Trump aide Hope Hicks said both she and former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann called for Donald Trump to tell his supporters to be peaceful before the Capitol riot.
Mr Herschmann reportedly told Mr Trump so in person, but the then-president “refused”.
According to texts shared by the January 6 committee, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley wrote to Ms Hicks at 2.19pm on 6 January 2021 that Mr Trump “really should tweet something about being NON-violent”.
“I’m not there. I suggested it several times Monday and Tuesday and he refused,” Ms Hicks responded.
“I didn't speak to the President about this directly, but I communicated to people like Eric Herschman that it was my view, that it was important that the president put out some kind of message in advance of the event,” Ms Hicks told the panel in pre-recorded testimony showed on Monday.
Ms Hicks said Mr Herschmann “had made the same ... recommendation directly to the president and that he had refused”.
“Mr Hirschman said that he had already recommended ... that the president convey a message that people should be peaceful on January 6, and the president had refused to do that,” she said.
“So his refusal wasn’t just a day-of thing. And it shows how foreseeable this was to those around Trump,” Aaron Blake of The Washington Post tweeted.
“Hope Hicks ties a bow around the charge of insurrection,” legal scholar Laurence Tribe wrote.
Ms Hicks told the committee that “I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy”.
When asked what Mr Trump said in response, Ms Hicks said he said “something along the lines of, ‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose...The only thing that matters is winning’”.
Panel member Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said on Monday that a subcommittee of panel lawyers recommended making criminal referrals because of “the gravity of the specific offence, the severity of its actual harm, and the centrality of the offender to the overall design of the unlawful scheme to overthrow the election”.
Mr Raskin said the “starting point” was a California judge who said it was likely that Mr Trump and lawyer John Eastman had violated laws against obstructing official proceedings.
“We believe that the evidence described by my colleagues today and assembled throughout our hearings, warrants a criminal referral of former president Donald J Trump, John Eastman and others for violations of this statute,” Mr Raskin said. “The whole purpose and obvious effect of Trump’s scheme were to obstruct influence and impede this official proceeding, the central moment for the lawful transfer of power in the United States”.
Mr Raskin added that Mr Trump and some associates should be prosecuted for violating parts of the law that “makes it unlawful to knowingly and willfully make materially false statements to the federal government” and for violating laws against anyone who “incites assist or engages in insurrection against the United States of America and anyone who gives aid or comfort to an insurrection”.
“The committee believes that more than sufficient evidence exists for a criminal referral of former President Trump for assisting or aiding and comforting those at the Capitol who engaged in a violent attack on the United States. The committee has developed significant evidence that President Trump intended to disrupt the peaceful transfer transition of power under our Constitution. The president has an affirmative and primary constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Nothing could be a greater betrayal of this duty than to assist in insurrection. against the constitutional order,” he said.
