Closing summary
It was a big night for revelations by the January 6 committee, which described in more detail than has been known in the past what Donald Trump was doing as the Capitol was attacked.
Here’s a rundown of what happened:
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A Democratic congresswoman who led the day’s presentation said Trump “was derelict in his duty” before and during the storming of the Capitol.
- Secret Service agents feared for their lives during the attack.
- Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who raised his fist in solidarity with the protesters that would go on to attack the Capitol, was shown fleeing through its halls.
- Republican Adam Kinzinger said Trump “kept resisting” actions demanded by his staff to end the violence.
- In speech outtakes, Trump struggled to say that the 2020 election was “over”.
-
Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows called for the president’s daughter Ivanka to help convince him to stop the attack.
- House Republicans attacked the committee on Twitter, including one of their own staffers who was a witness. (They later deleted the tweet).
- The committee will have its next public hearings in September, and appears particularly interested in what the Secret Service knows about that day.
January 6 committee vice chair Liz Cheney reminded the public tonight that, essentially, the most serious evidence against Donald Trump in the “dereliction of his duty” as president has been presented by erstwhile allies and supporters.
As she wraps up, Cheney says: "The case made against him is not made by his political enemies. It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump's own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years and his own family."
— Patricia Zengerle (@ReutersZengerle) July 22, 2022
Cheney, herself the Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, has been unsparing in her verbal flaying of Trump and his conduct.
Former Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone, who was beaten by rioters during the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, was at the hearing this evening and was harassed on the street afterwards.
Quite a scene just now—
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) July 22, 2022
Officer Michael Fanone heckled by protesters of the Jan 6 hearing waiting outside the Capitol he fought to defend — someone with a flag pole steps in and a small skirmish ensues…
“Are you a real police officer?” pic.twitter.com/EbcJLWCqdO
Fanone also called right-winger Josh Hawley a clown - and worse. Said he understood the laughter in the hearing room when video was shown of Hawley, who had raised a clenched fist in solidarity with rioters earlier on January 6, running away later, but that it also pissed him off.
I talked to former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone outside the #Jan6thHearings.
— JC (@JCWhittington_) July 22, 2022
Here is his response to seeing video of Sen. Josh Hawley running away from rioters after fist bumping them earlier in the day on Jan. 6 :
"Josh Hawley is a bitch", said Fanone. https://t.co/qgCPHcVh1r pic.twitter.com/rTJoJywgY3
Over the course of nine public hearings, the panel has sought to lay out the case that Trump orchestrated a multilayered plot to seize another term in office despite being told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that his myth of a stolen election was baseless.
Culling from hundreds of thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews, the committee showed that Trump, having been turned back by the courts at every level, became increasingly desperate in his bid to overturn the results of an election his own Attorney General deemed free and fair.
It documented the pressure campaign Trump waged against state and local officials in states Biden won, pushing them to reverse their electoral votes. It detailed his efforts to lean on the Department of Justice officials to support his scheme. And it showed how, as the day drew nearer for Congress to count the electoral votes, Trump began to publicly and privately push his vice president to reject or delay the proceedings, an unprecedented act that one witness told the panel in June would have been “tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis.”
Taken together, the panel has sought to offer a full public accounting of the events of January 6 for the American people and for the historical record.
Its work, however, is not done. The committee continues to receive new information and said on Thursday that it would resume public hearings in September.
But already, the committee has presented evidence that lawmakers and aides have suggested could be used as a foundation for bringing a criminal case against the former president. Among the possible charges that have been discussed are conspiracy to defraud the American people and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. The committee has also raised the prospect of witness tampering, announcing at its last hearing that Trump had attempted to contact a witness cooperating with its investigation.
“The facts are clear and unambiguous,” Congressman Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chair of the committee, said on Thursday.
The Justice Department is pursuing a separate investigation into the events of January 6 that has resulted in hundreds of arrests, including rare seditious conspiracy charges against the leaders of violent far-right extremist groups involved in the breach of the Capitol.
“No person is above the law in this country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday. “I can’t say it any more clearly than that.”
Trump has dismissed the panel’s inquiry as politically motivated and a witch hunt. He remains the most popular figure in the Republican party and a clear favorite to win the nomination in 2024.
But there are nevertheless signs that the committee’s work is having an impact. Half of Americans say Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the attack, and nearly 6 in 10 say the former president bears a “great deal” or “quite a bit of responsibility” for the violence carried out in his name.
Thursday night’s congressional hearing on the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol lived up to its billing as a season finale. A modern-day Nero, Trump watched reports of the invasion of the Capitol on Fox News from the comfort of his private White House dining room. The commander-in-chief ignored repeated calls to end the mayhem.
“The mob was his people.” Trump never reached out to the military, the FBI, the defense department or the national guard to intervene. He rebuffed entreaties from Ivanka Trump, Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone to end the downwardly spiraling situation.
The tumult of 6 January was not spontaneous. Trump knew that that the crowd was armed, but sought to accompany them to the Capitol. He wanted to obstruct the certification of the election with a phalanx behind him.
Carnage and destruction were OK. The ends justified all means. Here, past was prelude. In 2016, Trump signaled that he might not accept the election’s results if they did not meet his expectations. As Covid descended in the spring of 2020, he began to refer to November’s upcoming ballot as rigged, months before a single vote had been cast. The events of 6 January horrify and shock, but they cannot be characterized as a surprise.
A recording of Steve Bannon evidenced that Trump’s reaction was premeditated. The prosecution has rested in his criminal case; he will not be taking the stand.
Trump’s standing slowly erodes, even as Trumpism retains its firm grip on Republicans.
Read the rest here.
Another word or two on Trump’s “criminal exposure”, when panel member Adam Kinzinger talked to reporters after the hearing.
GOP IL Rep & 1/6 cmte mbr Kinzinger on Trump: I think the President certainly has criminal exposure..if you look at what we presented tonight, and in all these hearings, that cannot be acceptable from a President
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) July 22, 2022
A big question circling over these hearings is whether they’ll spark a prosecution of Donald Trump.
Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois congressman who is one two Republicans on the panel and led part of tonight’s session, said the president’s conduct appears criminal.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, leaving the hearing, told me that Trump “certainly has criminal exposure” after what the committee has revealed so far — adding that the “worst thing” would be to end up suggesting that the President above the law.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 22, 2022
“I think the President certainly has criminal exposure,” Kinzinger said. “I'm not a prosecutor, I’m not DOJ. But I certainly think if you look at what we presented tonight, and in all these hearings, that cannot be acceptable for the President of the United States.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 22, 2022
Kinzinger added: “Like the worst thing we can do is put out something that says, ‘a president is above the law and can do this again,’ because I guarantee you it will happen again if we say that.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 22, 2022
A reminder: it’s up to the department of justice, headed by Merrick Garland, to decide whether Trump gets prosecuted over what the January 6 committee is finding.
The January 6 committee now has a month and a week – at least – before its next public hearing, which will come in September.
Speaking after today’s session, committee members made clear they’re very interested in what the Secret Service knows about Trump’s actions on the day of the attack. Here’s what Democratic representative Jamie Raskin told the press:
Raskin on Sept hearings: “It all depends on … the evidence that comes in and then how we decide to make it coherent.”
— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) July 22, 2022
“There are certainly a number of significant leads… and we’re going to pursue those. We’re going to figure out this whole mystery with Secret Service texts.”
The Secret Service’s deletion of text messages is increasingly evolving into a scandal for the agency best-known for protecting the president. Democratic committee member Zoe Lofgren confirmed that two top officials who worked with Trump now have retained their own attorneys.
Asked by @AnnieGrayerCNN whether Tony Oranto and Robert Engel are the secret service officials who retained private counsel, Rep. Lofgren says “yes, and the driver”
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) July 22, 2022
Ornato is the former head of Trump’s security detail, whom the president named as his deputy chief of staff in 2019. Engel was Trump’s lead secret Service agent during the attack, and his text messages were among those that the agency apparently deleted.
Updated
One point Cheney made tonight was that it was often Donald Trump’s own appointees who spoke up against his actions on and leading up to January 6.
“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies. It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials ... his own family,” she said.
But she also noted that the women who testified have had to brave especially vicious personal attacks. Of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who testified earlier, Cheney said: “She knew all along she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60-, 70-year-old men who themselves hide behind executive privilege.”
Similarly, Sarah Matthews, was attacked on the House Republican conference Twitter account – despite the fact that she has worked for the House Republican conference – in a post that has since been taken down.
– MS
Updated
Takeaways from tonight's January 6 committee hearing
The January 6 committee has just concluded its final scheduled hearing, but its work is far from over. The committee will hold more hearings in September, and vice-chairwoman Liz Cheney said “the dam has begun to break” on the details of what happened that day.
Here’s more about what took place at tonight’s hearing:
-
A Democratic congresswoman who led the day’s presentation said Trump “was derelict in his duty” before and during the storming of the Capitol.
- Secret Service agents feared for their lives during the attack.
- Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who raised his fist in solidarity with the protesters that would go on to attack the Capitol, was shown fleeing through its halls.
- Republican Adam Kinzinger said Trump “kept resisting” actions demanded by his staff to end the violence.
- In speech outtakes, Trump struggled to say that the 2020 election was “over”.
-
Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows called for the president’s daughter Ivanka to help convince him to stop the attack.
- House Republicans attacked the committee on Twitter, including one of their own staffers who was a witness. (They later deleted the tweet).
The video of Josh Hawley running away not long after he cheered on the January 6 mob is a moment that’s likely to endure for a while after this hearing.
There was audible laughter in the room after the clip played. And now online it’s being set to various soundtracks:
Josh Hawley running away to a variety of soundtracks.
— Mallory Nees (@The_Mal_Gallery) July 22, 2022
Pt. 1: Chariots of Fire #January6thCommitteeHearing pic.twitter.com/tVCf2R5tUD
– Maanvi Singh
Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, who lead the committee, are now delivering closing remarks.
Cheney ended with this thought: “Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”
– Maanvi Singh
“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 Jan 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation,” Kinzinger said.
It’s unclear whether these hearings will break through and convince many fellow Republicans. Polls prior to this hearing finale found that while the majority of Americans think Trump is responsible for the deadly insurrection, stark party divisions remain.
A Monmouth poll found that fewer Republicans now see January 6 as an insurrection than did last year.
– Maanvi Singh
Updated
Trump said ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in outtake video message
One of the most revelatory parts of this hearing are the outtakes from Trump’s video message on 7 January.
“I don’t want to say the election is over,” he says in one clip. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results.”
Here’s the clip:
Updated
The day after the attack, White House staff pressed Trump to give another speech to the nation condemning the attack on the Capitol, which committee member Elaine Luria said Trump was motivated to do “because of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th amendment, or by impeachment”.
The committee just showed video of him recording that speech and struggling to accept that the election was finished.
“But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” Trump said in the speech, before saying to his staff: “I don’t want to say the election’s over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election’s over, okay?”
“One day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie, President Trump still could not say that the election was over,” Luria said.
Updated
“Mike Pence let me down.” According to an unnamed White House employee, that’s what Trump said in the Oval Office following the attack, congressman Adam Kinzinger said.
Meanwhile, administration officials were condemning the day’s events and planning to resign.
“What happened at the Capitol cannot be justified in any form or fashion. It was wrong and it was tragic. And it was a terrible day. It was a terrible day for this country,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone told the committee.
Kinzinger: Trump 'kept resisting' opportunity to end violence for hours
As the hearing resumed, congressman Adam Kinzinger asked viewers to put themselves in the shoes of the president on the day of the attack.
“What would you have done if you had the opportunity to end the violence?” the Illinois Republican asked.
“You would’ve told the rioters to leave. As you heard, that’s exactly what the senior staff had been urging him to do. But he resisted, and he kept resisting for almost another two hours.”
Much of this hearing has focused on the efforts of various Trump administration official to get the president to act as the situation got ever more desperate at the Capitol.
Updated
Once again tonight, we’re being reminded of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s 180 flip after January 6.
Multiple witnesses have now recounted that. McCarthy first asked Donald Trump, and then Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, asking the president to call off the mob..
“Think about that. Leader McCarthy, who was one of the president’s strongest supporters, was scared and begging for help. President Trump turned him down,” Adam Kinzinger said.
A week later, McCarthy went to see Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
– Maanvi Singh
Updated
The hearing is now focusing on the tweets Trump sent as the Capitol was being stormed, which his former officials are testifying that they didn’t feel were strong enough to stop the violence.
The committee has played voice clips from the Oath Keepers militia groups, apparently between members who took part in the attack and those who were elsewhere.
After Trump tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”, one of the Oath Keepers remarked, “That’s saying a lot, but what he didn’t say, he didn’t say not to do anything to the congressman.” The speaker then laughed.
Updated
The committee showed Josh Hawley, the rightwing senator of Missouri, raising his fist in solidarity with the crowds on January 6 – and later fleeing as rioters breached the Capitol.
Here’s that video:
Reporters in the room said there was audible laughter after the video of Hawley running played. Hawley was the first senator to declare he would object to certifying the election.
– Maanvi Singh
Updated
The hearing has restarted with more from Pat Cipollone’s interview. He is describing White House officials as near-unanimous in wanting the rioters out of the Capitol as it was being attacked.
“I can’t think of anybody, you know, on that day, who didn’t want people to get out of the Capitol,” Cipollone said.
Asked what the president wanted, Cipollone appeared to invoke executive privilege.
Mark Meadows said 'Get Ivanka down here', according to Cipollone
“Get Ivanka down here”. That’s what chief of staff Mark Meadows said as White House officials tried to figure out how to get Trump to stop the rioters at the Capitol, according to testimony from then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
“I remember him getting Ivanka involved, said ‘get Ivanka down here.’ He felt that would be important”, Cipollone said.
Ivanka Trump is, of course, the president’s daughter, who was an adviser in the White House and told the committee she never believed Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen.
Updated
It seems the House GOP twitter account has deleted tweets attacking Sarah Matthews and describing tonight’s testimony was “heresy”.
Matthews, who has described herself as a “lifelong Republican” and has worked as a staffer for the House GOP, was previously derided as a “pawn” in Nancy Pelosi’s “witch hunt.”
The Twitter account is run by Representative Elise Stefanik’s staff.
– Maanvi Singh
Updated
The January 6 committee is now taking a 10-minute recess.
Just before they broke, several former top officials confirmed that they believed ensuring a peaceful transfer of power was among the president’s duties, including White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Ivanka Trump’s husband Jared Kushner and Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser.
“Rather than uphold his duty to the Constitution, president Trump allowed the mob to achieve the delay that he hoped with keep him in power,” congresswoman Elaine Luria said as the hearing’s first half concluded.
Official said Secret Service agents ‘called to say goodbye to family’
Secret Service agents feared for their lives as the Capitol was stormed, an unnamed White House security official testified to the committee.
“There’s a lot of yelling, a lot of... very personal phone calls over the radio,” the official said. Others “called to say goodbye to a family member”.
“I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming, but again, it is just chaos. They’re just yelling”, the official continued. “It sounds like that we came very close to either the service having to use lethal options, or worse.”
Updated
Elaine Luria just mentioned the pipe bombs found near the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee...
It is still unclear who planted the bombs – which were discovered to be active. No arrests have been. Kamala Harris was reportedly within yards of the bomb and was evacuated from the DNC building after the bomb was discovered.
– Maanvi Singh
The committee just played Secret Service radio traffic and video footage as agents tried to evacuate the vice-president, Mike Pence, who was supposed to preside over the certification of electoral votes.
The clips began with shots of a rioter identified as Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola using an officer’s riot shield to smash in a window at the Capitol, allowing rioters to flood in.
“You may want to consider getting out and leaving now,” a voice said on the Secret Service radio.
“We got smoke out there,” another voice said, as the video showed someone shooting some kind of chemical during a confrontation between police in the Capitol and the rioters.
“We’re coming out now,” an agent says. The video ended before Pence was shown being taken away by Secret Service to a location that remains unknown.
Updated
The House Republican conference has taken to Twitter, undermining the character of Republican former officials testifying today.
“Just another liar and pawn in Pelosi’s witch-hunt,” they tweeted about Sarah Matthews. They also tweeted, “Stories are NOT facts”.
In reality, the January 6 committee has presented testimony – including from former Republican officials and the president’s own daughter – alongside text messages and other communications, video and other hard evidence to construct a detailed timeline of events preceding the violent insurrection on the capitol.
They also tweeted “This is all heresy”. It’s unclear if they meant “hearsay”.
This is all heresy.
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) July 22, 2022
– Maanvi Singh
Updated
As the Capitol was attacked, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he told Trump something along the lines of, “People need to be told, there needs to be some public announcement passed, that they need to leave the Capitol”, according to a video interview aired by the committee.
He continued to push for a strong statement from Trump discouraging the mob, joined by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Eric Herschmann, a White House attorney.
Cipollone was among the more recent officials to speak to the committee, only breaking his silence earlier this month.
Today’s hearing is being led by representatives Elaine Luria – a Democrat of Virginia – and Adam Kinzinger – a Republican of Illinois.
Elaine Luria
Luria was elected in 2018. She is a former Navy commander who serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Veterans Affairs committee. She’s facing a tough reelection campaign in a district that was redrawn to become more Republican.
Adam Kinzinger
Kinzinger is a veteran as well – he was a major in the Air National Guard who served two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is not seeking reelection, and this is his last term in Congress. One of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump during the second impeachment, he’s one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee.
Updated
Elaine Luria, the Virginia Democrat who is currently leading the committee’s presentation, just showed a picture of Trump in the Oval Office shortly after his speech to the crowd that went on to attack the Capitol.
“A White House employee informed the president as soon as he returned to the Oval about the riot at the Capitol,” Luria said. “Let me repeat that. Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack.”
Earlier, former Washington DC police officer Mark Robinson, who was part of Trump’s motorcade on January 6, testified that even after Trump had been taken back to the White House, he still wanted to go to the Capitol, but was prevented by the Secret Service.
Updated
Democratic congresswoman Luria says Trump was 'derelict in his duty'
Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democratic lawmaker on the January 6 committee and a Navy veteran, said Trump violated his oath of office during the attack.
“Our hearings have shown many ways in which President Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days leading up to January 6, with each step of his plan, and betrayed his oath of office, and was derelict in his duty,” Luria said in her opening remarks.
- This post was amended after erroneously attributing a quote to Adam Kinzinger.
Updated
Two former Trump White House aides who resigned shortly after January 6, Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, are testifying.
Matthew Pottinger
Pottinger resigned as deputy national security adviser in response the January 6, the highest-ranking White House official (other than cabinet secretaries) to do so. During a previously aired clip of tesimony he gave, he said he decided to quit after seeing a Trump tweet saying that Mike Pence should have had more courage. He is a former US Marine and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had worked as a reporter fo Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.
Sarah Matthews
Matthews was the former deputy press secretary. She resigned, saying she was “was deeply disturbed by what I saw” on January 6. A “lifelong Republican”, Matthews previously worked as a spokesperson for Trump’s reelection campaign.
Updated
'Dam has begun to break', Cheney says, as she announces further hearings
The committee’s Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney announced lawmakers will hold more hearings in September due to the emergence of new evidence concerning the insurrection.
“In the course of these hearings, we have received new evidence and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward. Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break. And now, even as we conduct our ninth hearing, we have considerably more to do,” she said.
“Our committee will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings” the following month, Cheney said.
Updated
Thompson concluded his remarks with a call for those involved in the attack to be held accountable.
“Our democracy withstood the attack on January 6, but if there is no accountability for January 6, for every part of this scheme, I fear that we will not overcome the ongoing threat to our democracy. There must be stiff consequences for those responsible,” the Mississippi Democrat said.
In his opening address via video link, committee chair Bennie Thompson has painted a picture of Donald Trump sitting in the White House and refusing to do anything as violence unfolded at the Capitol just two miles away.
“Donald Trump ignored and disregarded the desperate pleas of his own family, including Ivanka and Don Jr,” Thompson said. “He could not be moved to rise from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the White House hallway into the press briefing room, where cameras were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to the armed and violent mob savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers defending the Capitol.”
Updated
It has been billed as the “season finale” and there is certainly electricity in the air.
The Cannon Caucus Room is buzzing with reporters, photographers, TV camera operators, police officers, congressional aides and spectators ahead of the eighth and – for now – final hearing of the congressional January 6 committee.
Unlike an austere courtroom on the day of a trial, a loud hubbub of voices is filling the ornate and cavernous room, where two chandeliers shine brightly, as people discuss what’s to come (or where they’re heading for the summer).
Reporters from the US and all over the world are tightly packed around desks with an overflow on the front row of the public gallery. Photographers gathered beneath the dais to take close-up shots of the witnesses. Former US Capitol police officer Michael Fanone is sitting nearby.
Members of the committee entered just after 8pm but this time Liz Cheney is in the chair because the usual chairman, Bennie Thompson, has come down with coronavirus. He is speaking via a video link.
After seven hearings that explored what Donald Trump did, this one is expected to focus on what he didn’t do during those 187 indelible minutes on 6 January 2021.
Updated
January 6 committee begins hearing exploring what Trump was doing as Capitol was attacked
The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has convened its latest hearing, which is expected to look into what Trump was doing during the insurrection.
You can follow it on the live feed embedded above.
January 6 committee plans September hearings
As expected, tonight will not be the last hearing of the January 6 committee. NBC News reports the House panel will hold three more session in September.
NEW: More J6 hearings to come in SEPTEMBER
— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) July 21, 2022
The January 6th Committee will hold more hearings - plural - in September, three sources familiar tell NBC News, with Vice Chair Liz Cheney expected to announce it tonight.
W/ @alivitali
The New York Times has more details about the missing Secret Service text messages from around the time of the January 6 insurrection.
Of the 24 agents and officials that the January 6 committee requested text messages from between 7 December, 2020 and 8 January, 2021, the Secret Service was only able to retrieve an exchange between the Capitol police chief and the head of the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division, according to the Times.
Texts from the agency’s director James M. Murray and Robert Engel, Trump’s main bodyguard, were not retrieved. Tony Ornato, whom Trump elevated from the position of security chief to his deputy chief of staff, was not among the agents for whom text messages had been lost.
Last month, Ornato was reported to be one of two Secret Service officials who were willing to contradict under oath testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump lunged for the wheel of his vehicle and physically attacked the chief of his security detail after his speech near the White House on January 6.
CNN reports the issue of Hutchinson’s testimony will addressed in the hearing beginning in a few minutes.
Adam Kinzinger told me today that Cassidy Hutchison will be corroborated today by the evidence they plan to present. "There will be no question over her veracity," he said.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 21, 2022
Watchdog launches criminal investigation into missing Secret Service texts around January 6 riot - reports
The inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the Secret Service, has embarked on a criminal investigation into the matter of agents’ text messages relating to January 6, 2021, having been erased, according to several media reports.
The watchdog also has told the Secret Service to pause its own internal investigation into the matter, during what the DHS now refers to as a separate and “ongoing criminal investigation”, according to a CNN report.
CNN further reported on a letter from DHS deputy inspector general Gladys Ayala to Secret Service director James Murray sent yesterday, quoting it as saying:
This is to notify you that the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has an ongoing investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the collection and preservation of evidence by the United States Secret Service as it relates to the events of January 6, 2021.”
And the Washington Post reported that Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi has confirmed the letter and has informed the House January 6 panel.
“We have informed the January 6th Select Committee of the Inspector General’s request and will conduct a thorough legal review to ensure we are fully cooperative with all oversight efforts and that they do not conflict with each other,” Guglielmi said in a statement, the Post reported.
The developments mark the latest escalation of the scandal after the watchdog notified Congress the DHS had sought the texts only to be told they no longer existed.
The circumstances surrounding the erasure of the Secret Service texts have become central for the January 6 committee as it investigates how agents planned to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence as the violence unfolded.
In Georgia, a special grand jury investigation is proceeding into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state - a subject that the January 6 committee has also looked into.
The Associated Press reports today that several Georgia Republican lawmakers who signed a fake document claiming that Trump, rather than Joe Biden, won the state have lost their bid to quash subpoenas compelling their appearance before the special panel. The body based in Fulton county, home to Atlanta, will issue a report that the local prosecutor could then use to seek indictments based on its information. Today’s rulings indicates the special grand jury will continue to remain one potential avenue for allies of the former president, or perhaps Trump himself, to face criminal charges over his meddling in the 2020 election.
Among the other former Trump officials subpoenaed by the jurors: Rudy Giuliani.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has a preview of what to expect from today’s hearing of the January 6 committee:
The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.
The January 6 committee’s hearing this evening is likely to bring more headline-generating revelations about what Trump was doing as a mob of his supporters perpetrated one of the worst attacks on the US government in history.
And while it may be the “season finale” for the hearings, which are being orchestrated by a team that includes an ABC news executive, chances are it won’t be the last. The committee’s investigation is continuing, including into text messages from the Secret Service that were deleted following the attack, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the lawmakers announce more sessions in the future.
But is their evidence changing Americans’ views of Trump? A Reuters/Ipsos poll released just this afternoon indicates it might be. Forty percent of Republicans say Trump was at least partly to blame for the attack, an increase of about seven percentage points from before the hearings. The proportion of Republicans who think Trump shouldn’t stand for office again also increased, to 32 percent from 26 percent in early June.
In final scheduled hearing, January 6 committee to press case Trump broke the law
Good afternoon, US politics blog readers. In a few hours, the January 6 committee will hold its final scheduled hearing, in which House lawmakers will make the case that former president Donald Trump may have violated the law by not stopping the assault on the Capitol. As if that wasn’t a packed news agenda by itself, president Joe Biden announced earlier today he had tested positive for Covid-19 – joining his vice president Kamala Harris, much of Congress’s Democratic leadership and yes, Trump, in contracting the virus.
Here’s what else has happened today:
- The House of Representatives passed a bill to guarantee access to contraception after supreme court justice Clarence Thomas mulled revisiting a decades-old ruling concerning the right. All Democrats voted for it, along with eight Republicans.
- Much of America is facing extreme heat. Some Democrats have called on Biden to declare a climate emergency, but he has yet to do so.
- Biden’s Covid-19 diagnosis has delayed the announcement of a plan to fight crime.
- Democratic senators have introduced a bill to legalize cannabis nationwide.
