What were the main takeaways from Thursday’s Jan. 6 hearing?

WASHINGTON — The House Jan. 6 committee is closing out its set of summer season hearings with its most detailed focus but on the investigation’s main goal: former President Donald Trump.

The panel is inspecting Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, as a whole lot of his supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol, guiding viewers minute-by-minute by the lethal afternoon to indicate how lengthy it took for the former president to name off the rioters. The panel is specializing in 187 minutes that day, between the finish of Trump’s speech calling for supporters to march to the Capitol at 1:10 p.m. and a video he launched at 4:17 p.m. telling the rioters they were “very special” however they needed to go residence.

Trump was “the only person in the world who could call off the mob,” however he refused to take action for a number of hours, mentioned the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who was collaborating in the listening to remotely resulting from a COVID-19 analysis. “He could not be moved.”

THE WHITE HOUSE DINING ROOM

The panel emphasised the place Trump was as the violence unfolded — in a White House eating room, sitting at the head of the desk, watching the violent breach of the Capitol on Fox News. He retreated to the eating room at 1:25 p.m., in line with Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., one in every of two members who led the listening to. That was after some rioters had already breached obstacles round the Capitol — and after Trump had been informed about the violence inside quarter-hour of returning to the White House.

Fox News was exhibiting stay photographs of the rioters pushing previous police, Luria mentioned, exhibiting excerpts of the protection.

In video testimony performed at the listening to, former White House aides talked about their frantic efforts to get the president to inform his supporters to show round. Pat Cipollone, Trump’s high White House lawyer, informed the panel that a number of aides — together with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump — suggested the president to say one thing. “People have to be informed” to go away, Cipollone recalled telling the president, urging Trump to make a public announcement.

Trump “could not be moved,” Thompson mentioned, “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.”

As he sat in the White House, Trump made no efforts to name for elevated regulation enforcement help at the Capitol. Witnesses confirmed that Trump didn’t name the protection secretary, the homeland safety secretary or the lawyer normal.

The committee performed audio of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reacting with shock to the former president’s response to the assault. “You’re the commander-in-chief. You’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there’s Nothing? No call? Nothing Zero?” Milley mentioned.

As Trump declined to name for assist, Vice President Mike Pence was hiding in the Capitol, simply toes away from rioters who were about to breach the Senate chamber. The committee performed audio from an unidentified White House safety official who mentioned Pence’s Secret Service brokers “started to fear for their own lives” at the Capitol and known as members of the family in case they didn’t survive.

Shortly afterward, at 2:24 p.m., Trump tweeted that Pence didn’t have the “courage” to dam or delay the election outcomes as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

Matt Pottinger, who was Trump’s deputy nationwide safety adviser at the time, and Sarah Matthews, then the deputy press secretary, testified at the listening to. Both resigned from their White House jobs instantly after the rebellion.

Both Pottinger and Matthews informed the committee of their disgust at Trump’s tweet about Pence.

Pottinger mentioned he was “disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty,” which he mentioned was “the opposite of what we needed at that moment.”

“That was the moment I decided I was going to resign,” Pottinger mentioned.

Matthews mentioned the tweet was “essentially him giving the green light to those people,” and mentioned Trump’s supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet.”

She additionally described a debate inside the press workplace about whether or not the violence ought to be condemned — and her frustration that such a debate was even occurring, and that they were debating the politics of a tweet.

Matthews mentioned she pointed to the tv. “Do you think it looks like we are effing winning? Because I don’t think it does,” she mentioned.

The committee confirmed a few of the texts that were despatched to Trump’s chief of employees, Mark Meadows, as White House aides tried to get the president to behave. Meadows turned the texts over to the panel earlier than he stopped cooperating.

“This is one you go to the mattresses on,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, texted Meadows. “They will try to f— his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.”

“Mark, he needs to stop this, now,” texted Mick Mulvaney, Meadows’ former GOP House colleague and the former director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” texted Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham.

As a few of the worst of the preventing at the Capitol was nonetheless underway, and had been occurring for hours, Trump put out the video at 4:17 p.m.

The committee confirmed video of Trump filming the assertion, and a replica of the script that he ignored. “I am asking you to leave the Capitol Hill region NOW and go home in a peaceful way,” the script mentioned.

But the president didn’t truly say that, as a substitute repeating baseless claims of voter fraud with out condemning the violence. “So go home. We love you. You’re very special,” Trump ended up saying. “I know how you feel.”

In video testimony, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner mentioned he acquired there as the filming ended, and “I think he was basically retiring for the day.”

The committee confirmed video from the Capitol siege at that precise second — rioters attempting to violently push by the main doorways, battering officers who had been preventing for hours. Police radio visitors relayed, “Another officer unconscious.”

The committee confirmed never-before-seen outtakes of a speech ready for Trump on Jan. 7 during which he was purported to say the election was over. But he bristled at that line, telling a roomful of supporters, “I don’t want to say the election is over.”

In the outtakes, Trump was visibly offended — at one level hitting his hand on the podium — as he labored by the ready remarks, together with his daughter Ivanka and others heard chiming in with strategies.

In the closing video, Trump condemns the violence and says: “Congress has certified the results, and new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”

‘WE HAVE CONSIDERABLY MORE TO DO’

At the starting of the listening to, Thompson and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chair, introduced that the panel would “reconvene” in September to proceed laying out their findings.

“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney mentioned of the committee’s probe. “We have considerably more to do. We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather.”