Riot Defendants Say Trump ‘Asked’ Them To Storm Capitol

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the committee, said Trump “energized” far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to storm the Capitol weeks before the January 6 riot, when he tweeted that his supporters should travel to D.C. and said: “Be there, will be wild!.”

Nick Quested, a documentary filmmaker who was following the Proud Boys, said in live testimony to the committee that members of the extremist group started moving toward the Capitol before Trump finished his speech at a “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House—marching toward Capitol Hill by the “hundreds.”

Among other jarring revelations during the two-hour hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)—the committee’s vice chair—said former President Donald Trump told White House staffers on January 6 the rioters were “doing what they should be doing,” and he responded to rioters’ chants to hang Vice President Mike Pence by saying Pence “deserves it.”

Despite harried efforts by White House staff, Trump was hesitant to call off the rioters, and he didn’t place any calls to agencies like the Department of Defense to ask for help resecuring the Capitol, Cheney said.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said in recorded testimony that Pence took charge and asked for National Guard support during a phone call on the day of the riot, while Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows primarily focused on the riot’s political ramifications.

Following the storming of the Capitol, Cheney said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was one of “multiple” members of Congress who asked for pardons (it’s not clear why Perry would want a pardon, but he reportedly pushed Trump to install Jeffrey Clark—an obscure Justice Department official who supported Trump’s false voter fraud claims—as attorney general).

Cheney said in the days following the riot, members of Trump’s cabinet discussed invoking the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which spells out a process for the cabinet to sideline the incumbent president.

The committee also looked at Trump’s effort to overturn the election results: Lawmakers played testimony of former Attorney General Bill Barr calling Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election “bulls***,” along with a video of the former president’s daughter Ivanka Trump saying she “accepted” Barr’s position there was no widespread fraud.

Cheney says White House Counsel Pat Cipollone “threatened to resign multiple times” in the weeks preceding the riot because he was concerned the Trump Administration’s behavior was illegal—though in videotaped testimony to lawmakers, Trump’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner said he interpreted these threats to quit as “whining.”

Thompson said the attack on the Capitol was part of a “conspiracy to thwart the will of the people,” calling the assault an “insurrection” that “put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk.”