17 p.m. “At that time, President Trump refused to act to defend Capitol Hill as a violent mob stormed Capitol Hill with the goal of stopping electoral votes and preventing the transfer of power,” a committee aide told reporters Wednesday. “President Trump had the power to withdraw the mob,” the aide added. “He was probably the one person who could have pulled the mob off and he chose not to.” The members of the committee, he presides remotely. US Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Senior Investigative Counsel John Wood, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Speaker Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Vice Speaker Liz Cheney (R-WY), Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), and Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA) hold the third of eight scheduled public hearings of the US House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, June 16, 2022. (Jonathan Ernst /Reuters) Committee aides declined to confirm reports that Trump’s former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews will testify in person on Thursday, saying only that the primetime hearing will include a mix of live and taped testimony. of testimony from people who were in the West Wing during the Jan. 6 riot who spoke with the former president or otherwise knew what he was doing as the violence unfolded. Those witnesses will shed light on when Trump first learned that Congress was under attack, who he was talking to during that time and why, “despite pleas from people in the White House, people on Capitol Hill and [from] allies elsewhere, the president did not tell his supporters to leave the Capitol and go home until 4:17 p.m. The story continues The committee previously released text messages it received from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which various Trump allies, including family members and Fox News hosts, begged him to persuade the former president to condemn the violence as his supporters looted. the Capitol.
Witnesses
Although select committee aides declined to announce Thursday’s live witnesses in advance, citing concerns about harassment and intimidation, CNN first reported that Pottinger and Matthews planned to testify, and other outlets have since confirmed that report. Both former Trump White House officials resigned in response to the events of Jan. 6, and portions of their taped testimony to the select committee have been shown in previous hearings. Sarah Matthews, former deputy White House press secretary. and, Former Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger. (Photo credit: Yahoo News; photos: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images, Andrew Harnick/AP) Pottinger, who served on the National Security Council during Trump’s presidency, was reportedly the most senior official to resign on Jan. 6, 2021. Last month, select committee Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., described him as “a former Marine intelligence officer who served in the White House for four years, including as deputy national security adviser” and who “was near the Oval Office at various points throughout the day” on Jan. 6. Cheney then played a clip of Pottinger telling the committee the moment he decided to resign. “One of my staff brought me a printout of a tweet by the president, and the tweet said something that said Mike Pence, the vice president, didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done — what should have been done. I read that tweet and decided at that moment to resign,” Pottinger said in the video. “That’s where I knew I was going that day as soon as I read that tweet.” ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl reported last year in his book “Betrayal” that Pottinger had rushed to the Oval Office just after 3 p.m., when the riot had begun, after hearing there had been a delay in sending the National Guard to the Capitol. . According to Karl, Pottinger did not see Trump, who was watching the violence on television in his private dining room, but saw several other senior officials, including White House adviser Pat Cipollone, who appeared “struggled,” and Meadows. When Pottinger asked Meadows if the White House was blocking the deployment of the National Guard to the Capitol, Meadows told him that was false and insisted that he “had given clear instructions for the Guard to go there to check the situation.” Matt Pottinger appears on a screen as Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified during the Select Committee Inquiry into the January 6 attack at the United States Capitol to present previously unseen material and hear testimony at the Cannon Building, Tuesday, June 28, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) Pottinger reportedly told the select committee about his visit to the Oval Office and the conversation with Meadows, and he may be asked to testify about it on Thursday. Like Pottinger, Matthews also cited Trump’s tweet at 2:24 p.m. who attacked Mike Pence as the final straw that prompted her to resign on January 6. the Trump administration and proud of the policies we implemented. As someone who has worked in the halls of Congress, I was deeply moved by what I saw today. I will be stepping down from my role, immediately. Our nation needs a peaceful transition of power.” Matthews, now 27, had worked in Congress before being hired by the Trump campaign and then the White House. She told the Washington Post in an interview after the attack on Capitol Hill that “seeing people I know who were scared for their lives shook me to the core.” During an earlier hearing, committee member Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Matthews and Meadows aide Ben Williamson both testified that Trump had been briefed on the violence on Capitol Hill before sending the tweet condemning Pence for refusing to intervene. Congressional Certification of Joe Biden’s Legitimate Electoral College Victory. Sarah Matthews, former deputy White House press secretary, during a video testimony to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, shown at a hearing Thursday, June 16, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington . (House Selection Committee via AP) It read: “Mike Pence lacked the courage to do what needed to be done to protect our country and our Constitution by giving states the opportunity to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones they were asked. previously certified. The US demands the truth!’ In an excerpt of her taped testimony, Matthews described the tweet as “throwing gasoline on the fire.” “I remember us saying that was the last thing that should be tweeted at that time,” he told the committee. “The situation was already bad.”
Trump’s actions on January 6th
Trump’s tweet at 2:24 p.m. was a focus throughout this recent series of hearings, as the committee tried to argue that Trump not only neglected to take action to quell the violence unfolding on Capitol Hill, but that he deliberately stoked the mob’s anger and directed it at his vice president once it became clear that he would not do his bidding. The commission had previously shown footage of rioters reacting angrily in real time to the news that Pence would not go along with the illegal plot to block the certification of some Biden electors — including videos of mob members calling for the vice president. the president will be hanged — and the committee’s investigation found that crowds both inside and outside Capitol Hill swelled immediately after Trump’s tweet. The hearings also showed that this was not the first time that day that Trump had targeted his vice president. Despite being repeatedly warned that he did not have the authority to disqualify Biden’s eligible electors when Congress convened to certify the vote on January 6, Trump during his Ellipse speech repeatedly asked Pence to do just that, falsely putting Pence as his only one. hope to stay in power while urging the crowd on Capitol Hill to press him to act. Trump supporters gather around a loop near the Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images) According to testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Trump made those remarks — which the committee says were added to his speech at the last minute — after learning that members of the crowd at the Ellipse rally were carrying guns (an allegation that the Trump has since refused). A select committee aide said Wednesday that the next hearing would examine “what happened when the speech ended and Trump, against his wishes, was taken back to the White House,” referring to another key detail revealed by Hutchinson, who testified that Trump had …
