From the NY Times….
Mr. Trump had given a ‘green light’ to the violence, a witness says. Here’s the latest developments.
In an hour of highly charged testimony Thursday night, some of President Trump’s top aides described his inaction for nearly three hours in the face of the deadly assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. Trump had given a “green light” to the violence, one said, and another witness testified anonymously that Secret Service agents guarding the vice president had radioed goodbyes to family members.
“He shouldn’t have been doing that,” Sarah Matthews, the president’s deputy press secretary, said. “He should have been telling these people to go home and to leave and to condemn the violence.”
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol returned to prime time on Thursday with rapid-fire evidence — including more details about the president’s angry demand to march to the Capitol with the rioters — that members said showed a dereliction of duty by Mr. Trump for failing to call off and even inflaming the assault carried out in his name.
“For 187 minutes on Jan. 6, this man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in his opening remarks. “Not by his aides, not by his allies, not by the violent chants of rioters or the desperate pleas of those facing down the mob. He could not be moved.”
Thursday night’s presentation is the culmination of weeks of gripping hearings designed to document for the public, and for history, the relentless efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to subvert the 2020 election. For the bipartisan group of lawmakers on the committee, it was the final piece of a narrative they insisted Americans must not ignore, and their most direct attempt to assign responsibility for an assault on democracy.
Using testimony from Mr. Trump’s deputy national security adviser, his top lawyer, his spokeswoman and others, the committee said the president had done nothing to help for more than three hours as he watched the attack play out live on television from just outside the Oval Office.
Among the developments:
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A White House national security official, testifying anonymously, said that members of the vice president’s security detail at the Capitol were “screaming” as they tried to get the vice president out of the building safely and were so worried about their safety that they radioed goodbyes to their family members. “On the ground, the vice president’s detail thought that this was about to get very ugly,” the witness said.
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The House committee showed never-before-seen video of Mr. Trump in the Rose Garden recording a video in which he told rioters that “we love you. You’re very special” during the violence at the Capitol. In a dramatic contrast, they then showed video of what was happening at the Capitol at that very moment: a violent mob still trying to force its way into the building, reports of another officer unconscious, and tear gas being sprayed on rioters.
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Two people on Thursday night backed up testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, about Mr. Trump’s demands to go to the Capitol with protesters. A national security aide said the protest would have become an “insurrection, coup, whatever” if the president had been allowed to go. A retired D.C. police officer who was part of the president’s motorcade, said he was told there was a “heated argument” about whether to go.
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In live testimony, two of Mr. Trump’s aides said they resigned after being horrified by the president’s tweet criticizing Vice President Mike Pence during the attack on the Capitol. Matthew Pottinger, who was deputy national security adviser under Mr. Trump, and Sarah Matthews, the deputy press secretary, both said the tweet was like pouring gasoline on a fire.
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Although Thursday’s hearing had been expected to be a capstone in the series of hearings throughout June and July, Mr. Thompson said the panel plans to reconvene for more hearings in September as it continues its investigation and works toward the release of a preliminary report.