Next Jan. 6 Hearing Will Examine 187 Minutes When Trump Did Nothing To Quell Capitol Riot

Mary Papenfuss
·3-min read

The next hearing by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is expected to focus on the three hours when then-President Donald Trump did nothing to quell the violence, despite several entreaties to take action, as his supporters raged through the U.S. Capitol.

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. EDT Thursday.

“We’ll talk about what was going on in the White House while the Capitol was being overrun, and basically we will show what the president — as best we can put together — was doing all that time. Or not doing,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the committee, said earlier this week.

House committee member Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) appeared to offer a preview of the key message of the hearing last Sunday when she said that Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone told investigators about Trump’s “dereliction of duty” during the insurrection.

According to accounts, Trump spent the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, in the White House, enthralled by TV coverage of the violence as his supporters battered police and rampaged through the Capitol, with some calling to “hang” then-Vice President Mike Pence for not following his boss’s entreaty to throw out the 2020 presidential election results.

After telling his supporters at a rally earlier that day to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” Trump “gleefully” watched the violence unfold on TV from the White House dining room, his former press secretary Stephanie Grisham told CNN. He gushed: “Look at all of the people fighting for me,” she recounted.

Trump “hit rewind” for some sections of the riot on a recorded TV program to watch them again, said Grisham, who was first lady Melania Trump’s press secretary and chief of staff at the time.

Grisham, who was interviewed by Jan. 6 investigators, said she quit her job after she asked the first lady that day if she would tweet a message asking rioters to stand down. Her boss flatly responded “no,” according to Grisham.

Another possible witness who may appear is former White House press aide Sarah Matthews, who said in a portion of a videotaped statement aired in an earlier hearing that she was stunned when Trump attacked Pence in a tweet mid-riot. Matthews said the message was like “pouring gasoline on the fire.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the House select committee, said at Tuesday’s hearing that Trump had attempted to speak on the phone with a committee witness who had yet to appear (and may be on the roster for Thursday). Trump’s action seemed to be an attempt to influence the unidentified “support staff” witness, Cheney suggested.

Several people, including Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News host Sean Hannity, reached out to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 6 to plead with him to persuade Trump to make a statement calling on the rioters to stand down and go home. Ivanka Trump reportedly personally appealed to her father at least twice that day to tell rioters to go home.

Meadows’ former assistant Cassidy Hutchinson testified earlier this month that a panicky Cipollone told Meadows that the mob was “literally calling” for Pence to “be f-ing hung.” When Meadows replied that Trump believed “Mike deserves it,” Hutchinson testified, Cipollone replied: “This is f-ing crazy.”

Trump never reached out to Pence, nor did he call for the National Guard or police reinforcements that day.

Trump finally recorded a video, 187 minutes after the violent eruption, telling his supporters to go home, adding: “We love you. You’re very special.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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