Donald Trump is reportedly impatient to be done with the January 6 hearings in Congress, watching each session live on TV and repeatedly question aides when they will be over.
“One thing that I’ve heard from sources is that Trump has been asking people in recent days is when these hearings are going to come to an end. They have been more effective than many people in his orbit expected,” reported CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday.
"These are people who have been through multiple impeachment hearings, a lot of investigations, they didn’t think this was going to be effective in any way, but you have seen the compelling testimony, including people from Cassidy Hutchinson," she added. "That has led to this question of when these hearings are going to end and when they have to stop wondering about when the next shoe to drop is going to be."
The former president is reportedly upset that more Republicans aren’t serving on the January 6 select committee to defend him, even though most of the GOP leadership declined to get involved in the process.
The Independent has contacted Mr Trump for comment.
He has repeatedly vented his frustration with the committee process and attacked the credibility of its witnesses.
“Well, I think in retrospect, I think it would have been very smart to put [Republicans on the committee] and again, I wasn’t involved in it from a standpoint so I never looked at it too closely. But I think it would have been good if we had representation,” Mr Trump told Punchbowl News in June. “I think in retrospect [McCarthy should’ve put Republicans on] to just have a voice. The Republicans don’t have a voice. They don’t even have anything to say.”
The Capitol riot investigation has had seven public sessions in Congress so far presenting its findings since June, and they have painted a damning picture of the former president of the “American carnage” and his inner circle in the days surrounding January 6.
On Tuesday, investigators showed text messages between January 6 rally organisers which showed they were aware that Mr Trump planned to exhort his supporters to march the 1.8 miles between the White House and Capitol, and that they understood that Mr Trump’s call for a march was to be kept under wraps.
One rally organiser, Kylie Kremer, sent a text to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell two days before the rally in which she said Mr Trump would “call for it [the march] unexpectedly”.
Previous sessions have also contained shocking revelations.
In June, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Mr Trump said he felt Mike Pence “deserves” chants from rioters who were calling for the vice-president to be hung. (Mr Trump has denied this.)
The ex-president has blasted witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson with regular posts on Truth Social, his social network.
"I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and “leaker”)..." he wrote in one post.
Despite being dismissive in public of the hearings, Mr Trump has reportedly bridled in private over the process.
A close adviser told The Washington Post that Mr Trump is at “the point of about to scream at the TV” as he watches the hearings, though others in the Trump orbit have denied this.
