The House Select Committee spent the majority of its highly anticipated public hearing Thursday focusing on Donald Trump's role in the Jan. 6 riot, with lawmakers making the case that the former president was "personally and substantially involved" in every effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of January 6 was one man: Donald Trump," said Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., at the top of Thursday's hearing – which was capped off with a unanimous vote from the panel to subpoena the former president for testimony and documents.
"Our duty today is to our country, and our children, and our constitution," Cheney said ahead of the vote. "We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion."
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., made the case that over the course of the panel's investigation, "we have have left no doubt knowing that Donald Trump led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of Jan. 6. He tried to take away the voice of the American people in choosing their president and replaced the will of the voters with his will to remain in power."
"This is a question about accountability to the American people," Thompson said before the vote. "He must be accountable."
Here are takeaways from the Jan. 6 panel's final public hearing ahead of November's midterm elections:
The panel on Thursday showed previously unseen video of congressional leaders hiding inside the Capitol and on the phone urging White House aides, Trump administration officials, local leaders and then vice president Mike Pence to call in law enforcement, clear the building and get the former president to tell his supporters to end their violent riot.
The video first shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi being ushered into a secure location, standing in what looks like a small auditorium.
An aide informed Pelosi that the lawmakers still in the House chamber were donning tear gas masks to prepare for a raid.
“Do you believe this?” she asked Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.
Footage from later on shows Pelosi in a room sitting on couches next to then-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., making calls to the acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, the acting secretary of defense and Virginia’s governor, calling all of them for help to clear rioters.
“Why don't you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General? In your law enforcement responsibility. A public statement: they should all leave,” Schumer says to Rosen.
Pelosi says the violence is all at “the instigation of the president of the United States.”
A striking piece of video then shows Pelosi, then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican House Whip Steve Scalise huddled together, on a call with the Pentagon, with Schumer asking how long it will take for the Capitol to be cleared.
Pelosi is later filmed talking to then-vice president Mike Pence, telling him she had gotten a report of “defecation,” or human feces, on the House floor and that it could take a while to restore order.
Pence can then be heard on speaker phone around 6:00 p.m. that day, reporting to Pelosi and Schumer that the House and Senate chambers could be reopened in an hour, speaking as he himself was hiding inside the Capitol.
Congressional leaders seen on video knew that only the president could really make the violence and rioting end, January 6 committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said Thursday as he revealed the new video.
Raskin then showed a clip of Leader McConnell speaking on the Senate floor in February about the former president’s glaring decision not to aid people inside the Capitol or tell his supporters to leave.
“It was obvious that only President Trump could end this,” he said. “Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration.”
“The president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored.”
Later Thursday, following the hearing, additional footage was aired as an exclusive on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“If he comes, I’m going to punch him out,” Speaker Pelosi said from her office, as she watched then-President Trump speak at the now-infamous rally on Jan. 6, 2021. “I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”
Trump had just promised his assembled followers that he would join them at the U.S. Capitol, where they would protest as Congress certified the 2020 election. “If he comes here, tell him that we’re going to the White House,” she joked, not yet aware that she and other lawmakers would be driven from the Capitol by a violent mob, some of whom would later break into the space that Pelosi was just seen standing in.
The new footage was provided by Alexandra Pelosi, a documentary filmmaker and daughter of Nancy Pelosi, who was in the Capitol that day to get footage of the election confirmation.
Pelosi’s footage follows her mother from the Capitol that morning, to mid-riot transit, to Fort McNair, where Democratic leaders Pelosi and Schumer, and Republican leaders McConnell and McCarthy, among other lawmakers, convened.
The footage shows Pelos and Schumer each working to call in members of the National Guard, of Virginia law enforcement, and even active duty military. They’re seen castigating the acting Attorney General, Jeffery Rosen, to start making arrests, and to urge Trump to call the rioters off. Rosen was repeatedly non-committal, sidestepping Schumer’s insistence.
The footage also includes Pelosi’s insistence that Congress reconveine to certify the election, lest the rioters claim “complete victory” by intimidating lawmakers out of doing their duty.
Congressional leaders were also seen speaking on multiple calls with then-Vice President Pence, who was taking refuge in a garage under the Capitol. By about 6 p.m. — two hours after Trump called on his followers to leave, via a post on Twitter — Pence gives leadership good news: that, according to the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, lawmakers would be able to return to the chambers within an hour.
After showing the footage, Cooper teased that more footage would be seen on Friday’s edition of the program.
Heavily featured at Thursday’s hearing were new documents from the Secret Service, received by the committee in the months since the last hearing was held in July. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said lawmakers spent the bulk of August poring over nearly one million pieces of new information.
The emails, text messages and other correspondence also included documents from the FBI, the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and other law enforcement agencies regarding potential threats to the certification of the election.
The documents showed that Secret Service agents were aware of the potential for violence at the Capitol over a week before the insurrection, having been tipped off by an individual that the far-right group the Proud Boys were planning to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6. That correspondence was received by the Secret Service on Dec. 26, 2020.
“The Secret Service had advance information more than 10 days beforehand regarding the Proud Boys planning for Jan. 6,” Rep. Schiff said. “We know now, of course, that the Proud Boys and others did lead the assault on our Capitol building.”
Further evidence included photos of weapons with captions threatening violence, social media accounts promising to bring rifles to the rally, and that right wing groups were building “quick reaction forces” to deploy to the Capitol.
“By the morning of Jan. 6, it was clear that the Secret Service anticipated violence,” Schiff said.
The Secret Service was also aware of the potential for violence on the day of the insurrection, and had added prohibitions on ballistic and tactical vests and ballistic helmets. On the ground, agents observed crowd members carrying weapons and pepper spray, wearing body armor and military grade equipment, with plastic riot shields.
"The documents we obtained from the Secret Service make clear that the crowd outside the magnetometers was armed, and the agents knew it,” Rep. Schiff said.
Other documents concerned the numerous warnings former President Donald Trump received about the potential for violence that day, and the Secret Service’s reaction to the president’s request to march with his supporters to the Capitol after a morning speech on the National Mall.
“As the time for the Ellipse rally approached, an email was circulated among intelligence officials – including Secret Service intelligence officials – attaching communications among rally goers that specifically contemplated violence,” Rep. Peter Aguilar, D-Calif., said, later adding: “What is clear from this record is that the White House had more than enough warning to warrant stopping any plan for an Ellipse rally, and certainly for stopping any march to the Capitol.”
Trump himself repeatedly told his followers he would march with them from the National Mall to the Capitol building, where lawmakers were affirming the results of the election. The committee on Thursday showed as-yet-unseen correspondence from Secret Service officials who expressed their concern over the president’s request.
The evidence “shows how frantic this hour must have been for the Secret Service scrambling to get the President of the United States to back down from a dangerous and reckless decision that put people in harm's way,” Aguilar said in part.
The new documents included an email from a Secret Service official at 1:19 p.m. ET on Jan. 6 sent to Robert Engel, then-head of the Secret Service detail, warning him they were “concerned about an OTR [off the record] movement to the Capitol."
Approximately seven minutes later, the The U.S. Capitol Police ordered people to leave at least two Capitol buildings.
Still, Aguilar said, Secret Service agents “were instructed to don their protective gear and prepare for a movement.”
“A few minutes later, they were told the President would leave for the Capitol in two hours,” he added. “It wasn't until 1:55 p.m. the President's lead Secret Service agent told them to stand down. [...] By then, rioters had breached the Capitol, and were violently attacking the efforts of the brave men and women in law enforcement trying to resist a mob.”
Because of the new testimony received from the Secret Service, the committee “will be recalling witnesses and conducting additional investigative steps,” according to Rep. Aguilar.
President Trump repeatedly gave public speeches claiming evidence of vote miscounting and fraudulent machines, despite the lack of evidence to support those claims and advice from some of his closest advisers to the contrary.
He also pressured officials, most notably in Georgia, to change the results of the 2020 election vote, also scaling that pressure up to the highest level at the Department of Justice.
Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., laid out how Trump publicly cast doubt on voting machines made by the company Dominion and repeated claims about voting “dumps” in Detroit and other states, even though his staff privately told them the claims were baseless.
Former attorney general Bill Barr said Trump repeatedly raised concerns about Dominion’s machines, despite having “zero basis” for the claims.
Yet the president said in a speech on Dec. 2: “You can press a button for Trump and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this?”
He also questioned in his speech on Jan. 6 a “dump” of ballots in Detroit and a suitcase of ballots in Georgia, though the transport of ballots was all part of the normal counting process, officials repeatedly told him.
“We looked at the tape. We interviewed the witnesses. There is no suitcase,” testified Richard Donoghue to the committee, explaining what he told the former president.
Trump later directly asked local officials to take a second look at their results, including in Georgia, where he notably asked the secretary of state to “find” votes to help him win the state, though they had already tallied the votes three times.
“I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break,” Trump said on the call.
Cassidy Hutchinson, then a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, recounted a conversation about the call in a videotaped deposition.
“I remember looking at Mark, and I said ‘Mark, he can’t possibly think we’re going to pull this off. Like, that call was crazy,’" she said. "And [Meadows] looked at me and just started shaking his head. And he’s like, ‘No, Cass, you know, he knows it’s over. He knows he lost. But we’re going to keep trying.'"
"This call and other related activity is now the focus of an ongoing criminal investigation in Fulton County, Georgia," Luria said.
Later, he attempted to install Jeff Clark as acting attorney general to help him overturn election results using the legal authority of the Justice Department.
“For the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country,” Donoghue testified earlier this year.
That leadership change did not happen in the end because of internal protest.
“The president ultimately relented only because the entire leadership of the Department of Justice, as well as his White House Counsel, threatened to resign,” Luria concluded.
Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the two Republicans on the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, highlighted the disconnect between former President Donald Trump’s private and public attitude toward the results of the 2020 election.
“At times, President Trump acknowledged the reality of his loss, although he publicly claimed that he had won the election,” Kinzinger said in part. “Privately, he admitted that Joe Biden would take over as president.”
The committee played several tapes of recorded testimony to that effect, including an interview with Alyssa Farah, who served as the White House director of Strategic Communications.
“I remember maybe a week after the election was called, I popped into the Oval just to like, give the president the headlines and see how he was doing,” she told lawmakers, saying Trump then said of Joe Biden: “And he was looking at the TV and he said, ‘can you believe I lost to this effing guy?’”
Hutchinson recalled asking Meadows on Dec. 18, the date of a heated discussion in the Oval Office about Trump’s continued claims of election fraud, if Trump “really think[s] that he lost?”
“[Meadows] said, ‘a lot of times he will tell me that he lost but he wants to keep fighting it, and he thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election, but [...] he pretty much just acknowledged that he's lost.”
Still, Trump went on to levy – by the committee’s count – 62 election lawsuits in multiple states questioning the results of the election.
“Those cases resulted in 61 losses, and only a single victory which did not affect the outcome for any candidate,” Kinzinger said.
Kinzinger shed new light on the former president's reaction to the Supreme Court rejecting his "last chance" appeal.
"On Dec. 11, Trump's allies lost a lawsuit in the US Supreme Court that he regarded as his last chance of success in the course," said Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the panel, before showing a newly released Secret Service email.
“Just fyi. POTUS is pissed – breaking news – Supreme Court denied his law suit. He is livid now,” the email read.
Hutchinson told the panel in a videotaped deposition that Trump was "just raging" about the decision said he "people to know we lost."
“The President was fired up about the Supreme Court decision,” Hutchinson said in a video deposition. “The President said something to the effect of, ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark [Meadows]. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost.’”
The panel on Thursday showed new video it obtained of Roger Stone, a political operative and longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, saying before Election Day that Trump should prematurely claim victory.
“Let’s just hope we’re celebrating. I really do suspect it will still be up in the air,” Stone says in the video, recorded by documentary filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen. “When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won. F*** you. Sorry, over. You're wrong. F*** you.”
In a separate video clip, Stone says: “I said, f*** the voting; let’s get right to the violence.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren said Stone was in contact with Trump throughout 2020 and that he indicated in a post on the Parler social media platform that he spoke to then-president on Dec. 27 as preparation for Jan. 6, 2021, were underway.
“I also told the president exactly how he can appoint a special counsel with full subpoena power to ensure those who are attempting to steal the 2020 election through voter fraud are charged and convicted and to ensure Donald Trump continues as our president,” Stone wrote in the post.
The committee seemed to insinuate Stone could have been a bridge between the Trump administration and extremist groups that were key in the attack on the Capitol.
Lofgren said, according to witness testimony, Stone was at meetings on Jan. 5 and 6 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where Trump asked his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to speak with Stone and Michael Flynn.
Stone, meanwhile, was in extensive, direct contact with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy. Several members of the Oath Keepers provided Stone with personal security on Jan. 6 or were seen with him in the weeks leading up to that day, Lofgren said.
The committee subpoenaed Stone, but he invoked the Fifth Amendment in declining to answer questions.
When CNN last month broadcast the same video clips the panel showed Thursday, Stone told the network in a statement that he challenged “the accuracy and the authenticity of these videos and believe they have been manipulated and selectively edited.” He added that the “excerpts you provided … do not prove I had anything to do with the events of January 6th.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., took the hearing back to election night of 2020, where she outlined Trump’s election day plan: to claim victory, to try and stop voting as early as possible, and — if he’s losing — to claim that the election was stolen.
The then-President’s advisors, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, urged Trump to push vote-by-mail for Republicans. But his mind was made up, Kushner said. So, election night vote counts initially leaned toward Trump — a “red mirage,” Lofgren called it. When absentee ballots came in, Biden’s lead became clear. And Trump, against his advisors’ recommendations, sought to declare victory.
“It was far too early to be making any calls like that. Ballots were still being counted. Ballots were still going to be counted for days,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a clip.
“My recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted.”
But Trump declared victory, and called to end vote counts. That, Lofgren pointed out, would have violated state and federal laws, and disenfranchised millions of voters.
Trump carried on. “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country,” the then-President said.
The evidence, Lofgren said, shows that Trump had a “premeditated plan” to declare victory no matter the result, and to stay in office regardless of the vote.
While then-Vice President Mike Pence’s staff set out to ensure that Pence not be percieved as having made a decision regarding electoral votes before the facts had come in, Trump advisor Tom Fitton presented a plan seeking to state that only ballots counted by the “election day deadline” (a deadline which doesn’t exist, Lofgren said) would be valid.
According to former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, Trump had a plan as early as July to say that he would won the election, even if he had lost. Footage of fellow Trump advisor Steve Bannon confirmed that idea — that the then-President would simply declare victory.
“So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s gonna be a firestorm,” Bannon said.
Bannon — who refused to testify before the committee — was then shown in a clip from a livestream on Jan. 5, where he stated that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
“All I can say is, strap in. You’ve made this happen,” Bannon said to his listeners. “Tomorrow, it’s game day. So strap in, let’s get ready.”
The House Jan. 6 panel on Thursday unanimously voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump to request documents and testimony under oath about his role in the insurrection.
At the end of Thursday's hearing, Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., addressed four police officers who served during the Jan. 6 riot, and said that the panel "asked them what they hope to see the committee accomplish over the course of our investigation."
"[U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino] Gonell wanted to know why the rioters were made to believe that election process was rigged," Thompson said. "[U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry] Dunn asked us to look into the actions and activities that resulted in the day's event. [Washington Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel] Hodges was concerned about whether anyone in power had a role. [Metropolitan Police officer Michael] Fanone put it simply: get to the bottom of what happened."
"We've worked for more than a year to get those answers," Thompson said. "We've conducted more than a thousand interviews and depositions we received and reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, thanks to the tireless work of our members and investigators. We have have left no doubt knowing that Donald Trump led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of Jan. 6. He tried to take away the voice of the American people in choosing their president and replaced the will of the voters with his will to remain in power."
“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6," Thompson continued. "So we want to hear from him.”
"Our duty today is to our country, and our children, and our constitution," said vice chair Liz Cheney, who presented the motion. "We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion."
"We must seek the testimony under oath of Jan. 6's central player," Cheney said.
The move marks the panel’s most aggressive action yet as it looks to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — and would likely set up a court battle between the select committee and the former president.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump questioned why the panel didn't call for him to testify sooner and accused the panel of serving to divide the country.
"Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting?" Trump wrote. "Because the Committee is a total 'BUST' that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly - A laughing stock all over the World?"
In a follow-up post, Trump went on to espouse false, debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, a claim backed up by members of his own administration. Courts across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected numerous cases alleging fraud brought by Trump and his allies.
A handful of presidents have been subpoenaed before, and all were while they were currently in office:
- Bill Clinton was subpoenaed in 1998 before a grand jury as part of the Justice Department's probe into his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The subpoena was withdrawn after he reached a deal to testify.
- Richard Nixon was subpoenaed to provide tapes and other materials related to the Watergate scandal. Nixon challenged the subpoena, which made it all the way to the Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the high court ruled against Nixon, ordering him to comply. The issue went away after his resignation.
- Thomas Jefferson became the first president to be subpoenaed when he was ordered to testify in the treason trial of Aaron Burr, his former vice president, in 1807. Jefferson did not comply, but produced some material for the trial. Burr was ultimately acqutted.
A number of former presidents have testified before Congress, including Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Gerald Ford, according to the Senate's website.