Former President Donald Trump “couldn’t be moved” to stop the mob storming the US Capitol, despite several advisers pleading with him to do so, the Jan. 6 commission said.
The eighth and final scheduled public hearing by the House Selection Committee investigating the Capitol riots focused on what Trump did between the start of the insurgency and Trump released a short video urging his supporters to “go home.” to go’.
“This man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved for 187 minutes on Jan. 6,” committee chairperson Bennie Thompson said in his opening address Thursday night.
Not by his aides, not by his allies, not by the violent chance of rioters, or the desperate pleas of those confronting the mob. He couldn’t be moved.’
Commissioner Elaine Luria said evidence shows Trump “sat in his dining room watching the attack on television while his top staff, closest advisers and family members begged him to do what was expected of a US president.”
“On January 6, when lives and our democracy were at stake,” she said, “President Trump refused to act because of his selfish desire to stay in power.”
Trump did not call law enforcement or military officials, but instead called on senators to urge them to delay certifying votes for Joe Biden’s victory, Luria said.
The commission used an anonymous witness to describe a scene in which a lawyer Eric Herschmann told White House counsel Pat Cipollone that Trump did not want anything done about the Mafia.
The panel called two live witnesses: Sarah Matthews, deputy White House press secretary, and a former National Security Council official, Matthew Pottinger.
Matthews said it would have taken Trump “less than 60 seconds” to walk from the dining room to the press room to make comments.
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