January 6 panel says Trump ignored calls to end riot – A timeline

The committee has played an audio recording of Steve Bannon, which was leaked earlier this year, in which the Trump ally says before the 2020 election that the former president should declare victory even if he does not win.

Cheney, the panel vice-chair, said the audio proves that Trump’s election fraud claims were “premeditated”.

“Donald Trump believed he could convince his voters to buy it, whether he had any actual evidence of fraud or not, and the same thing continued to occur from Election Day onward until January 6,” she said.

Congresswoman Luria has said Trump still has not acknowledged his responsibility for the attack.

“The only time he apparently did so it was a private call with [Republican leader] Kevin McCarthy,” she said during the hearing, adding that the former president has never acknowledged the names of the police officers who died following the attack.

“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 January 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of duty to our nation and a stain on our history,” Congressman Kinzinger added.

Adam Kinzinger has said Trump’s conduct on January 6 was a violation of his oath of office.

“It was only once the vice president and the members of Congress were in secure locations, and the officers defending the Capitol began to turn the tide that then President Trump engaged in the political theatre of telling the mob to go home,” Kinzinger said.

“And even then, he told them all they were special and that he loved them.”

In a January 7, 2021 speech in which Trump called for a “seamless” transition of power to the Biden administration, the then-president still refused to acknowledge that the election was over.

The committee played raw footage of Trump taping his remarks. Reading from a teleprompter, Trump can be seen halting the speech. “I don’t want to say the election is over,” he then says.

The comment was dropped from the final speech, according to a transcript of the speech.

In the evening of January 6 after the riot, then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani called a Republican senator urging him to delay certifying Biden’s election victory.

In a voicemail to Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, which was played during the hearing, Giuliani urged the newly-elected legislator to slow down the process.

“I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing, and how we need you – our Republican friends – to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislators to get more information,” Giuliani said.

The panel has played footage from Congress in the days and weeks following the attack, including a clip in which Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the attack.

“The people who stormed this building believe they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” McConnell said.

“And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the panel, has pointed to Trump’s last tweet of the day on January 6.

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” the tweet said.

Kinzinger commented: “He called the mob great patriots. He told people to remember the day forever. He showed absolutely no remorse.”

Mark Milley, the top US general, has recalled Pence offering “very direct, unambiguous orders” to officials to take action to protect the Capitol.

By contrast, Milley said Mark Meadows, the then-White House chief of staff, stressed that Trump must appear to be in charge, not Pence. “That is politics, politics, politics – red flag for me personally, no action,” Milley said of Meadows’s remarks.

Luria said the difference between the two showed Trump’s “dereliction of duty”.

The panel has shared what it says are never-before-seen video footage and images of US legislators on January 6.

“We’re not going to let these people keep us from finishing our business,” then-Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can be heard telling former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller in a video aired during the hearing.

“We need you to get the building cleared, give us the OK, so we can go back in session and finish up the peoples’ business as soon as possible,” McConnell said.

While Trump refused to help, other leaders acted to clear the Capitol.

Here are never-before-seen photos and video of Congressional leaders during the attack. The video is a portion of a call they had at approximately 4:45 with the Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller. pic.twitter.com/UaKLReInht

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) July 22, 2022

Pat Cipollone, the then-White House counsel, has confirmed that he and other aides thought Trump needed to do more to end the attack.

Asked whether any White House staff members did not want the rioters to leave the Capitol, Cipollone said: “I can’t think of anybody.”

The committee has said Republican leader Kevin McCarthy reached out to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, ex-Trump adviser Jared Kushner, to get the former president to intervene to stop the attack.

“I got the sense that they were scared,” Kushner told the panel in a taped interview aired during the hearing.

“Think about that, leader McCarthy, who was one of the president’s leading supporters, was scared and begging for help – President Trump turned him down,” panel member Adam Kinzinger said.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, texted then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6, urging action to end the attack on the Capitol, the committee has said.

Donald Trump Jr also called on his father to “condemn” the attack as soon as possible.

“This is one you go to the mattresses on,” Trump Jr wrote, according to the committee. “They will try to f**k his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.”

The former president’s son later explained to the panel that “go to the mattresses” means acting urgently, “all in”.

Matthew Pottinger has said a Trump tweet on January 6, in which he denounced Vice President Pence for not stopping the election certification in Congress, pushed him to resign.

The former deputy national security adviser said he was “disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty”.

“So the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation,” Pottinger said. “So that was the moment that I decided that I was going to resign … I simply didn’t want to be associated with the events that were unfolding at the Capitol.”

A White House security official has said that members of Pence’s security team feared for their lives as rioters turned their anger against the then-vice president for refusing to overturn the 2020 election results.

“Members of the VP’s detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives,” said the official, whose testimony was presented anonymously.

“I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth. Whatever the reason was on the ground, the VP detail thought that this was about to get very ugly.”

The panel has said that it confirmed that Trump did not call senior law enforcement or military leaders, VP Pence’s staff or government officials to “issue orders” or offer assistance during the Capitol riot.

Instead, the former president “was calling senators to encourage them to delay or object to the certification” of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden, the committee said.

He also called his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. “According to the phone records, the call lasted approximately four minutes,” the panel said.

We have confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, VP Pence’s staff, and D.C. government officials: None of them heard from President Trump during the attack on the Capitol.

Trump did not call to issue orders or to offer assistance.

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) July 22, 2022

Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, has said that he could have made a statement from the White House to ask his supporters to end the attack within minutes.

“If he had wanted to make an address from the Oval Office, we could have assembled the White House press corps probably in a matter of minutes to get them into the Oval for him to do an on-camera address,” Matthews told the panel.

Virtually everyone told President Trump to condemn the violence in clear and unmistakable terms… But the former President chose not to do what all of these people begged. He refused to tell the mob to leave until 4:17. pic.twitter.com/sYDQ6DodM6

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) July 22, 2022

Luria has said that Trump knew about the riot shortly after he concluded his speech to supporters near the White House.

“Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, President Trump knew the Capitol was besieged and under attack,” she said. “From 1:25 until after 4:00, the president stayed in his dining room.”

Read Trump’s full January 6, 2021 speech here.

Pat Cipollone, the former lawyer for the Trump White House, told the panel during a taped interview aired on Thursday that he was pushing for a strong statement to be made to urge people to leave the Capitol.

“I said, ‘People need to be told, there needs to be a public announcement, fast, that they need to leave the Capitol,'” Cipollone said.

Mark Robinson, a retired District of Columbia police official, has recalled hearing about a “heated discussion” in the presidential motorcade as Trump pressed to go to the Capitol on January 6.

“The only description I received was that the president was upset and was adamant about going to the Capitol, and there was a heated discussion about that,” Robinson told the committee in a recorded testimony played at the hearing.