A new video of the scene inside the Capitol itself shows the minutes immediately following the White House’s release of a video in which Donald Trump instructed his supporters to leave the building.
Posted on Twitter by NBC News’s Ryan J. Reilly on Tuesday, it was apparently shot by Pam Hemphill, a participant in riot who was sentences to 60 days in prison for her presence inside the Capitol as Trump supporters fought police and stormed the building.
In the video, an unidentified woman is seen demanding to know when the video was recorded, insisting (correctly) that it was not a live feed; she apparently did not realise it had been released by Donald Trump himself on Twitter just minutes earlier.
"That looks prerecorded!" she yells, adding: "I don't see where he recorded that!"
Mr Trump’s video was credited with driving a number of his supporters from the Capitol grounds, but it came hours after the siege began and after dozens of police officers were already wounded, some seriously. One of the driving questions being pursued by the House select committee investigating the riot has been why Mr Trump did not act sooner to address the situation; more and more, it appears the answer is that he approved of the actions of his supporters whom he had sought to join personally just moments earlier.
His video, released on Twitter, is now gone from the platform along with the rest of ex-president’s account, deleted by administrators after the shocking violence of the riot.
The committee’s next hearing is set to examine Mr Trump’s efforts to “assemble” the mob that day, according to lawmakers on the panel. Members previously met for a surprise hearing last week which featured the testimony of a high-level White House aide who said that chief of staff Mark Meadows and others were aware days beforehand that violence was likely to break out on Jan 6.
The first hearing of the select committee last month also featured a new set of previously unreleased footage of the riot itself, showing the brutality and vicious rage that Capitol Police faced on the day of the attack.
