Highlights from the Final Report of the Select Committee To Investigate The January 26th Attack On The United States Capital.

What follows are my highlights from the Final Report of the Select Committee To Investigate The January 26^th Attack On The United States Capital. You can read the full document here: https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/Report_FinalReport_Jan6SelectCommittee.pdfn

gressSecond Session House Report 117-000 

These are excerpts from the Executive Summary, which is the shorter version of a much longer report contained in the same document. I obviously have not included anywhere near all the information from the summary; the full report contains significantly more information than the summary.

 

I encourage you to read the whole thing (or at least the full summary). Of all the politicians or political operatives interviewed, all but one are Republican. This is not the testimony of Democrats going after a political enemy. This is testimony from those who saw how the political sausage was made leading up to the 2020 election and leading directly to the insurrection on January 6. 

Yes, this is a really long post. 

But how it happened matters. Why it happened matters. And who made it happen matters perhaps most of all. 

 

* * * * *

 

“This Report supplies an immense volume of information and testimony assembled through the Select Committee’s investigation, including information obtained following litigation in Federal district and appellate courts, as well as in the U.S. Supreme Court. Based upon this assembled evidence, the Committee has reached a series of specific findings,19 including the following: 

 

·      Beginning election night and continuing through January 6th and thereafter, Donald Trump purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud related to the 2020 Presidential election in order to aid his effort to overturn the election and for purposes of soliciting contributions. These false claims provoked his supporters to violence on January 6th. 

·      Knowing that he and his supporters had lost dozens of election law- suits, and despite his own senior advisors refuting his election fraud claims and urging him to concede his election loss, Donald Trump refused to accept the lawful result of the 2020 election. Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome. 

·      Despite knowing that such an action would be illegal, and that no State had or would submit an altered electoral slate, Donald Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes during Congress’s joint session on January 6th. 

·      Donald Trump sought to corrupt the U.S. Department of Justice by attempting to enlist Department officials to make purposely false statements and thereby aid his effort to overturn the Presidential election. After that effort failed, Donald Trump offered the position of Acting Attorney General to Jeff Clark knowing that Clark intended to disseminate false information aimed at overturning the election. 

·      Without any evidentiary basis and contrary to State and Federal law, Donald Trump unlawfully pressured State officials and legislators to change the results of the election in their States. 

·      Donald Trump oversaw an effort to obtain and transmit false electoral certificates to Congress and the National Archives. 

·      Donald Trump pressured Members of Congress to object to valid slates of electors from several States.

·      Donald Trump purposely verified false information filed in Federal court. 

·      Based on false allegations that the election was stolen, Donald Trump summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for January 6th. Although these supporters were angry and some were armed, Donald Trump instructed them to march to the Capitol on January 6th to “take back” their country. 

·      Knowing that a violent attack on the Capitol was underway and knowing that his words would incite further violence, Donald Trump purposely sent a social media message publicly condemning Vice President Pence at 2:24 p.m. on January 6th. 

·      Knowing that violence was underway at the Capitol, and despite his duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, Donald Trump refused repeated requests over a multiple hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol, and instead watched the violent attack unfold on television. This failure to act perpetuated the violence at the Capitol and obstructed Congress’s proceeding to count electoral votes. 

·      Each of these actions by Donald Trump was taken in support of a multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election. 

·      The intelligence community and law enforcement agencies did successfully detect the planning for potential violence on January 6th, including planning specifically by the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper militia groups who ultimately led the attack on the Capitol. As January 6th approached, the intelligence specifically identified the potential for violence at the U.S. Capitol. This intelligence was shared within the executive branch, including with the Secret Service and the President’s National Security Council. 

·      Intelligence gathered in advance of January 6th did not support a conclusion that Antifa or other left-wing groups would likely engage in a violent counter-demonstration, or attack Trump supporters on January 6th. Indeed, intelligence from January 5th indicated that some left-wing groups were instructing their members to “stay at home” and not attend on January 6th.20 Ultimately, none of these groups was involved to any material extent with the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. 

·      Neither the intelligence community nor law enforcement obtained intelligence in advance of January 6th on the full extent of the ongoing planning by President Trump, John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani and their associates to overturn the certified election results. Such agencies apparently did not (and potentially could not) anticipate the provocation President Trump would offer the crowd in his Ellipse speech, that President Trump would “spontaneously” instruct the crowd to march to the Capitol, that President Trump would exacerbate the violent riot by sending his 2:24 p.m. tweet condemning Vice President Pence, or the full scale of the violence and lawlessness that would ensue. Nor did law enforcement anticipate that President Trump would refuse to direct his supporters to leave the Capitol once violence began. No intelligence community advance analysis predicted exactly how President Trump would behave; no such analysis recognized the full scale and extent of the threat to the Capitol on January 6th. 

·      Hundreds of Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers performed their duties bravely on January 6th, and America owes those individuals immense gratitude for their courage in the defense of Congress and our Constitution. Without their bravery, January 6th would have been far worse. Although certain members of the Capitol Police leadership regarded their approach to January 6th as “all hands on deck,” the Capitol Police leadership did not have sufficient assets in place to address the violent and lawless crowd.21 Capitol Police leadership did not anticipate the scale of the violence that would ensue after President Trump instructed tens of thousands of his supporters in the Ellipse crowd to march to the Capitol, and then tweeted at 2:24 p.m. Although Chief Steven Sund raised the idea of National Guard support, the Capitol Police Board did not request Guard assistance prior to January 6th. The Metropolitan Police took an even more proactive approach to January 6th, and deployed roughly 800 officers, including responding to the emergency calls for help at the Capitol. Rioters still managed to break their line in certain locations, when the crowd surged forward in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet. The Department of Justice readied a group of Federal agents at Quantico and in the District of Columbia, anticipating that January 6th could become violent, and then deployed those agents once it became clear that police at the Capitol were overwhelmed. Agents from the Department of Homeland Security were also deployed to assist. 

·      President Trump had authority and responsibility to direct deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day. Nor did he instruct any Federal law enforcement agency to assist. Because the authority to deploy the National Guard had been delegated to the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense could, and ultimately did deploy the Guard. Although evidence identifies a likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense impacting the timing of deployment, the Committee has found no evidence that the Department of Defense intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard. The Select Committee recognizes that some at the Department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election. 

 

THE BIG LIE 

 

In the weeks before election day 2020, Donald Trump’s campaign experts, including his campaign manager Bill Stepien, advised him that the election results would not be fully known on election night.23 This was because certain States would not begin to count absentee and other mail-in votes until election day or after election-day polls had closed.24 Because Republican voters tend to vote in greater numbers on election day and Democratic voters tend to vote in greater numbers in advance of election day, it was widely anticipated that Donald Trump could initially appear to have a lead, but that the continued counting of mail-in, absentee and other votes beginning election night would erode and could overcome that perceived lead.25 Thus, as President Trump’s campaign manager cautioned, understanding the results of the 2020 election would be a lengthy “process,” and an initial appearance of a Trump lead could be a “red mirage.”26 This was not unique to the 2020 election; similar scenarios had played out in prior elections as well.27 

 

Prior to the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, along with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, urged President Trump to embrace mail-in voting as potentially beneficial to the Trump Campaign.28 Presidential advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner recounted others giving Donald Trump the same advice: “[M]ail in ballots could be a good thing for us if we looked at it correctly.”29 Multiple states, including Florida, had successfully utilized mail-in voting in prior elections, and in 2020.30 Trump White House Counselor Hope Hicks testified: “I think he [President Trump] understood that a lot of people vote via absentee ballot in places like Florida and have for a long time and that it’s worked fine.”31 Donald Trump won in numerous States that allowed no-excuse absentee voting in 2020, including Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming.32 

 

On election night 2020, the election returns were reported in almost exactly the way that Stepien and other Trump Campaign experts predicted, with the counting of mail-in and absentee ballots gradually diminishing President Trump’s perceived lead. As the evening progressed, President Trump called in his campaign team to discuss the results. Stepien and other campaign experts advised him that the results of the election would not be known for some time, and that he could not truthfully declare victory.33 “It was far too early to be making any calls like that. Ballots—ballots were still being counted. Ballots were still going to be counted for days.”34 

 

Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller told the Select Committee that he argued against declaring victory at that time as well, because “it was too early to say one way [or] the other” who had won.35 Stepien advised Trump to say that “votes were still being counted. It’s too early to tell, too early to call the race but, you know, we are proud of the race we run—we ran and we, you know, think we’re—think we’re in a good position” and would say more in the coming days.36 

 

President Trump refused, and instead said this in his public remarks that evening: “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election . . . . We want all voting to stop.”37And on the morning of November 5th, he tweeted “STOP THECOUNT!”38 Halting the counting of votes at that point would have violated both State and Federal laws.39 

 

According to testimony received by the Select Committee, the only advisor present who supported President Trump’s inclination to declare victory was Rudolph Giuliani, who appeared to be inebriated.40 President Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, who had earlier left the election night gathering, perceived the President’s statement this way: 

[R]ight out of the box on election night, the President claimed that there was major fraud underway. I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence. He claimed there was major fraud. And it seemed to be based on the dynamic that, at the end of the evening, a lot of Democratic votes came in which changed the vote counts in certain States, and that seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud. And I didn’t think much of that, because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night . . . . 41 

 

President Trump’s decision to declare victory falsely on election night and, unlawfully, to call for the vote counting to stop, was not a spontaneous decision. It was premeditated. The Committee has assembled a range of evidence of President Trump’s preplanning for a false declaration of victory. This includes multiple written communications on October 31 and November 3, 2020, to the White House by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.42 This evidence demonstrates that Fitton was in direct contact with President Trump and understood that President Trump would falsely declare victory on election night and call for vote counting to stop. The evidence also includes an audio recording of President Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon, who said this on October 31, 2020, to a group of his associates from China: 

 

“And what Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner . . . The Democrats—more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in mail. And so they’re gonna have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it—that’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner. So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm . . . . Also, if Trump, if Trump is losing, by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s going to be even crazier. No, because he’s gonna sit right there and say “They stole it. I’m directing the Attorney General to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states.” It’s going to be, no, he’s not going out easy. If Trump—if Biden’s winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.43 

 

Also in advance of the election, Roger Stone, another outside advisor to President Trump, made this statement: 

 

I really do suspect it will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won. Fuck you, Sorry. Over. We won. You’re wrong. Fuck you.44 

 

On election day, Vice President Pence’s staff, including his Chief of Staff and Counsel, became concerned that President Trump might falsely claim victory that evening. The Vice President’s Counsel, Greg Jacob, testified about their concern that the Vice President might be asked improperly to echo such a false statement.45 Jacob drafted a memorandum with this specific recommendation: “[I]t is essential that the Vice President not be perceived by the public as having decided questions concerning disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts.”46 

Millions of Americans believed that President Trump was telling the truth on election night—that President Trump actually had proof the election was stolen and that the ongoing counting of votes was an act of fraud.

 

In a meeting on November 23rd, Barr told President Trump that the Justice Department was doing its duty by investigating every fraud allegation “if it’s specific, credible, and could’ve affected the outcome,” but that “they’re just not meritorious. They’re not panning out.”60 

 

Barr then told the Associated Press on December 1st that the Department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”61 Next, he reiterated this point in private meetings with the President both that afternoon and on December 14th, as well as in his final press conference as Attorney General later that month.62 The Department of Homeland Security had reached a similar determination two weeks earlier: 

 

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” 63 

 

In addition, multiple other high ranking Justice Department personnel appointed by President Trump also informed him repeatedly that the allegations were false. As January 6th drew closer, Acting Attorney General Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue had calls with President Trump on almost a daily basis explaining in detail what the Department’s investigations showed.64 Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue told the Select Committee that he and Acting Attorney General Rosen tried 

 

“to put it in very clear terms to the President. And I said something to the effect of ‘Sir, we’ve done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed. We’ve looked in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada. We’re doing our job.’”65

 

On December 31st,Donoghue recalls telling the President that “people keep telling you these things and they turn out not to be true.”66And then on January 3rd, Donoghue reiterated this point with the President: 

 

[A]s in previous conservations, we would say to him, you know, “We checked that out, and there’s nothing to it.”67 

 

Acting Attorney General Rosen testified before the Select Committee that “the common element” of all of his communications with President Trump was President Trump urging the Department to find widespread fraud that did not actually exist. None of the Department’s investigations identified any genuine fraud sufficient to impact the election outcome: 

 

During my tenure as the Acting Attorney General, which began on December 24 of [2020], the Department of Justice maintained the position, publicly announced by former Attorney General William Barr, that the Department had been presented with no evidence of widespread voter fraud in a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 2020 election.68 

 

As President Trump was hearing from his campaign and his Justice Department that the allegations of widespread fraud were not supported by the evidence, his White House legal staff also reached the same conclusions, and agreed specifically with what Barr told President Trump. Both White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and White House Senior Advisor Eric Herschmann reinforced to President Trump that the Justice Department was doing its duty to investigate allegations of supposed voter fraud.69 

 

In short, President Trump was informed over and over again, by his senior appointees, campaign experts and those who had served him for years, that his election fraud allegations were nonsense. 

 

How did President Trump continue to make false allegations despite all of this unequivocal information? President Trump sought out those who were not scrupulous with the facts, and were willing to be dishonest. He found a new legal team to assert claims that his existing advisors and the Justice Department had specifically informed him were false. President Trump’s new legal team, headed by Rudolph Giuliani, and their allies ultimately lost dozens of election lawsuits in Federal and State courts. 

 

As Giuliani visited Campaign headquarters to discuss election litigation, the Trump Campaign’s professional staff began to view him as unhinged.74 In addition, multiple law firms previously engaged to work for the Trump Campaign decided that they could not participate in the strategy being instituted by Giuliani. They quit. Campaign General Counsel Matthew Morgan explained that he had conversations with “probably all of our counsel who [we]re signed up to assist on election day as they disengaged with the campaign.”75 The “general consensus was that the law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making publicly.”76 When asked how many outside firms expressed this concern, Morgan recalled having “a similar conversation with most all of them.”77 Stepien grew so wary of the new team that he locked Giuliani out of his office: 

 

Committee Staff: Yeah. I’m getting the sense from listening to you here for a few hours that you sort of chose to pull back, that you were uncomfortable with what Mr. Giuliani and others were saying and doing and, therefore, you were purposefully stepping back from a day-to-day role as the leader of the campaign. Is that—I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Is that accurate? 

Stepien: That’s accurate. That’s accurate. You know, I had my assistant -- it was a big glass kind of wall office in our headquarters, and I had my assistant lock my door. I told her, don’t let anyone in. You know, I’ll be around when I need to be around. You know, tell me what I need to know. Tell me what’s going on here, but, you know, you’re going to see less of me. And, you know, sure enough, you know, Mayor Giuliani tried to, you know, get in my office and ordered her to unlock the door, and she didn’t do that, you know. She’s, you know, smart about that. But your words are ones I agree with.78 

Over the weeks that followed, dozens of judges across the country specifically rejected the allegations of fraud and irregularities being advanced by the Trump team and their allies. For example, courts described the arguments as “an amalgamation of theories, conjecture, and speculation,” “allegations ... sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence,” “strained legal arguments without merit,” assertions that “did not prove by any standard of proof that any illegal votes were cast and counted,” and even a “fundamental and obvious misreading of the Constitution.”79 

 

Reflecting back on this period, Trump Campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh texted colleagues in January 2021 about a news report that the New York State Bar was considering expelling Rudolph Giuliani over the Ellipse rally: 

 

“Why wouldn’t they expel him based solely on the outrageous lies he told for 2 1/2 months?”80 

 

This is exactly what ultimately came to pass. When suspending his license, a New York court said that Giuliani “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020.”81 The court added that “[t]he seriousness of [Giuliani’s] uncontroverted misconduct cannot be overstated.”82 

 

Other Trump lawyers were sanctioned for making outlandish claims of election fraud without the evidence to back them up, including Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and seven other pro-Trump lawyers in a case that a Federal judge described as “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.” 

 

A group of prominent Republicans have more recently issued a report— titled Lost, Not Stolen—examining “every count of every case brought in these six battleground states” by President Trump and his allies. The report concludes “that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case.”84 President Trump and his legal allies,

 

 “failed because of a lack of evidence and not because of erroneous rulings or unfair judges . . . . In many cases, after making extravagant claims of wrongdoing, Trump’s legal representatives showed up in court or state proceedings empty-handed, and then returned to their rallies and media campaigns to repeat the same unsupported claims.”85 

 

By mid-December 2020, Donald Trump had come to what most of his staff believed was the end of the line. The Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit he supported filed by the State of Texas in the Supreme Court, and Donald Trump had this exchange, according to Special Assistant to the President Cassidy Hutchinson: 

 

The President was fired up about the Supreme Court decision. And so I was standing next to [Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows, but I had stepped back . . . The President [was] just raging about the decision and how it’s wrong, and why didn’t we make more calls, and just this typical anger outburst at this decision . . . And the President said I think—so he had said something to the effect of, “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost.”99 

 

Despite all that Donald Trump was being told, he continued to purposely and maliciously make false claims. To understand the very stark differences between what he was being told and what he said publicly and in fundraising solicitations, the Committee has assembled the following examples. 

 

Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen (12/15/20):
“And so he said, ‘Well, what about this? I saw it on the videotape, some- body delivering a suitcase of ballots.’ And we said, ‘It wasn’t a suitcase. It was a bin. That’s what they use when they’re counting ballots. It’s benign.’”105 

Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (12/27 & 12/31/20):
“I told the President myself that several times, in several conversations, that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run through the machine several times, it was not true, that we looked at it, we looked at the video, we interviewed the witnesses, that it was not true . . . . I believe it was in the phone call on December 27th. It was also in a meeting in the Oval Office on December 31st.”107 

GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
“You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context.” . . . “[W]e did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times. . . . Yes, Mr. President, we’ll send you the link from WSB.” 

[Trump]: “I don’t care about a link. I don’t need it.”109 

President Trump one week later (12/22/20):
“There is even security camera footage from Georgia that shows officials telling poll watchers to leave the room before pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables and continuing to count for hours.”106 

President Trump later that week (1/2/21):
“[S]he stuffed the machine. She stuffed the ballot. Each ballot went three times, they were showing: Here’s ballot number one. Here it is a sec- ond time, third time, next ballot.” 108 

President Trump one day later (1/3/21):
“I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘vot- ers’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”110 

Attorney General Barr (12/1/20): 

“Then he raised the ‘big vote dump,’ as he called it, in Detroit. And, you know, he said, people saw boxes coming into the counting station at all hours of the morning and so forth.... I said, ‘Mr. President, there are 630 precincts in Detroit, and unlike elsewhere in the State, they centralize the counting process, so they’re not counted in each precinct, they’re moved to counting stations, and so the normal process would involve boxes coming in at all different hours.’ And I said, ‘Did any- one point out to you—did all the people complaining about it point out to you, you actually did better in Detroit than you did last time? I mean, there’s no indication of fraud in Detroit.’”111 

Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (12/27/20):
“The President then continued, there are ‘more votes than voters...’. But I was aware of that allegation, and I said, you know, that was just a matter of them ‘comparing the 2020 votes cast to 2016 registration numbers.’ That is ‘not a valid complaint.’”113 

Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (1/3/21):
“[W]e would say to him, you know, ‘We checked that out, and there’s nothing to it. . . . And we would cite to certain allegations. And so—like such as Pennsylvania, right. ‘No, there were not 250,000 more votes reported than were actually cast. That’s not true.’ So we would say things like that.”115 

President Trump one day later (12/2/20):
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, voter fraud. Here’s an example. This is Michigan. At 6:31 in the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror. . . . In Detroit everybody saw the tremendous conflict . . . there were more votes than there were voters.”112 

President Trump ten days later (1/6/21): “More votes than they had voters. And many other States also.”114

President Trump three days later (1/6/21):
“In Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters. And the number is actually much greater than that now. That was as of a week ago. And this is a mathematical impossibility unless you want to say it’s a total fraud.”116 

GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “[I]t’s 4,502 who voted, but they weren’t on the voter registration roll, which they had to be. You had 18,325 vacant address voters. The ad- dress was vacant, and they’re not allowed to be counted. That’s 18,325.” . . . 

[Raffensperger]: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.” 117 

GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.” . . . 

[Raffensperger]: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong.”119 

GA Sec. State General Counsel Ryan Germany (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “You had out-of-state voters. They voted in Georgia, but they were from out of state, of 4,925.” . . . [Ger- many]: “Every one we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately.” . . . “They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”121 

President Trump two days later (1/4/21):
“4,502 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who do not appear on the state’s voter rolls. Well, that’s sort of strange. 18,325 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who registered to vote using an address listed as vacant according to the postal service.” 118 

President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“[T]he number of fraudulent ballots that we've identified across the state is staggering. Over 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election.”120 

President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“And at least 15,000 ballots were cast by individuals who moved out of the state prior to November 3rd election. They say they moved right back.”122 

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (n.d.):
“[T]he one specific I remember referencing was I don’t agree with the Dominion track.” . . . “I specifically referenced waving him off of the Dominion theory earlier in my testimony.” . . . [Q] “Are you saying you think he still continued to tweet that after you  waved him off of it?” [A] “Yeah . . .”123 

Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller:
“...the international allegations for Dominion were not valid.” 

[Q] “Okay. Did anybody communicate that to the President?”
[A]: “I know that that was—I know that was communicated. I know I communicated it”125 

Attorney General Barr (11/23/20): 

“I specifically raised the Dominion voting machines, which I found to be one of the most disturbing allegations— ‘disturbing’ in the sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations . . . I told him that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that and it was doing great, great disservice to the country.”127 

Attorney General Barr (12/1/20): 

“I explained, I said, look, if you have a machine and it counts 500 votes for Biden and 500 votes for Trump, and then you go back later and you have a—you will have the 1,000 pieces of paper put through that machine, and you can see if there’s any discrepancy . . . there has been no discrepancy.”129 

President Trump: 

Between mid-November and January 5, 2021, President Trump tweeted or retweeted conspiracy theories about Dominion nearly three dozen times.124 

President Trump: 

“You have Dominion, which is very, very suspect to start off with. Nobody knows the ownership. People say the votes are counted in foreign countries and much worse...”126 

President Trump three days later (11/26/20):
“[T]hose machines are fixed, they’re rigged. You can press Trump and the vote goes to Biden. . . . All you have to do is play with a chip, and they played with a chip, especially in Wayne County and Detroit.”128 

President Trump one day later (12/2/20):
“In one Michigan County, as an example, that used Dominion systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched from Trump to Biden, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what we caught. How many didn’t we catch?”130 

Attorney General Barr (12/14/20): “‘I will, Mr. President. But there are a couple of things,’ I responded. ‘My understanding is that our experts have looked at the Antrim situation and are sure it was a human error that did not occur anywhere else. And, in any event, Antrim is doing a hand recount of the paper ballots, so we should know in a couple of days whether there is any real problem with the machines.’”131 

Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen (12/15/20):
“[O]ther people were telling him there was fraud, you know, corruption in the election. The voting machines were no good. And we were telling him that is inconsistent, by ‘we,’ I mean Richard Donoghue and myself, that that was not what we were seeing.” . . . “There was this open issue as to the Michigan report. And—I think it was Mr. Cuccinelli, not certain, but had indicated that there was a hand recount. And I think he said, ‘That's the gold standard.’”133 

National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien (12/18/20):
“I got a call from, I think, Molly Michael in outer oval, the President’s assistant, and she said, ‘I’m connecting you to the Oval’ . . . somebody asked me, was there—did I have any evidence of election fraud in the voting machines or foreign interference in our voting machines. And I said, no, we’ve looked into that and there’s no evidence of it.”135 

President Trump one day later (12/15/20):
“This is BIG NEWS. Dominion Voting Machines are a disaster all over the Country. Changed the results of a landslide election. Can’t let this happen. . . .”132 

President Trump one day later (12/16/20):
“ ‘Study: Dominion Machines shifted 2-3% of Trump Votes to Biden. Far more votes than needed to sway election.’ Florida, Ohio, Texas and many other states were won by even greater margins than projected. Did just as well with Swing States, but bad things happened. @OANN”134 

President Trump one day later (12/19/20):
“. . . There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI- _Ratcliffe @SecPompeo”136  

Acting Deputy AG Richard Donoghue (12/31/20):
“We definitely talked about Antrim County again. That was sort of done at that point, because the hand recount had been done and all of that. But we cited back to that to say, you know, this is an example of what people are telling you and what’s being filed in some of these court filings that are just not supported by the evidence.”137 

GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
“I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion machines. Because we did a hand re-tally, a 100 percent re-tally of all the ballots, and compared them to what the machines said and came up with virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result.”139 

President Trump two days later (1/2/21):
“Well, Brad. Not that there’s not an issue, because we have a big issue with Dominion in other states and perhaps in yours. . . . in other states, we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines, but we’ll have to see.” . . . “I won’t give Dominion a pass because we found too many bad things.”138 

President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“In addition, there is the highly troubling matter of Dominion Voting Systems. In one Michigan county alone, 6,000 votes were switched from Trump to Biden and the same systems are used in the majority of states in our country.” . . . “There is clear evidence that tens of thousands of votes were switched from President Trump to former Vice President Biden in several counties in Georgia.”140 

 

Evidence gathered by the Committee indicates that President Trump raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising efforts between the election and January 6th.141 Those solicitations persistently claimed and referred to election fraud that did not exist. 

 

As January 6th approached, John Eastman and others devised a plan whereby Vice President Pence would, as the presiding officer, declare that certain electoral votes from certain States could not be counted at the joint session.148 John Eastman knew before proposing this plan that it was not legal. Indeed, in a pre-election document discussing Congress’s counting of electoral votes, Dr. Eastman specifically disagreed with a col- league’s proposed argument that the Vice President had the power to choose which envelopes to “open” and which votes to “count.” Dr. Eastman wrote: 

 

I don’t agree with this. The 12th Amendment only says that the President of the Senate opens the ballots in the joint session then, in the passive voice, that the votes shall then be counted. 3 USC § 12 [of the Electoral Count Act] says merely that he is the presiding officer, and then it spells out specific procedures, presumptions, and default rules for which slates will be counted. Nowhere does it suggest that the president of the Senate gets to make the determi- nation on his own. § 15 [of the Electoral Count Act] doesn’t either.149 

 

Despite recognizing prior to the 2020 election that the Vice President had no power to refuse to count certain electoral votes, Eastman nevertheless drafted memoranda two months later proposing that Pence could do exactly that on January 6th—refuse to count certified electoral votes from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.150 

 

Even after Eastman proposed the theories in his December and January memoranda, he acknowledged in conversations with Vice President Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob that Pence could not lawfully do what his own memoranda proposed.152 Eastman admitted that the U.S. Supreme Court would unanimously reject his legal theory. “He [Eastman] had acknowledged that he would lose 9-0 at the Supreme Court.”153 Moreover, Eastman acknowledged to Jacob that he didn’t think Vice President Al Gore had that power in 2001, nor did he think Vice President Kamala Harris should have that power in 2025.154 

In testimony before the Select Committee, Jacob described in detail why the Trump plan for Pence was illegal: 

 

[T]he Vice President’s first instinct, when he heard this theory, was that there was no way that our Framers, who abhorred concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person—particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election—in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of the election. And our review of text, history, and, frankly, just common sense, all confirmed the Vice President’s first instinct on that point. There is no justifiable basis to conclude that the Vice President has that kind of authority.155 

 

This is how the Vice President later described his views in a public speech: 

 

I had no right to overturn the election. The Presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American President. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election.156 

 

But as January 6th approached, President Trump nevertheless embraced the new Eastman theories, and attempted to implement them. In a series of meetings and calls, President Trump attempted to pressure Pence to intervene on January 6th to prevent Congress from counting multiple States’ electoral votes for Joe Biden. At several points in the days before January 6th, President Trump was told directly that Vice President Pence could not legally do what Trump was asking. 

 

For example, at a January 4th meeting in the Oval Office, Eastman acknowledged that any variation of his proposal— whether rejecting electoral votes outright or delaying certification to send them back to the States—would violate several provisions of the Electoral Count Act. According to Greg Jacob: 

 

In the conversation in the Oval Office on the 4th, I had raised the fact that . . . [Eastman’s] preferred course had issues with the Electoral Count Act, which he had acknowledged was the case, that there would be an inconsistency with the Electoral Count Act].157 

Jacob recorded Eastman’s admission in an internal memo he drafted for Vice President Pence on the evening of January 4th: “Professor Eastman acknowledges that his proposal violates several provisions of statutory law.”158 And, during a phone call with President Trump and Eastman on the evening of January 5, 2021, Eastman again acknowledged that his proposal also would violate several provisions of the Electoral Count Act.

 

[W]e did have an in-depth discussion about [the Electoral Count Act] in the subsequent phone calls as I walked him through provision after provision on the recess and on the fact that . . . Congress- men and Senators are supposed to get to object and debate. And he acknowledged, one after another, that those provisions would—in order for us to send it back to the States, we couldn’t do those things as well. We can’t do a 10-day, send it back to the States, and honor an Electoral Count Act provision that says you can’t recess for more than one day and, once you get to the 5th, you have to stay continuously in session.159 

 

As Pence’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, testified that the Vice President also repeatedly informed President Trump that the Vice President’s role on January 6th was only ministerial. 

 

Contemporaneous written correspondence also confirms both that: (1) Eastman himself recognized Pence could not lawfully refuse to count electoral votes, and (2) President Trump also knew this. While sheltering in a loading dock with the Vice President during the violent January 6th attack, Greg Jacob asked Eastman in an email, “Did you advise the President that in your professional judgment the Vice President DOES NOT have the power to decide things unilaterally?” Eastman’s response stated that the President had “been so advised,” but then indicated that President Trump continued to pressure the Vice President to act illegally: “But you know him—once he gets something in his head, it is hard to get him to change course.”164 

 

The pressure began before the January 4th Oval Office meeting with Pence, Eastman, Jacob, Short and Trump, but became even more intense thereafter. On the evening of January 5, 2021, the New York Times published an article reporting that “Vice President Mike Pence told President Trump on Tuesday that he did not believe he had the power to block congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s victory in the Presidential election despite President Trump’s baseless insistence that he did.”174 

 

This reporting was correct—both as to the Vice President’s power and as to Vice President Pence having informed President Trump that he did not have the authority to change the outcome of the election. But in response to that story, late in the evening before the January 6th joint session, President Trump dictated to Jason Miller a statement falsely asserting, “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”175 This statement was released at President Trump’s direction and was false.176 

 

Thereafter, Trump continued to apply public pressure in a series of tweets. At 1:00 a.m. on January 6th,

 “[i]f Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!”177 

 

At 8:17 a.m. on January 6th, he tweeted again: 

 

“States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”178 

 

President Trump tried to reach the Vice President early in the morning of January 6th, but the Vice President did not take the call. The President finally reached the Vice President later that morning, shouting from the Oval Office to his assistants to “get the Vice President on the phone.”179 After again telling the Vice President that he had “the legal authority to send [electoral votes] back to the respective states,” President Trump grew very heated.180 

 

Witnesses in Committee said that the President called Vice President Pence a “wimp,”181 told him it would be “a political career killer” to certify the lawful electoral votes electing President Biden,182 and accused him of “not [being] tough enough to make the call.”183 As Ivanka Trump would recount to her chief of staff moments later, her father called the Vice President “the p-word” for refusing to overturn the election.184 

 

In response, Vice President Pence again refused to take any action other than counting the lawfully certified electoral votes of the States. But President Trump was angry and undeterred. After the conclusion of this call, he edited his speech for the Ell Earlier that morning, Eric Herschmann had tried to remove the reference to Vice President Pence from the speech. As he told speechwriter Stephen Miller, he “didn’t concur with the legal analysis” that John Eastman had advanced and believed it “wouldn’t advance the ball” to discuss it publicly.186 But after the call with Vice President Pence, speechwriters were instructed to reinsert the line. Although the final written draft of his speech referred to Pence just once—a line President Trump didn’t end up reading187—the President went off-script five different times to pressure the Vice President: 

 

·      “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” Trump first told the crowd.188 

·      “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us,” Trump later said, “and if he doesn’t, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our Constitution.”189 

·      Addressing Pence directly, Trump told the assembled crowd: “Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country.” Trump said at another point, “And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I’m not hearing good stories.”190 

·      “So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to,” Trump said.191 

These statements to the assembled crowd at the Ellipse had Trump’s intended effect—they produced substantial anger against Pence. When Pence released a statement confirming that he would not act to prevent Congress from counting electoral votes, the crowd’s reaction was harshly negative. 

 

·      “I’m telling you what, I’m hearing that Pence—hearing the Pence just caved. No. Is that true? I didn’t hear it. I’m hear — I’m hearing reports that Pence caved. No way. I’m telling you, if Pence caved, we’re going to drag motherfuckers through the streets. You fucking politicians are going to get fucking drug through the streets.”192 

·      Pence voted against Trump. [Interviewer: “Ok. And that’s when all this started?”] Yup. That’s when we marched on the Capitol. 193

·      “We just heard that Mike Pence is not going to reject any fraudulent electoral votes. [Other speaker: “Boo. You’re a traitor!”] That's right. You’ve heard it here first. Mike Pence has betrayed the United States of America. [Other speaker: “Fuck you, Mike Pence!”] Mike Pence has betrayed this President and he has betrayed the people of the United States and we will never, ever forget.” [Cheers]194 

·      “This woman cames [sic] up to the side of us and she says Pence folded. So it was kind of, like, Ok, well — in my mind I was think- ing, well that’s it. You know. Well, my son-in-law looks at me and he says I want to go in.”195 

·      “[Q] “What percentage of the crowd is going to the Capitol?” [A] [Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins]: “One hundred percent. It has, it has spread like wildfire that Pence has betrayed us, and everybody’s marching on the Capitol. All million of us. it’s insane.”196 

·      “Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence.”197 

·      “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.”198 

 

Once Trump returned to the White House, he was informed almost immediately that violence and lawlessness had broken out at the Capitol among his supporters.199 At 2:24 p.m., President Trump applied yet further pressure to Pence, posting a tweet accusing Vice President Mike Pence of cowardice for not using his role as President of the Senate to change the outcome of the election:

 

 “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”200 

 

Almost immediately thereafter, the crowd around the Capitol surged, and more individuals joined the effort to con- front police and break further into the building. 

 

The sentiment expressed in President Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet, already present in the crowd, only grew more powerful as the President’s words spread. Timothy Hale-Cusanelli—a white supremacist who expressed Nazi sympathies—heard about the tweet while in the Crypt around 2:25 p.m., and he, according to the Department of Justice, “knew what that meant.” Vice President Pence had decided not to keep President Trump in power.201 Other rioters described what happened next as follows: 

 

·      Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like officially, the crowd went crazy. I mean, it became a mob. We crossed the gate.202 

·      Then we heard the news on [P]ence . . . And lost it . . . So we stormed.203 

·      They’re making an announcement right now saying if Pence betrays us you better get your mind right because we’re storming that building.204 

 

Minutes after the tweet—at 2:35 p.m.—rioters continued their surge and broke a security line of the DC Metropolitan Police Department, resulting in the first fighting withdrawal in the history of that force.205 

 

President Trump issued this tweet after he had falsely claimed to the angry crowd that Vice President Mike Pence could “do the right thing” and ensure a second Trump term, after that angry crowd had turned into a violent mob assaulting the Capitol while chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”206 and after the U.S. Secret Service had evacuated the Vice President from the Senate floor.207 

 

One minute after the President’s tweet, at 2:25 p.m., the Secret Service determined they could no longer protect the Vice President in his ceremonial office near the Senate Chamber, and evacuated the Vice President and his family to a secure location, missing the violent mob by a mere 40 feet.208 

 

Further evidence presented at our hearing shows the violent reaction following President Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet and the efforts to protect Vice President Pence in the time that followed.209 

 

The day after the attack on the Capitol, Eastman called Eric Herschmann to talk about continuing litigation on behalf of the Trump Presidential Campaign in Georgia. Herschmann described his reaction to Eastman this way: 

 

And I said to him, are you out of your F'ing mind? Right? I said, because I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: Orderly transition. I said, I don't want to hear any other F'ing words coming out of your mouth, no matter what, other than orderly transition. Repeat those words to me.”210 

 

Herschmann concluded the call by telling Eastman: “Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life. Get a great F’ing criminal defense lawyer, you’re going to need it,” and hanging up the phone.211 

 

During a January 2, 2021, call, President Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.” During that call, President Trump asserted conspiracy theories about the election that Department of Justice officials had already debunked. President Trump also made a thinly veiled threat to Raffensperger and his attorney about his failure to respond to President Trump’s demands: “That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense . . . That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer . . . I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen.”239 

 

Mr. Raffensperger debunked the President’s allegations “point by point” and explained that “the data you have is wrong;” however, President Trump still told him, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.”240 

 

That call to Raffensperger came on the heels of President Trump’s repeated attacks on Raffensperger, election workers, and other public servants about President Trump’s loss in the election. A month earlier, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Chief Operating Officer, Gabriel Sterling, had given this explicit public warning to President Trump and his team, a warning that the Select Committee has determined President Trump apparently saw and disregarded:242 

 

[I]t has all gone too far. All of it. . . .  A 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose put out, saying he should be hung for treason because he was transferring a report on batches from an EMS to a county computer so he could read it. It has to stop. 

 

Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop. We need you to step up. And if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some. 

 

My boss, Secretary Raffensperger—his address is out there. They have people doing caravans in front of their house, they’ve had people come onto their property. Tricia, his wife of 40 years, is get- ting sexualized threats through her cellphone. 

 

It has to stop. This is elections,this is the backbone of democracy, and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. It’s too much.... What you don’t have the ability to do—and you need to step up and say this—is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. 

 

Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.243 

 

The stark warning was entirely appropriate, and prescient. In addition to the examples Sterling identified, President Trump and his team were also fixated on Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. He and Giuliani mentioned Freeman repeatedly in meetings with State legislators, at public rallies, and in the January 2nd call with Raffensperger. Referring to a video clip, Giuliani even accused Freeman and Moss of trading USB drives to affect votes “as if they [were] vials of heroin or cocaine.”244 This was completely bogus: it was not a USB drive; it was a ginger mint.245 

 

After their contact information was published, Trump supporters sent hundreds of threats to the women and even showed up at Freeman’s home.246 As Freeman testified to the Select Committee, Trump and his followers’ conduct had a profound impact on her life. She left her home based on advice from the FBI, and wouldn’t move back for months.247 And she explained,

 

 “I’ve lost my sense of security—all because a group of people, starting with Number 45 [Donald Trump] and his ally Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye to push their own lies about how the Presidential election was stolen.”248 

 

The treatment of Freeman and Moss was callous, inhumane, and inexcusable. Rudolph Giuliani and others with responsibility should be held accountable. 

 

In Michigan, President Trump focused on Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield. He invited them to the White House for a November 20, 2020, meeting during which President Trump and Giuliani, who joined by phone, went through a “litany” of false allegations about supposed fraud in Michigan’s election.255 Chatfield recalled President Trump’s more generic directive for the group to “have some backbone and do the right thing,” which he understood to mean overturning the election by naming Michigan’s Electoral College electors for President Trump.256 Shirkey told President Trump that he wouldn’t do anything that would violate Michigan law,257 and after the meeting ended, issued a joint statement with Chatfield: 

 

“We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election.”258 

 

When President Trump couldn’t convince Shirkey and Chatfield to change the outcome of the election in Michigan during that meeting or in calls after, he or his team maliciously tweeted out Shirkey’s personal cell phone number and a number for Chatfield that turned out to be wrong.259 Shirkey received nearly 4,000 text messages after that, and another private citizen reported being inundated with calls and texts intended for Chatfield.260 

 

At one point during the December 27th call in which Donoghue refuted President Trump’s fraud allegations, Donoghue recorded in handwritten notes a request President Trump made specifically to him and Acting Attorney General Rosen: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.”274 Donoghue explained: “[T]he Department had zero involvement in anyone’s political strategy,” and “he wanted us to say that it was corrupt.”275 “We told him we were not going to do that.” 

 

President Trump’s closest aides knew about the political power of sites like thedonald.win, which is where much of this violent rhetoric and planning happened. On December 30, 2020, Jason Miller—a Senior Adviser to and former spokesman for the former President—texted Chief of Staff Mark Meadows a link to the thedonald.win, adding, “I got the base FIRED UP.”400 The link connected to a page with comments like “Gallows don’t require electricity,” “if the filthy commie maggots try to push their fraud through, there will be hell to pay,” and Congress can certify Trump the winner or leave “in a bodybag.”401 Symbolic gallows were constructed on January 6th at the foot of the Capitol.402 

 

After President Trump’s signal, his supporters did not hide their plans for violence at the Capitol, and those threats made their way to national and local law enforcement agencies. As described in this report, the intelligence agencies did detect this planning, and they shared it with the White House and with the U.S. Secret Service. 

 

Testimony from White House staff also suggests real concerns about the risk of violence as January 6th approached. Cassidy Hutchinson, for example, testified about a conversation she had with her boss, Mark Meadows, on January 2nd: 

 

I went into Mark’s office, and he was still on his phone . . . . I said to Mark, “Rudy [Giuliani] said these things to me. What’s going on here? Anything I should know about?” 

This was—he was, like, looking at his phone. He was like, “Oh, it’s all about the rally on Wednesday. Isn’t that what he was talking to you about?” 

I said, “Yeah. Yeah, sounds like we’re going to the Capitol.” 

He said, “Yeah. Are you talking with Tony?”

“I’m having a conversation, sir.” 

He said—still looking at his phone. I remember he was scrolling. He was like, “Yeah. You know, things might get real, real bad on the 6th.” 

And I remember saying to him, “What do you mean?” 

He was like, “I don’t know. There’s just going to be a lot of people here, and there’s a lot of different ideas right now. I’m not really sure of everything that’s going on. Let's just make sure we keep tabs on it.”403 

 

Hutchinson also testified about a conversation she had with Director of National Intelligence, Ratcliffe: 

 

He had expressed to me that he was concerned that it could spiral out of control and potentially be dangerous, either for our democracy or the way that things were going for the 6th.404 

 

Hope Hicks texted Trump Campaign spokesperson Hogan Gidley in the midst of the January 6th violence, explaining that she had “suggested . . . several times” on the preceding days (January 4th and January 5th) that President Trump publicly state that January 6th must remain peaceful and that he had refused her advice to do so.405 Her recollection was that Herschmann earlier advised President Trump to make a preemptive public statement in advance of January 6th calling for no violence that day.406 No such statement was made. 

 

On January 2, 2021, Katrina Pierson wrote in an email to fellow rally organizers, “POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the [E]llipse, and call on everyone to march to the Capitol.”410 And, on January 4, 2021, another rally organizer texted Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, that President Trump would “unexpectedly” call on his supporters to march to the Capitol: 

 

This stays only between us . . . . It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but POTUS is going to just call for it “unexpectedly.”411 

 

Testimony obtained by the Committee also indicates that President Trump was specifically aware that the crowd he had called to Washington was fired up and angry on the evening of January 5th. Judd Deere, a deputy White House press secretary recalled a conversation with President Trump in the Oval Office on the evening of January 5th: 

 

Judd Deere: I said he should focus on policy accomplishments. I didn’t mention the 2020 election. 

Committee Staff: Okay. What was his response? 

Deere: He acknowledged that and said, “We’ve had a lot,” something along those lines, but didn’t—he fairly quickly moved to how fired up the crowd is, or was going to be. 

Committee Staff: Okay. What did he say about it? 

Deere: Just that they were—they were fired up. They were angry. They feel like the election’s been stolen, that the election was rigged, that—he went on and on about that for a little bit.412 

 

Testimony indicated that President Trump was briefed on the risk of violence on the morning of the 6th before he left the White House. Cassidy Hutchinson provided this testimony: 

 

Vice Chair Cheney: So, Ms. Hutchinson, is it your understanding that Mr. Ornato told the President about weapons at the rally on the morning of January 6th? 

Hutchinson: That is what Mr. Ornato relayed to me.413 

 

The head of President Trump’s security detail, Bobby Engel, told the Select Committee that when he shared critical information with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato, it was a means of conveying that information with the Oval Office:

 

 “So, when it came to passing information to Mr. Ornato, I—my assumption was that it would get to the chief [of staff, Mark Meadows], or that he was sharing the information with the chief. I don’t—and the filtering process, or if the chief thinks it needs to get to the President, then he would share it with the President.”414 

 

Also, Engel confirmed that if “information would come to my attention, whether it was a protective intelligence issue or a concern or—primarily, I would—I would make sure that the information got filtered up through the appropriate chain usually through Mr. Ornato. So if I received a report on something that was happening in the DC area, I’d either forward that information to Mr. Ornato, or call him about that information or communicate in some way.”415 

 

The Select Committee also queried Deputy Chief of Staff Ornato this November about what he generally would have done in this sort of situation, asking him the following: 

 

“Generally you receive information about things like the groups that are coming, the stuff that we talked earlier. You would bring that to Mr. Meadows and likely did here, although you don’t have a specific recollection?”416 Ornato responded: “That is correct, sir.”417 Ornato also explained to the Committee that “... in my normal daily functions, in my general functions as my job, I would’ve had a conversation with him about all the groups coming in and what was expected from the secret service.”418 As for the morning of January 6th itself, he had the following answer: 

 

Committee Staff: Do you remember talking to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about any of your concerns about the threat landscape going into January 6th? 

Ornato: I don’t recall; however, in my position I would’ve made sure he was tracking the demos, which he received a daily brief, Presidential briefing. So he most likely was getting all this in his daily brief as well. I wouldn’t know what was in his intelligence brief that day, but I would’ve made sure that he was tracking these things and just mentioned, “Hey, are you tracking the demos?” If he gave me a “yeah”, I don’t recall it today, but I’m sure that was something that took place.419 

 

Hours before the Ellipse rally on January 6th, the fact that the assembled crowd was prepared for potential violence was widely known. In addition to intelligence reports indicating potential violence at the Capitol, weapons and other prohibited items were being seized by police on the streets and by Secret Service at the magnetometers for the Ellipse speech. Secret Service confiscated a haul of weapons from the 28,000 spectators who did pass through the magnetometers: 242 cannisters of pepper spray, 269 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items like scissors, needles, or screwdrivers.420 And thousands of others purposely remained outside the magnetometers, or left their packs outside.421 

 

Others brought firearms. Three men in fatigues from Broward County, Florida brandished AR-15s in front of Metropolitan police officers on 14th Street and Independence Avenue on the morning of January 6th.422 MPD advised over the radio that one individual was possibly armed with a “Glock” at 14th and Constitution Avenue, and another was possibly armed with a “rifle” at 15th and Constitution Avenue around 11:23 a.m.423 The National Park Service detained an individual with a rifle between 12 and 1 p.m.424 

 

Almost all of this was known before Donald Trump took the stage at the Ellipse. 

By the time President Trump was preparing to give his speech, he and his advisors knew enough to cancel the rally. And he certainly knew enough to cancel any plans for a march to the Capitol. According to testimony obtained by the Select Committee, President Trump knew that elements of the crowd were armed, and had prohibited items, and that many thousands would not pass through the magnetometers for that reason. Testimony indicates that the President had received an earlier security briefing, and testimony indicates that the Secret Service mentioned the prohibited items again as they drove President Trump to the Ellipse. 

 

Cassidy Hutchinson was with the President backstage. Her contemporaneous text messages indicate that President Trump was “effing furious” about the fact that a large number of his supporters would not go through the magnetometers: 

 

Cassidy Hutchinson: But the crowd looks good from this vanish [sic] point. As long as we get the shot. He was fucking furious.

Tony Ornato: He doesn’t get it that the people on the monument side don’t want to come in. They can see from there and don’t want to come in. They can see from there and don’t have to go through mags. With 30k magged inside. 

Cassidy Hutchinson: That’s what was relayed several times and in different iterations.

Poor max got chewed out. He also kept mentioning [an off the record trip] to Capitol before he took the stage.

Tony Ornato: Bobby will tell him no. It’s not safe to do. No assets available to safely do it.425 

 

And Hutchinson described what President Trump said as he prepared to take the stage: 

 

When we were in the off-stage announce area tent behind the stage, he was very concerned about the shot. Meaning the photograph that we would get because the rally space wasn’t full. One of the reasons, which I’ve previously stated, was because he wanted it to be full and for people to not feel excluded because they had come far to watch him at the rally. And he felt the mags were at fault for not letting everybody in, but another leading reason and likely the primary reasons is because he wanted it full and he was angry that we weren’t letting people through the mags with weapons—what the Secret Service deemed as weapons, and are, are weapons. But when we were in the off-stage announce tent, I was a part of a conversation, I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the President say something to the effect of, “I don’t F’ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the F’ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the F’ing mags away.”426 

 

Although President Trump and his advisors knew of the risk of violence, and knew specifically that elements of the crowd were angry and some were armed, from intelligence and law enforcement reports that morning, President Trump nevertheless went forward with the rally, and then specifically instructed the crowd to march to the Capitol: 

 

“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”429 

 

Much of President Trump’s speech was improvised. Even before his improvisation, during the review of President Trump’s prepared remarks, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann specifically requested that “if there were any factual allegations, someone needed to independently validate or verify the statements.”430 And in the days just before January 6th, Herschmann “chewed out” John Eastman and told him he was “out of [his] F’ing mind” to argue that the Vice President could be the sole decision-maker as to who becomes the next President.431 Herschmann told us, “I so berated him that I believed that theory would not go forward.”432 But President Trump made that very argument during his speech at the Ellipse and made many false statements. Herschmann attended that speech, but walked out during the middle of it.433 

 

President Trump’s speech to the crowd that day lasted more than an hour. The speech walked through dozens of known falsehoods about purported election fraud. And Trump again made false and malicious claims about Dominion voting systems.434 As discussed earlier, he again pressured Mike Pence to refuse to count lawful electoral votes, going off script repeatedly, leading the crowd to believe falsely that Pence could and would alter the election outcome: 

 

And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: “Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.” And then we’re stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen . . . . When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”435 

 

This characterization of Vice President Pence’s decision had a direct impact on those who marched to and approached the Capitol, as illustrated by this testimony from a person convicted of crimes committed on January 6th: 

 

So this woman came up to the side of us, and she, says, Pence folded. So it was kind of, like, okay. Well, in my mind I was thinking, ”Well, that’s it, you know.” Well, my son-in-law looks at me, and he says, ”I want to go in.”436 

Trump used the word “peacefully,” written by speech writers, one time. But he delivered many other scripted and unscripted comments that conveyed a very different message: 

 

Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. . . . And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore . . . .437 

 

Trump also was not the only rally speaker to do these things. Giuliani, for instance, also said, “Let’s have trial by combat.”438 Likewise, Eastman used his two minutes on the Ellipse stage to make a claim already known to be false—that corrupted voted machines stole the election.439 

 

Another criminal defendant—charged with assaulting an officer with a flagpole and other crimes—explained in an interview why he went to the Capitol and fought: 

 

Dale Huttle: We were not there illegally, we were invited there by the President himself. . . . Trump’s backers had been told that the election had been stolen. . . . 

Reporter Megan Hickey: But do you think he encouraged violence? 

Dale Huttle: Well, I sat there, or stood there, with half a million people listening to his speech. And in that speech, both Giuliani and [Trump] said we were going to have to fight like hell to save our country. Now, whether it was a figure of speech or not—it wasn’t taken that way. 

Reporter Megan Hickey: You didn’t take it as a figure of speech? 

Dale Huttle: No.445 

 

President Trump concluded his speech at 1:10 p.m. Among other statements from the Ellipse podium, President Trump informed the crowd that he would be marching to the Capitol with them: 

 

Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.446 

 

Hutchinson testified that she first became aware of President Trump’s plans to attend Congress’s session to count votes on or about January 2nd. She learned this from a conversation with Giuliani: 

 

“It’s going to be great. The President’s going to be there. He’s going to look powerful. He’s—he’s going to be with the members. He’s going to be with the Senators.”447 

 

Evidence also indicates that multiple members of the White House staff, including White House lawyers, were concerned about the President’s apparent intentions to go to the Capitol.448 

 

After he exited the stage, President Trump entered the Presidential SUV and forcefully expressed his intention that Bobby Engel, the head of his Secret Service detail, direct the motorcade to the Capitol. The Committee has now obtained evidence from several sources about a “furious interaction” in the SUV. The vast majority of witnesses who have testified before the Select Committee about this topic, including multiple members of the Secret Service, a member of the Metropolitan police, and national security and military officials in the White House, described President Trump’s behavior as “irate,” “furious,” “insistent,” “profane” and “heated.” 

 

From the outset of the violence and for several hours that followed, people at the Capitol, people inside President Trump’s Administration, elected officials of both parties, members of President Trump’s family, and Fox News commentators sympathetic to President Trump all tried to contact him to urge him to do one singular thing—one thing that all of these people immediately understood was required: Instruct his supporters to stand down and disperse—to leave the Capitol. 

 

As the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates, President Trump specifically and repeatedly refused to do so—for multiple hours—while the mayhem ensued. Chapter 8 of this report explains in meticulous detail the horrific nature of the violence taking place, that was directed at law enforcement officers at the Capitol and that put the lives of American lawmakers at risk. 

 

Yet in spite of this, President Trump watched the violence on television from a dining room adjacent to the Oval Office, calling Senators to urge them to help him delay the electoral count, but refusing to supply the specific help that everyone knew was unequivocally required. As this report shows, when Trump finally did make such a statement at 4:17 p.m.— after hours of violence—the statement immediately had the expected effect; the rioters began to disperse immediately and leave the Capitol.457 

 

No photographs exist of the President for the remainder of the afternoon until after 4 p.m. President Trump appears to have instructed that the White House photographer was not to take any photographs.462 The Select Committee also was unable to locate any official records of President Trump’s telephone calls that afternoon.463 And the President’s official Daily Diary contains no information for this afternoon between the hours of 1:19 p.m. and 4:03 p.m., at the height of the worst attack on the seat of the United States Congress in over two centuries.464 

 

At 1:49 p.m., just as the DC Metropolitan Police officially declared a riot and the Capitol Police were calling for help from the National Guard to address the crisis, President Trump sent a tweet with a link to a recording of his speech at the Ellipse.471 

 

At about that point, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone became aware of the Capitol riot. The Committee collected sworn testimony from several White House officials, each with similar accounts. The President’s White House Counsel Pat Cipollone testified that he raced downstairs, and went to the Oval Office Dining Room as soon as he learned about the violence at the Capitol—likely just around or just after 2 p.m. Cipollone knew immediately that the President had to deliver a message to the rioters—asking them to leave the Capitol. Here is how he described this series of events: 

 

. . . the first time I remember going downstairs was when people had breached the Capitol... But I went down with [Deputy White House Counsel] Pat [Philbin], and I remember we were both very upset about what was happening. And we both wanted, you know, action to be taken related to that . . . But we went down to the Oval Office, we went through the Oval office, and we went to the back where the President was. . . . I think he was already in the dining room . . . I can’t talk about conversations [with the President]. I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response, statement, public statement, that people need to leave the Capitol now.472 

 

Cipollone also left little doubt that virtually everyone among senior White House staff had the same view: 

 

There were a lot of people in the White House that day . . . Senior people who, you know, felt the same way that I did and who were working very hard to achieve that result. There were—I think Ivanka was one of them. And Eric Herschmann was there, Pat Philbin was there, and a number of other people . . . . many people suggested it. . . . Many people felt the same way. I’m sure I had conversations with Mark [Meadows] about this during the course of the day and expressed my opinion very forcefully that this needs to be done.473 

 

Likewise, senior staff cooperated to produce a message for the President on a notecard, which read: ANYONE WHO ENTERED THE CAPITOL ILLEGALLY WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORITY SHOULD LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.474 

 

The President declined to make the statement. Cipollone also made it clear that the advice they were giving to the President never changed throughout this three-hour period. Trump refused to do what was necessary. 

 

Committee Staff: [I]t sounds like you from the very onset of violence at the Capitol right around 2 o’clock were pushing for a strong statement that people should leave the Capitol. Is that right? 

Cipollone: I was, and others were as well.475 

 

Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked closely with Mark Meadows and sat directly outside his office, confirmed this account and described several additional details: 

 

I see Pat Cipollone barreling down the hallway towards our office. And he rushed right in, looked at me, said, “Is Mark in his office?” And I said, “Yes.” And on a normal day he would’ve said, “Can I pop in,” or, “Is he talking to anyone,” or, “Is it an appropriate time for me to go chat with him,” and myself or Eliza would go let him in or tell him no. But after I had said yes, he just looked at me and started shaking his head and went over, opened Mark’s office door, stood there with the door propped open, and said something to the—Mark was still sitting on his phone. I remember, like, glancing in. He was still sitting on his phone. 

 

And I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, “The rioters have gotten to the Capitol, Mark. We need to go down and see the President now.” And Mark looked up at him and said, “He doesn't want to do anything, Pat.” And Pat said something to the effect of—and very clearly said this to Mark—something to the effect of, “Mark, something needs to be done, or people are going to die and the blood’s gonna be on your F’ing hands. This is getting out of control. I’m going down there.476 

 

The Select Committee believes that the entire White House senior staff was in favor of a Presidential statement specifically instructing the violent rioters to leave. But President Trump refused. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone answered certain questions from the Select Committee on this subject as follows: 

 

Vice Chair Cheney: And when you talk about others on the staff thinking more should be done, or thinking that the President needed to tell people to go home, who would you put in that category? 

Cipollone: Well, I would put . . . Pat Philbin, Eric Herschmann. Over- all, Mark Meadows, Ivanka. Once Jared got there, Jared. General Kellogg. I’m probably missing some, but those are—Kayleigh I think was there. But I don’t—Dan Scavino. 

Vice Chair Cheney: And who on the staff did not want people to leave the Capitol?” 

Cipollone: On the staff?
Vice Chair Cheney: In the White House? 

Cipollone: I can’t think of anybody on that day who didn’t want people to get out of the Capitol once the—particularly once the violence started. No. I mean— 

Mr. Schiff: What about the President? 

Vice Chair Cheney: Yeah.... 

[Consultation between Mr. Cipollone and his counsel.] 

Cipollone: Yeah. I can’t reveal communications. But obviously I think, you know—yeah.477 

 

At 2:13 p.m., rioters broke into the Capitol and flooded the building.482 

As the violence began to escalate, many Trump supporters and others outside the White House began urgently seeking his intervention. Mark Meadows’s phone was flooded with text messages. These are just some of them: 

 

·      2:32 p.m. from Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham: “Hey Mark, The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home.”483 

·      2:35 p.m. from Mick Mulvaney: “Mark: he needs to stop this, now. Can I do anything to help?”484 

·      2:46 p.m. from Rep. William Timmons (R–SC): “The president needs to stop this ASAP”485 

·      2:53 p.m. from Donald Trump, Jr.: “He’s got to condem [sic] this shit. Asap. The captiol [sic] police tweet is not enough.”486 

·      3:04 p.m. from Rep. Jeff Duncan (R–SC): “POTUS needs to calm this shit down”487 

·      3:09 p.m. from former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus: “TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!”488 

·      3:13 p.m. from Alyssa Farah Griffin: “Potus has to come out firmly and tell protestors to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed.”489 

·      3:15 p.m. from Rep. Chip Roy (R–TX): “Fix this now.”490 

·      3:31 p.m. from Fox News anchor Sean Hannity: “Can he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to peacefully leave the capital [sic]”491 

·      3:58 p.m. from Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade: “Please get him on tv. Destroying every thing you guys have accomplished”492 

 

Others on Capitol Hill appeared in the media, or otherwise appeared via internet. Representative Mike Gallagher (R–WI) issued a video appealing directly to the President:

 

Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is over. Call it off!493 

 

Some Members of Congress sent texts to President Trump’s immediate staff or took to Twitter, where they knew the President spent time: 

 

·      Sen. Bill Cassidy (R–LA) issued a tweet: @realDonaldTrump please appear on TV, condemn the violence and tell people to disband.494 

·      Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R–WA) sent a text to Mark Meadows: We need to hear from the president. On TV. I hate that Biden jumped him on it.495 

·        Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy tried repeatedly to reach President Trump, and did at least once. He also reached out for help to multiple members of President Trump’s family, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.496 

 

Kushner characterized Leader McCarthy’s demeanor on the call as “scared”: 

 

Kushner: I could hear in his voice that he really was nervous, and so, obviously, I took that seriously. And, you know, I didn’t know if I’d be able to have any impact, but I said, you know, it’s better to at least try. And so I—like I said, I turned the shower off, threw on a suit, and, you know, and rushed into the White House as quickly as I could. 

Committee Staff: Yeah. What did he ask you to do? When you say have an impact, what is it specifically that he needed your help with? 

Kushner: I don't recall a specific ask, just anything you could do. Again, I got the sense that, you know, they were—they were—you know, they were scared. 

Committee Staff: “They” meaning Leader McCarthy and people on the Hill because of the violence? 

Kushner: That he was scared, yes.497 

Kevin McCarthy told Fox News at 3:09 p.m. about his call with the President498 and elaborated about its contents in a conversation with CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell at around 3:30 p.m.: 

 

O’Donnell: Have you spoken with the President and asked him to perhaps come to the Capitol and tell his supporters it’s time to leave? 

Leader McCarthy: I have spoken to the President. I asked him to talk to the nation and tell them to stop this. . . . 

O’Donnell: The President invited tens of thousands of people to quote unquote stop the steal. I don’t know if you heard his more- than-hour-long remarks or the remarks of his son, who was the wind-up. It was some heated stuff, Leader McCarthy. I just wonder whether someone is going to accurately call a spade a spade, and I am giving you the opportunity right now that your precious and beloved United States Capitol and our democracy is witnessing this. Call a spade a spade. 

Leader McCarthy: I was very clear with the President when I called him. This has to stop. And he has to, he’s gotta go to the American public and tell them to stop this. 

O’Donnell: Leader McCarthy, the President of the United States has a briefing room steps from the Oval Office. It is, the cameras are hot 24/7, as you know. Why hasn’t he walked down and said that, now? 

Leader McCarthy: I conveyed to the President what I think is best to do, and I’m hopeful the President will do it.499 

 

The Committee has evidence from multiple sources regarding the content of Kevin McCarthy’s direct conversation with Donald Trump during the violence. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R–WA), to whom McCarthy spoke soon after, relayed more of the conversation between McCarthy and President Trump: 

 

And he said [to President Trump], “You have got to get on TV. You’ve got to get on Twitter. You’ve got to call these people off.” You know what the President said to him? This is as it’s happening. He said, “Well Kevin, these aren’t my people. You know, these are Antifa. And Kevin responded and said, “No, they’re your people. They literally just came through my office windows and my staff are running for cover. I mean they’re running for their lives. You need to call them off.” And the President’s response to Kevin to me was chilling. He said, “Well Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election, you know, theft than you are”.500 

 

Rep. Herrera Beutler’s account of the incident was also corroborated by former Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who testified that Leader McCarthy told him several days later that President Trump had said during their call: “Kevin, maybe these people are just more angry about this than you are. Maybe they’re more upset.”501 

At 2:16 p.m., security records indicate that the Vice President was “being pulled” to a safer location.507 

 

In an interview with the Select Committee, a White House Security Official on duty at the White House explained his observations as he listened to Secret Service communications and made contemporaneous entries into a security log. In particular, he explained an entry he made at 2:24 p.m.: 

 

Committee Staff: Ok. That last entry on this page is: “Service at the Capitol does not sound good right now.” 

Official: Correct.
Committee Staff: What does that mean? 

Official: The members of the VP detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There were a lot of—there was a lot of yelling, a lot of—I don’t know—a lot [of] very personal calls over the radio. So—it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say good-bye to family members, so on and so forth. It was getting—for whatever the reason was on the ground, the VP detail thought that this was about to get very ugly. 

Committee Staff: And did you hear that over the radio? Official: Correct.

Committee Staff: ... obviously, you’ve conveyed that’s disturbing, but what prompted you to put it into an entry as it states there, “Service at the Capitol—” 

Official: That they’re running out of options, and they’re getting nervous. It sounds like that we came very close to either Service having to use lethal options or worse. At that point, I don’t know. Is the VP compromised? Is the detail—like, I don’t know. Like, we didn’t have visibility, but it doesn’t—if they’re screaming and saying things, like, say good-bye to the family, like, the floor needs to know this is going to a whole another level soon.508 

 

Also at 2:24 p.m., knowing the riot was underway and that Vice President Pence was at the Capitol, President Trump sent this tweet: 

 

Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!509 

 

Evidence shows that the 2:24 p.m. tweet immediately precipitated further violence at the Capitol. Immediately after this tweet, the crowds both inside and outside of the Capitol building violently surged forward.510 Outside the building, within ten minutes thousands of rioters overran the line on the west side of the Capitol that was being held by the Metropolitan Police Force’s Civil Disturbance Unit, the first time in history of the DC Metro Police that such a security line had ever been broken.511 

 

Virtually everyone on the White House staff the Select Committee interviewed condemned the 2:24 p.m. tweet in the strongest terms. 

 

·      White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told the Select Committee, “I don’t remember when exactly I heard about that tweet, but my reaction to it is that’s a terrible tweet, and I disagreed with the sentiment. And I thought it was wrong.”515 

·      Likewise, Counselor to the President Hope Hicks texted a colleague that evening: “Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him.”516 

At 2:26 p.m., Vice President Pence was again moved to a different location.517 President Trump had the TV on in the dining room.518 At 2:38 p.m., Fox News was showing video of the chaos and attack, with tear gas filling the air in the Capitol Rotunda. And a newscaster reported, “[T]his is a very dangerous situation.”519 This is the context in which Trump sent the tweet. 

 

Testimony obtained by the Committee indicates that President Trump knew about the rioters’ anger at Vice President Pence and indicated something to the effect that the Vice President “deserves it.”520 As Cassidy Hutchinson explained: 

 

I remember Pat saying something to the effect of, “Mark, we need to do something more. They’re literally calling for the Vice President to be f’ing hung.” And Mark had responded something to the effect of, “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they're doing anything wrong.” To which Pat said something, “[t]his is f’ing crazy, we need to be doing something more,” briefly stepped into Mark’s office, and when Mark had said something—when Mark had said something to the effect of, “He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong,” knowing what I had heard briefly in the dining room coupled with Pat discussing the hanging Mike Pence chants in the lobby of our office and then Mark’s response, I understood “they’re” to be the rioters in the Capitol that were chanting for the Vice President to be hung.521 

 

Reflecting on President Trump’s conduct that day, Vice President Pence noted that President Trump “had made no effort to contact me in the midst of the rioting or any point afterward.”549 He wrote that President Trump’s “reckless words had endangered my family and all those serving at the Capitol.”550 

 

President Trump did not contact a single top national security official during the day. Not at the Pentagon, nor at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the D.C. Mayor’s office.551 As Vice President Pence has confirmed, President Trump didn’t even try to reach his own Vice President to make sure that Pence was safe.552 President Trump did not order any of his staff to facilitate a law enforcement response of any sort.553 His Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who is by statute the primary military advisor to the President—had this reaction:

 

General Milley: You know, 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?554 

 

Some have suggested that President Trump gave an order to have 10,000 troops ready for January 6th.556 The Select Committee found no evidence of this. In fact, President Trump’s Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller directly refuted this when he testified under oath: 

 

Committee Staff: To be crystal clear, there was no direct order from President Trump to put 10,000 troops to be on the ready for January 6th, correct? 

Miller: No. Yeah. That’s correct. There was no direct—there was no order from the President.557