The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol voted Thursday to subpoena former president Donald Trump as it presented a sweeping summation of its case placing him at the center of a calculated, multipart effort to overturn the 2020 election, beginning even before Election Day.
At what may have been its final public hearing and just weeks before midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake, the panel knit together evidence and testimony from its nine previous presentations while introducing new revelations about Trump’s central role in numerous plots to maintain power.
The committee laid out in vivid detail how Trump, enraged and embarrassed that he had lost the election and unwilling to accept that fact, sought to join the crowd he had summoned to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, as it marched to the Capitol — knowing that some of his supporters were armed and threatening violence as Congress met to certify his defeat.
“None of this is normal, acceptable, or lawful in our republic,’’ said Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chair.
The committee also showed previously unreleased video from the secure location where congressional leaders hunkered down while the Capitol was under attack. The footage offered a glimpse of the shock and disbelief that gripped them as they urgently phoned governors and top national security officials in efforts to summon the National Guard or get Trump to call off the assault.
After nearly 2½ hours, the committee wrapped up with a direct challenge to the former president, voting to subpoena him to appear for a formal deposition, a step that is exceedingly unlikely given his refusal to cooperate in the inquiry and could lead to a bitter legal battle.
“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6,’’ said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee’s chair.
“He must be accountable,’’ Thompson added. “He is required to answer for his actions.’’
In one particularly chilling segment of the hearing, the panel played video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi huddling with other congressional leaders after being evacuated from the Capitol, reaching out to law enforcement and military officials and begging for the National Guard to help put down the violence.
“Do you believe this?’’ Pelosi says to colleagues as she receives reports that lawmakers are donning gas masks on the House floor to prepare for a breach.
Later, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, is seen speaking loudly into his signature flip phone, apparently during a call with Jeffrey A. Rosen, then the acting attorney general, imploring him to get Trump to ask his supporters to leave the Capitol, where Schumer notes that some senators are still hiding in their offices.
“Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility?’’ Schumer said.
The stunning behind-the-scenes look came as the panel delivered what amounted to a closing argument to an investigation that began 15 months ago. Members took turns laying out an indictment of Trump, telling a story that began in the summer of 2020 and, by their own account, has still not ended.
Well before any votes were cast, the committee members said, Trump had hatched a plan to simply claim victory on Election Day.
“The ballots counted by the Election Day deadline show the American people have bestowed on me the great honor of reelection to president of the United States — the deadline by which voters in states across the country must choose a president,’’ Tom Fitton, a right-wing activist who heads the group Judicial Watch, suggested Trump say in a statement, effectively discounting lawfully cast early and absentee votes.
Fitton, who offered the advice days before the election, indicated in a text message presented by the panel that he had discussed the idea with Trump.
And the committee showed how the president embraced that approach, despite the advice of aides who told him on election night that he could not say he had won. With a coterie of allies, Trump then sought to stave off his defeat by spreading lies that voting across the country had been marred by widespread fraud.
Even though dozens of courts ruled against him and his own advisers ultimately told him to concede, Trump stubbornly ignored the facts, the committee said, and aggressively pressured state officials, strong-armed Justice Department leaders, and sought to create fake slates of electors in states that had been won by Joe Biden.
Then, with his hold on power slipping, Trump called a crowd to Washington on Jan. 6, mobilizing both ordinary supporters and far-right extremists, some of whom had expressed their violent intentions in the days leading up to the event, the committee said. As hundreds of people stormed the Capitol that day, assaulting police officers and disrupting the certification of the election, Trump effectively turned his back on the chaos he helped sow.
Chief among the new revelations at the hearing was that the Secret Service was aware before Jan. 6 that some Trump supporters were using online forums to discuss plans for violence, including plots to storm the Capitol. Trump and key members of his security detail knew on the day of the attack that many people in the crowd that had gathered to hear him speak in Washington were carrying weapons and were possibly dangerous, the committee said.
The panel plans to continue investigating the Secret Service’s role in Jan. 6, including testimony it has received about “potential obstruction’’ and “advice given not to tell the committee’’ about certain incidents, said Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and a committee member.
The panel presented more evidence that Trump had been told by several of his own top advisers, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, that he had lost the election and should abide by the decisions of more than 60 courts that had ruled against his claims of fraud.
But Trump, mortified by his losses in court, could not bear to do so, according to a recorded interview with Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff.
“He said something to the effect of: ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing,’ ’’ Hutchinson recalled in the interview.
Boston Globe October 14, 2022
Video shows in vivid new detail how congressional leaders fled the US Capitol on January 6 and transformed a nearby military base into a command center, where Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer frantically coordinated with Vice President Mike Pence and Trump Cabinet members to quell the insurrection and finish certifying the 2020 election.
The extended raw footage shines a devastating light on then-President Donald Trump’s inaction during the riot. Lawmakers are seen working around Trump to secure any help they could get – from the National Guard, federal agencies and local police departments – to defeat the mob he incited. This was essentially the legislative branch of the United States of America being attacked by the Executive branch. They called called state Governors and local officials outside the federal agencies for help.
“Everyone involved was working actively to stop the violence, to get federal law enforcement deployed to the scene to put down the violence and secure the Capitol complex,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said about the footage at the hearing. “All of them did what President Trump was not doing, what he simply refused to do.”
The new clips show chaotic scenes of Democrats and Republicans working the phones at Fort McNair, sometimes together, trying to figure out what was going on at the overrun Capitol, and begging for help.
In one dramatic scene, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shouted at the Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, after hearing a rumor that Trump blocked the DC National Guard from rushing to the Capitol.
“I’d like to know a good God damn reason why it’s been denied,” Schumer said. “Please – the whole Capitol is rampaged. There is a picture of someone sitting in the chair of the Senate. We’ve all been evacuated. There have been shots fired. We need a full National Guard component, now.”
McCarthy then assures Schumer that there was no stand-down order for the National Guard.
And in another shocking moment, Schumer and Pelosi are seen chewing out the acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. In a heated phone call, Schumer told Rosen that federal authorities should “make arrests, starting now,” but Rosen only offered a halting, non-committal response.
“Um, I have to defer to law enforcement on that,” Rosen replied.
NOTE: After the attack Republican House Leader Steve Scalise stood at the podium and asked why Nancy Pelosi didn’t call the National Guard. The video shows Nancy Pelosi working feverishly calling federal agencies, states Governors, National Guard and local police with Steve Scalise standing next to her. He knew what she did and lied about it.