Jan. 6 hearing examines Trump's 187 minutes at White House as riot unfolded | July 21

if you look at the defense department timeline it appears that that verbal order did not come till sometime after three o'clock so a lot of chaos a lot of confusion over the critical deployment of the guard and matthew pottenger can really fill in those blanks he's also important because former colleagues describe him as someone who's a straight shooter a serious professional and he was the highest ranking official in the white house who resigned on january 6th because of what he witnessed that day lilia and his statements before have been significant to the investigation andrew tonight's hearings will focus on those 187 minutes before the riders between actually when the rioters began attacking the capital and before former president trump told them to leave in that video that we've now seen over and over ahead of this hearing what's the point or the message that lawmakers are trying to get across by honing in on these 187 minutes so the emphasis here is really to show that uh not only is the former president um was he aware of the violence as it was unfolding but but that he was enjoying it that he was watching it on tv from the white house president um and that he was quite satisfied um with what he was seeing uh you know the washington post reporting that um they're making the case not just that he sat on his hands as well as all this was going on but that it's really what he intended and he only really uh backed down and and made a statement to try to call the violence once he realized that it was unsuccessful not necessarily that he felt it had gone too far and what the committee is really trying to put forward is the best evidence they've shown so far that uh trump you know was derelict in his duty as president that he committed even potentially a crime um you know throughout these hearings we've seen them sort of subtly messaging to the department of justice uh and sometimes not so subtly saying you know some action uh is warranted here at least in an investigation at the criminal level um and what this hearing really is supposed to do is to sort of uh be the capstone to to all these hearings we've had so far and and to sort of put a nice bow on it and really prove uh the former president's complicity uh in the violence on january 6. complicity and and dereliction of duty that's that's a big word there that's a big concept that they'll have to prove tonight chuck let me bring you in ahead of the hearing cbs today learned that the dhs inspector general asked the secret service to stop their internal investigation into what happened to those missing texts related to january 6 to avoid interference what's striking about that to you well the fact that it's evolved to a criminal investigation regarding the secret service and what happened with the deleted messages i think anybody speaking about this honestly has to acknowledge that this is a bad look for the secret service you know there should have been protections in place to eliminate the possibility of the loss of data during this migration that they went through regardless of its association with january 6 as we know it's the law under the records act and further what it's done to the secret service is now pulled them into a place that they don't like to be and that's as in front during a political narrative right the politics we don't want to be involved in uh with the secret service we like to do our jobs apolitically protect members of the cabinet and the administration and do our jobs whether they're democrat or republican so you know now it's led to a lot of speculation and theories about why these messages were deleted and the secret service needs to get out in front on this quickly and explain what happened and what caused this this could have just been a poorly timed data migration where they didn't have the right protections in place to keep these messages from being purged as opposed to the other theory that's out there that there was some type of intent regarding purposely deleting these messages which i don't think is going to be the case but right now the secret service doesn't have the luxury of calling those shots and saying one way or another what happened with these messages right it can be an innocent thing that looks bad and and the duty is to protect physically literally not to protect politically the people that they are due to protect catherine from an investigative point of view why are the text messages so important in the first place well lily these text messages are important because you can think of them as an unfiltered road map to the communications that were being exchanged leading up to january 6th and then afterwards it's a way to have another set of facts that can be compared and contrasted with existing testimony to see whose story adds up and whose story doesn't and the one episode where the text messages would be extremely helpful are the allegations from former white house aide cassidy hutchinson she talked about this altercation in the presidential suv on january 6. she said she heard from a special a secret service agent that the president wanted to go up to the capitol and when he was denied he got physical with him tried to grab the steering wheel well the secret service text messages may be able to confirm that that's exactly what was discussed by agents sort of in real time or they may cast a different light on cassidy hutchinson's testimony that perhaps it's a little bit more nuanced that she said maybe the agents were exaggerating what happened so it can be incredibly important to establishing a credible fact pattern in the case so it's it's an important investigative tool that it looks like the committee will be denied lilia and chuck you were saying it's probably it's not a good look uh for the secret service to not have these messages but i mean what can be done to recover them is there any way that that they could be found you know my understanding uh from sources inside the agency is that they've been working diligently to try and find these messages including conducting cyber forensics uh on the cell phones regarding the 24 people whose information was requested by the ig right now it doesn't look good it looks like these messages are gone forever they've been purged and as catherine alluded to it is a problem because you do want to have any amplifying information regarding testimony that's already been given i mean in the case of cassidy hutchinson's testimony one thing that is problematic to me regarding the committee's actions has been the fact that the agents that were in the limo have not been requested to come back up to the hill and provide testimony on those accounts by ms hutchinson you know i think they can be brought up the secret service has made them available to come back up put them under oath and hear what they have to say that's also another way to validate what's been told already to the committee well we will be watching closely all of this in just a few minutes when the committee hearing begins catherine herridge chuck mourinho and andrew solinder thank you all for joining me tonight [Music] this is a cbs news special report i'm nora o'donnell here in the nation's capital and we are coming on the air tonight to hear from new witnesses to hear new testimony and new evidence tonight as we learn more about the three hours here in our nation's capital on january 6 that nearly derailed democracy the key question is about former president donald trump what was the commander-in-chief doing during the hours of violence at the capitol we do know that he was sitting at in his dining room watching television but deciding not to act we also know that from the capitol to the white house and even from people in his own family he was being begged to do something anything to stop the violence well the committee says it will lay out what they call trump's dereliction of duty the witnesses tonight will help fill in the gaps in trump's activities that day we will hear from former deputy national security adviser matthew pottinger and former deputy press secretary sarah matthews they will testify live we're also expected to hear some other new testimony from taped depositions uh we've got our incredible team with us here tonight with new reporting and analysis john dickerson this is really going to focus when we've had seven hearings this committee has interviewed more than a thousand people but today it's about donald trump specifically and a timeline during the 2016 campaign candidate donald trump said i alone can fix it about the presidency never more was that more true in his presidency than on january 6th he alone could fix it because he's commander-in-chief and because he had a special relationship with the people flying his flag that's why all of his friends allies in congress allies in the media were calling him because he was the only one who could fix it for 187 minutes the phone was ringing and he refused to pick it up we are watching now liz cheney the vice chair throw to a piece of tape from the chair of this committee benny thompson who's not there live today because he has covenant is explaining that right now robert costa as we mentioned we've learned a lot in these hearings thus far but there's still a lot that's missing out there that hasn't been turned over to this committee there are still gaps in this story missing text from the secret service and we just learned today some secret service agents are seeking private counsel as the dhs looks into that part of the story we're also missing phone logs who was the president talking to during this time testimony today will help fill in those gaps let's turn now to chairman benny thompson he bullied he betrayed his oath he tried to destroy our democratic institutions he summoned a mob to washington after war on january 6 when he knew that the assembled mob was heavily armed and angry he commanded the mob to go to the capitol and he emphatically commanded the heavily armed mob to fight like hell for the weeks between november election and january 6th donald trump was a force to be reckoned with he shrugged off the factuality and legality correct sober advice of his knowledgeable and sensible advisors instead he recklessly blazed a path of lawlessness and corruption the cost to which democracy be damned and then he stopped for 187 minutes on january 6 this man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved not by his age not by his allies not by the violent chance of rioters or the desperate pleas of those facing down the riot and more tellingly donald trump ignored and disregarded the desperate pleas of his own family including ivanka and don jr even though he was the only person in the world who could call off the mob he's sent to the capitol he could not be moved to rise from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the white house hallway into the press briefing room where cameras were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to the armed and violent mob savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers revenging the capital and hunting down the vice president and various members of congress he could not be moved this evening my colleagues mr kingsinger of the illinois and miss luria of virginia will take you inside the white house during those 187 minutes we also remind you of what was happening at the capitol minute by minute as a found violent tragic part of donald trump's scheme to cling to power unraveled while he ignored his advisors stood by and watched it unfold on television let me offer a found thought about the select committee's work so far as we've made clear throughout these hearings our investigation goes forward we continue to receive new information every day we continue to hear from witnesses we will reconvene in september to continue laying out our findings to the american people but as that work goes forward a number of facts are clear there can be no doubt that there was a coordinated multi-step effort to overturn an election overseen and directed by donald trump there can be no doubt that he commanded a mob a mob he knew was heavily armed violent and angry to march on the capitol to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power and he made targets out of his own vice president and the lawmakers gathered to do the people's work these facts have gone undisputed and so there needs to be accountability accountability under the law accountability to the american people accountability at every level from the local precincts in many states where donald trump and his allies attacked election workers for just doing their jobs all the way up to the oval office where donald trump embraced a legal advice of insurrectionists that a federal judge has already said was a coup in search of a legal theory our democracy will stood the attack on january 6. if there is no accountability for january 6 for every part of this scheme i feel that we will not overcome the ongoing threat to our democracy there must be stiff consequences for those responsible now i'll turn things over to our vice chair to start telling this story thank you mr chairman without objection the presiding officer is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any point pursuant to house deposition authority regulation 10 i announced that the committee has approved the release of the deposition material presented during today's hearing and let me begin tonight by wishing chairman thompson a rapid recovery from covid he has expertly led us through eight hearings so far and he has brought us to the point we are today in our initial hearing the chairman and i described what ultimately became donald trump's seven part plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election a plan stretching from before election day through january 6th at the close of today's hearing our ninth we will have addressed each element of that plan but in the course of these hearings we have received new evidence and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful and those continue doors have opened new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break and now even as we conduct our ninth hearing we have considerably more to do we have far more evidence to share with the american people and more to gather so our committee will spend august pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings this september today we know far more about the president's plans and actions to overturn the election than almost all members of congress did when president trump was impeached on january 13 2021 or when he was tried by the senate in february of that year 57 of 100 senators voted to convict president trump at that time and more than 20 others said they were voting against conviction because the president's term had already expired at the time the republican leader of the united states senate said this about donald trump a mom was assaulting the capitol in his name these criminals were carrying his banners hanging his lies and screaming their loyalty to him it was obvious that only president trump could end this he was the only one leader mcconnell reached those conclusions based on what he knew then without any of the much more detailed evidence you will see today lawlessness and violence began at the capitol on january 6th 2021 before 1 pm and continued until well after darkness fell what exactly was our commander in chief doing during the hours of violence today we address precisely that issue everything you've heard in these hearings thus far will help you understand president trump's motives during the violence you already know donald trump's goal to halt or delay congress's official proceedings to count certified electoral votes you know that donald trump tried to pressure his vice president to illegally reject votes and delay the proceedings you know he tried to convince state officials and state legislators to flip their electoral votes from biden to trump and you know donald trump tried to corrupt our department of justice to aid his scheme but by january 6 none of that had worked only one thing was succeeding on the afternoon of january 6th only one thing was achieving president trump's goal the angry armed mob president trump sent to the capitol broke through security invaded the capitol and forced the vote counting to stop that mob was violent and destructive and many came armed as you will hear secret service agents protecting the vice president were exceptionally concerned about his safety and their own republican leader kevin mccarthy was scared as were others in congress even those who themselves helped to provoke the violence and as you will see today donald trump's own white house counsel his own white house staff members of his own family all implored him to immediately intervene to condemn the violence and instruct his supporters to stand down leave the capitol and disperse for multiple hours he would not donald trump would not get on the phone and order the military or law enforcement agencies to help and for hours donald trump chose not to answer the pleas from congress from his own party and from all across our nation to do what his oath required he refused to defend our nation and our constitution he refused to do what every american president must in the days after january 6 almost no one of any political party would defend president trump's conduct and no one should do so today thank you and i now recognize the gentlewoman from virginia thank you madam vice chair article two of our constitution requires that the presidents swear a very specific oath every four years every president swears or affirms to faithfully execute the office of president of the united states and to the best of their ability preserve protect and defend the constitution of the united states the president also assumes the constitutional duty to take care that our nation's laws be faithfully executed and is the commander-in-chief of our military our hearings have shown the many ways in which president trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days leading up to january 6th with each step of his plan he betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty tonight we will further examine president trump's actions on the day of the attack on the capitol early that afternoon president trump instructed tens of thousands of supporters ed and near the ellipse rally a number of whom he knew were armed with various types of weapons to march to the capitol after telling the crowd to march multiple times he promised he would be with them and finished his remarks at 1 10 p.m like this we're going to walk down and i'll be there with you we're going to walk down [Applause] we're going to walk down anyone you want but i think right here we're going to walk down to the capitol so let's walk down pennsylvania avenue by this time the vice president was in the capital the joint session of congress to certify joe biden's victory was underway and the proud boys and other rioters had stormed through the first barriers and begun the attack radio communications from law enforcement informed secret service and those in the white house situation room of these developments in real time at the direction of president trump thousands more rioters marched from the ellipse to the capital and they joined the attack as you will see in great detail tonight president trump was being advised by nearly everyone to immediately instruct his supporters to leave the capitol disperse and halt the violence virtually everyone told president trump to condemn the violence in clear and unmistakable terms and those on capitol hill and across the nation begged president trump to help but the former president chose not to do what all of those people begged he refused to tell the mob to leave until 4 17 when he tweeted out a video statement filmed in the rose garden ending with this so go home we love you you're very special you've seen what happens you see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil i know how you feel but go home and go home at peace by that time two pipe bombs had been found at locations near the capitol including where the vice president-elect was conducting a meeting hours of hand-to-hand combat had seriously injured scores of law enforcement officers the capitol had been invaded the electoral count had been halted as members were evacuated rioters took the floor of the senate they rifled through desks and broke into offices and they nearly caught up to vice president pence guns were drawn on the house floor and a rioter was shot attempting to infiltrate the chamber we know that a number of rioters intended acts of physical violence against specific elected officials we know virtually all the rioters were motivated by president trump's rhetoric that the election had been stolen and they felt they needed to take their country back this hearing is principally about what happened inside of the white house that afternoon from the time when president trump ended his speech until the moment when he finally told the mob to go home a span of 187 minutes more than three hours what you will learn is that president trump sat in his dining room and watched the attack on television while his senior most staff closest advisors and family members begged him to do what is expected of any american president i served proudly for 20 years as an officer in the united states navy veterans of our armed forces know firsthand the leadership that's required in a time of crisis urgent and decisive action that puts duty and country first but on january 6th when lives and our democracy hung in the balance president trump refused to act because of his selfish desire to stay in power and i yield to the gentleman from illinois mr kinsinger thank you thank you ms lauria one week after the attack republican leader kevin mccarthy acknowledged the simple truth president trump should have acted immediately to stop the violence during our investigation general mark milley the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff also remarked on the president's failure to act let's hear what they had to say the president bears responsibility for wednesday's attack on congress by mob rioters he should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding these facts require immediate action by president trump yeah you know commander in chief you've got an assault going on on the capital of the united states of america there's nothing [Music] no call nothing zero like my colleague from virginia i'm a veteran i served in the air force and i serve currently in the air national guard i can tell you that general milley's reaction to president trump's conduct is 100 percent correct and so was leader mccarthy's what explains president trump's behavior why did he not take immediate action in a time of crisis because president trump's plan for january 6 was to halt or delay congress's official proceeding to count the votes the mob attacked the capital quick the mob attacking the capital quickly caused the evacuation of both the house and the senate the count ground to an absolute halt and was ultimately delayed for hours the mob was accomplishing president trump's purpose so of course he didn't intervene here's what will be clear by the end of this hearing president trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the ellipse and telling the mob to go home he chose not to act but there were hundreds that day who honored their oaths and put their lives on the line to protect the people inside the capitol and to safeguard our democracy many of them are here tonight with us and many more are watching from home as you already know and we'll see again tonight their service and sacrifice shines a bright light on president trump's dishonor and dereliction of duty i yield to the vice chair thank you very much mr kinsenger i'd like to begin by welcoming our witnesses this evening tonight we're joined by mr matthew pottinger mr pottinger is a decorated former marine intelligence officer who served this nation on tours of duty in afghanistan and iraq he served in the trump white house from the first day of the administration through the early morning hours of january seventh twenty twenty one the last role in which he served in the white house was his deputy national security adviser to the president of the united states we're also joined by sarah matthews ms matthews started her career in communications working on capitol hill serving on the republican staffs of several house committees she then worked as deputy press secretary for president trump's re-election campaign before joining the trump white house in june of 2020 she served there as deputy press secretary and special assistant to the president until the evening of january 6 2021. i will now swear in our witnesses the witnesses will please stand and raise their right hands do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to give is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god thank you you may be seated and let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative thank you both again for being here tonight mr pottinger uh thank you for your service to the nation as well as as for joining us this evening can you please briefly explain what your responsibilities were as deputy national security adviser to the president thank you madam vice chair um when i started the white house i was a senior director for asia on the national security council staff so that was a job that involved helping coordinate the president's asia policy i supported the president when he met or interacted with asian leaders later 2019 i was promoted to the job of deputy national security advisor in that role i was the chairman of the deputies committee that's an nsc uh uh meeting of all the deputy cabinet secretaries we would settle uh important matters of national policy related to to our national security and we would also tee up options for the president and uh for his cabinet members uh it was um i i felt then as i do now that it was a privilege to serve in the white house i'm also very proud of president trump's foreign policy accomplishments we were able to uh finally compete with china we were also able to broker uh peace agreements between israel and and three arab states i mean those are some examples of the types of policies that i think made uh our country safer thank you miss pattinger and were you in uh the white house during the attack on the capitol on january 6th uh for most of the day i was in the white house although when the the president was speaking at the rally i was actually off site at a scheduled meeting with india's ambassador to the united states uh uh the national security council staff was not involved in organizing the security for what was a domestic event the rally but i did return to the white house at roughly 2 30 p.m thank you and i know my colleagues will have additional questions for you about that afternoon let me turn out to you miss matthews how did you come to join president trump's white house staff thank you madam vice chair as you outlined i am a lifelong republican and um i joined the trump re-election campaign in june of 2019 i was one of the first communications staffers actually on board for his re-election campaign and during that time i traveled all around the country and met kaylee mcinenny who was also working on his re-election campaign i worked there for a year and i formed a close relationship with miss mcineney and she moved over to the white house in april of 2020 to start as white house press secretary and she brought over a group of campaign staff with her and so i joined her over at the white house in june of 2020 to start as her deputy and were you uh miss matthews at work in the white house on january 6th yes i was working out of the west wing that day thank you and now i'd like to recognize the gentlewoman from virginia and the gentleman from illinois you madam vice chair as you've seen in our prior hearings president trump summoned the mob to dc on january 6. before he went on stage he knew some of them were armed and prepared for combat during his speech he implored them to march to the capitol as he had always planned to do by the time he walked off the stage his supporters had already breached the outer perimeter of the capitol at the foot of capitol hill since our last hearings we've received new testimony from a security professional working in the white house complex on january 6 with access to relevant information and responsibility to report to national security officials this security official told us that the white house was aware of multiple reports of weapons in the crowd that morning we as a committee are cognizant of the fear of retribution expressed by certain national security witnesses who have come forward to tell the truth we've therefore taken steps to protect this national security individual's identity listen to this clip from their test message from the people about this idea of the president to walk to the capitol to be completely honest um we were all in a state of shock because why because it just one i think the actual physical feasibility of doing it and then also we all knew what that was indicated and what that meant that this was no longer a rally that this was going to move to something else if he physically walked to the capitol i i don't know if you want to use the word insurrection coup whatever we all knew that this would move from a normal uh democratic you know public events into something else what was what was driving that sentiment considering this this part of it the actual bridge of the capital hadn't happened yet why were we alarmed right the president wanted to lead tens of thousands of people to the capitol i think that was enough grounds for us to be alarmed even though he understood many of his supporters were armed the president was still adamant to go to the capitol when he got off the stage at the ellipse but his secret service detail was equally determined to not let him go that led to a heated argument with the detail that delayed the departure of the motorcade to the white house we have evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry exchange in the presidential suv including testimony we will disclose today from two witnesses who confirmed that a confrontation occurred the first witness is a former white house employee with national security responsibilities after seeing the initial violence at the capitol on tv the individual went to see tony ornato the deputy chief of staff in his office mr ornato was there with bobby engel the president's lead secret service agent this employee told us that mr ornato said that the president was quote irate when mr engel refused to drive him to the capitol mr ingle did not refute what mr ornato said the second witness is retired sergeant mark robinson of the d.c police department who was assigned to the president's motorcade that day he sat in the lead vehicle with a secret service agent responsible for the motorcade also called the ts agent here's how sergeant robinson remembered the exchange was there any description of what of what was occurring in the car no only then on the only description i received was that the president was upset and that was adamant about going to the capitol and there was a heated discussion about that when you say he did is that your word or is that the word that was described by the ts agent were described by the tsai meaning that the president was upset and he was saying there was a heated argument or discussion about going to the capitol about how many times would you say you've been part of that motorcade with the president probably over a hundred times uh and in that a hundred times have you ever uh witnessed uh another discussion of a argument or heated discussion with the president where the president was contradicting uh where he was supposed to go or what the secret service believe was safe no like other witnesses sergeant robinson also testified that he was aware that individuals in the crowd were armed yes i believe we was on a special uh events channel and i was monitoring the traffics and so i could hear some of the units pointing out to individuals that there were individuals along constitution avenue that were armed that were up in the trees and i can hear the units responding to those individuals so there's always a concern when there's a potent in the area and like other witnesses sergeant robinson told us that the president still wanted to travel to the capitol even after returning to the white house so at the end of the speech what was the plan supposed to be so at the end of the speech uh we do know that while inside the limo the president was still um adamant about going to the capitol that's being relied to me by the ts agent and so we did park the ellipse and we responded back to the white house however we the the motorcade the produce motorcade was placed on standby and so we were told to stand by uh on west exec until they confirmed whether or not the president was going to go to the capitol and so i may have waited i would just estimate maybe 45 to 45 minutes to an hour waiting for secret service to make that decision the motorcade waited at the white house for more than 45 minutes before being released the committee is also aware that accounts of the angry confrontation in the presidential suv have circulated widely among the secret service since january 6. recent disclosures have also caused the committee to subpoena yet further information from the secret service which we've begun to receive and will continue to assess the committee is also aware that certain secret service witnesses have now retained new private council we anticipate further testimony under oath and other new information in the coming weeks after the secret service refused to take president trump to the capitol he returned to the white house what you see on the screen is a photo of him inside the oval office immediately after he returned from the rally still wearing his overcoat a white house employee informed the president as soon as he returned to the oval about the riot at the capitol let me repeat that within 15 minutes of leaving the stage president trump knew that the capital was besieged and under attack at 1 25 president trump went to the private dining room off the oval office from 1 25 until 4 o'clock the president stayed in his dining room just to give you a sense of where the dining room is situated in the west wing let's take a look at this floor plan the dining room is connected to the oval office by a short hallway witnesses told us that on january 6 president trump sat in his usual spot at the head of the table facing a television hanging on the wall we know from the employee the tv was tuned to fox news all afternoon here you can see fox news on the tv showing coverage of the joint session that was airing that day at 1 25. other witnesses confirmed that president trump was in the dining room with the tv on for more than two and a half hours there was no official record of what president trump did while in the dining room on the screen is the presidential call log from january 6. as you can see there's no official record of president trump receiving or placing a call between 1106 and 6 54 p.m as to what the president was doing that afternoon the presidential daily diary is also silent it contains no information from the period between 1 21 pm and 403 pm there are also no photos of president trump during this critical period between 121 and the oval office and when he went outside to the rose garden after four o'clock the chief white house photographer wanted to take pictures because it was in her words very important for his archives and for history but she was told quote no photographs despite the lack of photos or an official record we've learned what president trump was doing while he was watching tv in the dining room but before we get into that it's important to understand what he never did that day let's watch so are you aware of any phone call by the president of the united states to the secretary of defense that day not that i'm aware of nothing are you aware of any phone call by the president of the united states to the attorney general of the united states that day no be aware of any phone call by the president of the united states to the secretary of homeland security that day i i'm not aware of that no did you ever get a vice president or excuse me the president no asked for the national guard did you ever hear the president ask for law enforcement response no so as somebody who worked in the national security space and with the national security council if if there were going to be troops present or called up for a rally in washington dc for example is that something that you would have been aware yeah i would have do you know if you asked anybody to reach out to any of those that we just listed off national guard dod fbi homeland security secret service mayor bowser the capitol police about the situation the capital i am not aware of any of those requests no sir we have confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders vice president pence's staff and d.c government officials none of them not one heard from president trump that day he did not call to issue orders he did not call to offer assistance this week we received additional testimony from yet another witness about why the president didn't make any efforts to quell the attack the former white house employee with national security responsibilities told us about a conversation with senior adviser eric hershman and pat cipoloni the top white house lawyer this conversation was about a pending call from the pentagon seeking to coordinate on the response to the attack mr hirschmann turned to mr zippoloni and said the president didn't want to do anything and so mr bologna had to take the call himself so if president trump wasn't calling law enforcement or military leaders what did president trump spend his time doing that afternoon while he first settled into the dining room he was calling senators to encourage them to delay or object to the certification here's kaylee mcaney his press secretary to explain all right then it says back there and he wants list of senators and then he's calling them one by one do you know which ones he called to the best of my recollection no as i say in my notes he wanted a list of the senators and you know i left him at that point because the presidential call log is empty we do not yet know precisely which senators president trump was calling but we do know from rudy giuliani's phone records that president trump also called him at 139 after he had been told that the riot was underway at the capitol mr giuliani was president trump's lead election attorney according to the phone records the president's call with him lasted approximately four minutes recall that fox news was on in the dining room let's take a look at what was airing as this call was ending the president as we all saw fired this crowd up they've all tens of thousands maybe a hundred thousand or more have gone down to the capitol or elsewhere in the city and they're very upset now i jumped down as soon as we heard the news that brett gave you about mike pence i started talking to these people i said what do you think one woman an air force veteran from missouri said she was quote disgusted to hear that news and that it was his duty to do something and i told her i said there's nothing in the constitution unilaterally that vice president pence could do she said that doesn't matter he should have fought for trump at 1 49 here's what was happening at the capitol with president trump's fired up supporters we're going to give fly a warning i'm going to try and get compliance but this is now effectively a riot 13 49 hours declaring a riot [Applause] what did president trump do at 149 as the d.c police at the same time were declaring a riot at the capitol as you can see on the screen he tweeted out a link to the recording of his ellipse speech this was the same speech in which he knowingly sent an armed mob to the capitol but president trump made no comment about the lawlessness and the violence i yield to the gentleman from illinois the next action president trump took was to tweet at 2 24 p.m what happened during the 35 minutes between his last tweet at 1 49 and 224 his staff repeatedly came into the room to see him and plead that he make a strong public statement condemning the violence and instructing the mob to leave the capitol he did not relent until after four o'clock when he went out to go to the rose garden to film his now infamous go home message pat sipoloni was a top white house lawyer here's what he told us about his reaction to seeing the violence and his advice throughout the afternoon when did you first realize that there was actually why i first realized that it may have been on television or it may have been tony or it may have been building but i i found out that people were you know they weren't in the capital yet but they were you know and then i started watching it and you know then i was aware what specifically did you think even i think i was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response statement public statement that people need to lead the capital now my question is exactly that it sounds like you from the very onset of violence at the capitol right around two o'clock were pushing for a strong statement that people should leave the capital is that right i was another soldier as well pat you said that you expressed your opinion forcefully could you tell us exactly how you did that yeah i can't i'm don't have you know i have to on the privileged issue i can't talk about conversations with the president but i can generically say that i said you know people need to be told there needs to be a public announcement fast that they need to leave the capitol and pat could you let us know approximately when you said that approximately when almost immediately after i found out people were getting into the capitol or approaching the capitol in a way that was was uh violent do you remember any discussion with mark meadows with respect to his view that the president didn't want to do anything was somehow resistant to wanting to say something along the lines that he suggests just to be clear many people suggested it um not just me many people felt the same way um i'm sure i had conversations with mark about this during the course of the day and expressed my my opinion very forcefully that this needs to be done so your advice was tell people in the capital and that took over two hours when there were subsequent statements made tweets put forth that in your view were insufficient did you continue disciplining throughout the period of time up until 417 continue you and others to push for a stronger statement yes where you joined in that effort by ivanka trump yes eric hershman yes i'm mark meadow yes white house counsel's office wanted there to be a strong statement out to condemn the rioters i'm confident in that i'm confident that ivanka trump wanted there to be a strong statement to condemn the rioters um i don't know the private conversation she had with mr trump but i remember when she came to the office one time with white house counsel's office when she came to the chief of staff's office with white house counsel's office she was talking about the speech later that day and trying to get her dad on board with saying something that was more direct than he had wanted to at the time and throughout the afternoon and i think mark also wanted to got i remember him getting ivanka involved because it's like hit ivanka down here because he thought that would be important i don't think jared was there in the morning but i think he came later i remember thinking it was important to get him in there too and and of course pat philbin you know was expressing the same things i mean pat philbin you know was very as i said i i don't think there was one of these meetings where there might have been but for the most part i remember that both of us going down together going back getting on phone calls he was also very clearly expressing this view pat sibiloni and cassidy hutchinson an aide to chief of staff mark meadows also told us about the hang mike pence chance as you will see mr sipoloni recalled conversations about those chants in the west wing but he relied on executive privilege to maintain confidentiality over his and others direct communications with the president although mr cipolloni was unwilling to provide more detail ms hutchison provided more explicit information filling in those blanks see that for yourself wasn't until mark hung up the phone handed it back to me i went back to my desk a couple minutes later him and pat came back possibly eric hirschman too i'm pretty sure eric hirschman was there but i'm i'm confident it was pat that was there um 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 effing 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 this is nothing crazy we need to be doing something more briefly stepped into mark's office do you remember any discussion at any point during the day about rioters at the capitol chanting hang mike pence yes i remember i remember hearing that about that yes yeah i don't know if i observed that myself on tv yet i'm just curious i understand the privilege line you've drawn but do you remember what you can share with us about the discussion about those chances to hang mike kent's chance i can tell you my view please my view that that is outrageous and for anyone to suggest such a thing as the vice president of the united states for people in that crowd to be chanting that i thought it was terrible i thought it was outrageous and wrong and i expressed that very clearly with respect to your conversations with mr meadows though did you specifically erase the concern of the vice president with him and and how did he respond i believe i raised a concern about the vice president and i and i again the nature of his response without remember calling exactly what seemed you know people were doing all that they could and what about the president did he indicate whether i thought the president was doing what needed to be done to protect the vice president in addition mr siboloni testified that it would have been feasible as commentators on television were suggesting for president trump to immediately appear at the podium in the press room to address the nation would it have been possible at any moment for the president to walk down to the podium in the briefing and and to talk to the nation at any time between when you first gave him that advice two o'clock in 417 when the video statement would that have been possible would have been possible yes yes we just heard mr sipoloni say that president trump could have gone to the press briefing room to issue a statement at any moment to give you a sense of just how easy that would have been let's take a look at a map of the west wing as we saw earlier the president's private dining room is at the bottom of the map the press briefing room is at the top highlighted in blue and the rose garden where the president ultimately filmed his go home video is on the right next to the oval office and that's highlighted in green ms matthews how quickly could the president have gotten on camera in the press briefing room to deliver a statement to the nation so as you outlined it would take probably less than 60 seconds from the oval office dining room over to the press briefing room and for folks that might not know the briefing room is the room that you see the white house press secretary do briefings from with the podium and the blue backdrop and there's a camera that is on in there at all times and so if the president had wanted to make a statement and address the american people he could have been on camera almost instantly and conversely the white house press corps has offices that are located directly behind the briefing room and so if he had wanted to make an address from the oval office we could have assembled the white house press corps probably in a matter of minutes to get them into the oval for him to do an on-camera address thank you other witnesses have given us their views on that question for example general keith kellogg told us that some staff were concerned that a live appearance by the president at the microphones at that moment could actually make matters worse he told us he recommended against doing a press conference because during his four years in the trump administration quote there wasn't a single clean press conference we had had president trump's advisors knew his state of mind at that moment and they were worried about what he would say in unscripted comments i yield to the gentlewoman from virginia thank you as you've heard by two o'clock multiple staff members in the white house recognized that a serious situation was underway at the capitol personally i recall being evacuated from the house office building where we're sitting by before this time it was due to the discovery of two pipe bombs in nearby buildings ms matthews around the same time you were watching the violence unfold on television and social media with colleagues including with ben williamson a senior aide to mark meadows and the acting director of communications you told us that before president trump sent his next tweet at 2 24 mr williamson got up to go see mr meadows and you got up to go see kaylee mcinnani why did you both do that so ben and i were watching the coverage unfold from one of the offices in the west wing and we both recognized that the situation was escalating and it was escalating quickly and that the president needed to be out there immediately to tell these people to go home and condemn the violence that we were seeing so i told him that i was going to make that recommendation to kaley and he said he was going to make the same recommendation to the chief of staff mark meadows thank you and one of your colleagues in the press office judd dear told us he also went to see ms mcaney at that time let's hear what he said about this critical period of time right as the writers were getting into the uh capital why did you think it was necessary well i mean it appears that individuals are storming the us capitol building they also appear to be supporters of donald trump who may have been in attendance at the rally we're going to need to say something and did you have a view as to what should be said by the white house if i recall i told kaylee that i thought that we needed to encourage um individuals to stop to respect law enforcement and to go home although president trump was aware of the ongoing riot he did not take any immediate action to address the lawlessness instead at 203 he called rudy giuliani again and that call lasted for over eight minutes moments later at 2 13 riders broke into the capitol itself one of the proud boys charged with seditious conspiracy dominic pizzola used an officer's shields to smash a window and rioters flooded into the building as rioters were entering the building the secret service held vice president pence in his office right off the senate chamber for 13 minutes as they work to clear a safe path to a secure location now listen to some of that radio traffic and see what they were seeing as the protesters got just feet away from where the vice president was holding the building we need to move now if we lose any more time we may have we may lose the ability to leave so if we're going to leave we need to do it now they've gained access to the second floor and i've got public about five feet from me down here below they are on the second floor moving in now we may want to consider getting out and leaving now coffee will we encounter the people once we make our way repeat count for any individuals if we made our way to the to the there's six officers between us and the people that are five to ten feet away from me and i am going down to evaluate go ahead we have a clear spot if we move quickly we got smoke down step however we will bypass some protesters that are being contained there is smoke unknown what kind of smoke it is clear we're coming out now all right make a way the president's national security council staff was listening to these developments and tracking them in real time on the screen you can see excerpts from the chat logs among the national among the president's national council national security council staff at 2 13 the staff learned that the rioters were kicking in the windows at the capitol three minutes later the staff said the vice president was being pulled which meant agents evacuated him from the senate floor at 2 24 the staff noted that the secret service agents at the capitol did not quote sound good right now earlier you heard from a security professional who had been working in the white house complex on january 6 with access to relevant information and a responsibility to report to national security officials we asked this person what was meant by the comment that the secret service agents did not quote sound good right now in the following clip of that testimony which has been modified to protect the individual's identity the professional discusses what they heard from listening to the incoming radio traffic that day okay that last entry in this page of service the capital does not sound good right now correct what does that mean the members of the bp 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 a lot of very personal calls um over the radio so it was discerning i don't like talking about it but um there were calls to um say goodbye to family members it was getting for whatever the reason was on the ground the vp details thought that this was about to get very unclean and did you hear that over the radio okay what was the response by the agent to secret service agents who were there everybody kept saying you know at that point it was just reassurances or um [Music] i think there were discussions of reinforcements coming but again it was just chaos they're just yelling obviously you've conveyed the disturbing but what what prompted you to put it into an entry as it's their service for the kids they're running out of options and they're getting nervous it sounds like we're that we came very close to either service having to use legal options or or worse like at that point i don't know is the vp compromise is the detail kind of like i don't know like we didn't have visibility but it doesn't if they're screaming and saying things like say goodbye to the family like the floor needs to know this is going to on a whole nother level soon as this next video shows the rioters anger was folk focused primarily on vice president mike pence this woman comes up to the side of us and she says pants 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 what percentage of the crowd is going to the capitol 100 it is it has spread like wildfire that pence has betrayed us and everybody is marching on the capitol all million of us it's insane [Music] [Applause] did people appear angry as you were walking to the capitol yeah a lot of people a lot of people seem like they're very upset tell us some of the things they were saying if you recall oh there was they were saying all time you know people were screaming all types of stuff um they're mad that uh uh vice president pence was going to accept the electorals i mean it was i mean it was a little you could if you could think it up that's you were hearing it i believe the vice president pence was going to certify the electoral votes and or not certify them but i guess that's just changed correct and it's a very big disappointment i think there's several hundred thousand people here that are very disappointed president trump did not try to calm his thousands of disappointed supporters instead at almost the same moment violence was getting completely out of hand donald trump sent his 224 tweet the president said mike pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution despite knowing the capital had been breached and the mob was in the building president trump called mike pence a coward and placed all the blame on him for not stopping the certification he put a target on his own vice president's back mr pottinger and miss matthews when we ask you about your reaction to seeing the 224 tweet in real time you both use the same imagery to describe it president trump was adding fuel to the fire mr potager you made the decision to resign after seeing this tweet can you please tell us why yes so that was um pretty soon after i did or shortly before i'd gotten back to the white house i'd come from offsite i began to see for the first time those images on tv of the chaos that was unfolding at the capitol one of my aides handed me a sheet of paper that contained the tweet that you just read i read it and was quite disturbed by it i i was disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking vice president pence for doing his constitutional duty so the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what what we really needed at that moment which was a de-escalation uh and uh that's why i had said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured on the fire so that was the moment that i decided uh that i was going to resign that that would be my last day at the white house uh i i simply didn't want to be associated with uh with the events that were unfolding on the capitol thank you and miss matthews what was your reaction to the president's tweet about vice president pence so it was obvious that the situation at the capitol was violent and escalating quickly and so i thought that the tweet about the vice president was the last thing that was needed in that moment and i i remember thinking that this was going to be bad for him to tweet this because it was essentially him giving the green light to these uh people telling them that what they were doing at the steps of the capital and entering the capital was okay that they were justified in their anger and he shouldn't have been doing that he should have been telling these people to go home and to leave and to condemn the violence that we're seeing and i'm someone who has worked with him you know i worked on the campaign traveled all around the country going to countless rallies with him and i've seen the impact that his words have on his supporters he they truly latch on to every word and every tweet that he says and so i think that in that moment for him to tweet out the message about mike pence it was him pouring gasoline on the fire and making it much worse thank you both and let's watch what others also told us about their reactions to this tweet 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 what was your reaction when you saw that tweet extremely unhelpful why it wasn't the message that we needed at that time it wasn't going to um the the scenes at the u.s capitol were only getting worse at that point this was not going to help that would concern it worse certainly miss hutchinson what was your reaction when you saw this tweet as a staffer that works to always represent the administration to the best of my ability and to showcase the good things that he had done for the country i remember feeling frustrated disappointed and really it felt personal i it was really sad as an american i was disgusted it was unpatriotic it was un-american we were watching the capitol building get defaced over a lie as you will see at 2 26 the vice president had to be evacuated to safety a second time and came within 40 feet of the rioters the attack escalated quickly right after the tweet [Applause] during this chaos what did president trump do at that point he went back to calling senators to try to further delay the electoral count while the vice president was being evacuated from the senate president trump called senator tommy tuberville one of his strongest supporters in the senate as senator tuberville later recalled he had to end the call so that he could evacuate the senate chamber himself let's listen he called didn't call my phone call somebody else and they hand it to me and i basically told him i said mr president we're not doing much work here right now because they just took our vice president out and matter of fact i'm gonna have to hang up on you i've gotta leave senator josh hawley also had to flee earlier that afternoon before the joint session started he walked across the east front of the capitol as you can see in this photo he raised his fist in solidarity with the protesters already amassing at the security gates we spoke with a capitol police officer who was out there at the time she told us that senator senator holly's jester riled up the crowd and it bothered her greatly because he was doing it in a safe space protected by the officers and the barriers later that day senator hawley fled after those protesters he helped to rile up stormed the capitol see for yourself think about what we've seen undeniable violence at the capitol the vice president being evacuated to safety by the secret service senators running through the hallways of the senate to get away from the mob as the commander-in-chief president trump was oath and duty bound to protect the capital his senior staff understood that do you believe jared that the president has an obligation to ensure a peaceful transfer of power yes and do you think the president has an obligation to defend all three branches of our government i believe so and i assume you also would agree the president has a particular obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed that is one of the president's obligations correct no i mean i asked what his duty is well i mean there's a there's a constitutional duty what he has he's the commander-in-chief and that was the industry that was my biggest issue with him as national security adviser rather than uphold his duty to the constitution president trump allowed the mob to achieve the delay that he hoped would keep him in power i reserve the gentlewoman reserves i request that those in the hearing room remain seated until the capitol police have escorted members and witnesses from the room i now declare the committee in recess for a period of approximately 10 minutes well we learned some new details today including specifically about vice president mike pence and the danger that he was in up on capitol hill want to bring our team back in margaret brennan we knew that donald trump was targeting his vice president we knew that the protesters outside were were chanting hang mike pence but what we learned today is that the vice president's own secret service detail i mean these are the toughest of the tough that they were calling family members saying goodbye that's right and that there was radio traffic being listened to of them asking for people to make calls to their family these are people who took oaths to give their lives and protection of the commander-in-chief and the vice president and we know that day that that was how close and how deeply threatened and threatening the situation was what this whole hearing is about today is really framing it in that national security context to show how severe this threat was that it wasn't just a riot gone wrong that this actually was an attack on the capital of the united states that the commander-in-chief chose not to intervene it's not so much about what he did it's what he did not do that's what we have been hearing and that's what we will continue to hear from the deputy national security adviser matthew pottinger who was the highest-ranking white house official to resign that day pottinger told me his four years in the trump administration was the mother of all deployments mother of all combat deployments and for someone who served in afghanistan and iraq that's quite a statement to make but this was the final straw it was staff member after staff member going in there and asking for immediate action to be taken and repeatedly there was none taken by the commander-in-chief from that testimony from this disguised national security official voice and face disguised he said the members of the vp detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives doesn't this lay waste to the claim that nobody was in danger that this wasn't a big deal as the president's own supporters to this day are making house republicans are tweeting trying to dismiss some of these witnesses today well and and that's why i think it was important that they showed mitch mcconnell and kevin mccarthy at the beginning setting with the two republican leaders in congress saying there was an obligation to act they hadn't seen all the grisliness and yet they said there was an obligation for the president to act and as margaret was talking about what was the testimony was the sound of a president not acting you know it was it was what the president wasn't doing there was no testimony about what he could what he was doing because he was on the phone actually there was one interesting piece of testimony is while he wasn't doing his commander-in-chief job he was on the phone to rudy giuliani he was on the phone to senators still trying to get the vote changed so it's not only that he wasn't acting but to the extent he was acting at all he was furthering the mayhem but we don't know that from white house logs or president trump's call logs because those have mysteriously disappeared robert you were first to report that uh that there was this gap in the president's call logs there was a gap in the president's uh schedule no records essentially during that time no photos uh during that time and now in the last couple of days we know there's not going to be any secret service texts or phone records as well which is interesting in light of what we're learning today about the fear and danger that the vice president's own detail felt we learned a little bit through some of this testimony about rudy giuliani's calls with the president when he was in the dining room but we still don't have a complete picture as i reported for cbs news with bob woodward the call logs provided to the national archives then provided to the committee do not have all of the information we're still wondering was the president making other calls on the cell phones of aids or advisors and this was such a critical moment to build on margaret's reporting while president trump was watching television the rest of the world was watching the united states this was a grave national security crisis at the capitol the mob getting close to the vice president and his detail to the point of chaos and alarm and u.s allies and adversaries were also watching this some of them went on alert wondering who was in control in the u.s and that was we learned later the justification for mike pence saying i'm not getting in that secret service vehicle to leave the capitol i don't want the world to watch me flee the phrase what that would signal the phrase has been used dereliction of duty under that tough questioning by liz cheney did the president call anybody from the department of defense no did he call anybody from the department of homeland security no what was the president doing well he was calling senators asking them to carry out what he wanted done up on capitol hill this idea that the president's inaction met was worse than just kind of hanging out in his dining room he was purposely not working to stop the violence and it's so strange to hear this because as all of us know when you report on a white house what aids love to do is tell you the rock'em sock'em that the president was doing how active they were and what actions they were doing they are fiction writers about how active a president is and yet here no one can testify to action a fall a call comes in from the pentagon and the president's lawyer has to take it because he won't i mean this is just an upside down world in the way things are supposed to act in a most vital moment where the one person who can act isn't doing it and we heard from the former white house counsel pat cipolloni testifying that ivanka trump eric hershman mark meadows and others all begging the president to issue a stronger statement to go to the white house briefing room to tweet whatever it would be to stop the violence and the president would not do that i want to go over to the wall and scott mcfarlane who covers capitol hill and also the prosecution of many of these people who are up there on capitol hill you know and you can show us just how much danger it now appears the vice president pence was in the committee wasn't sugarcoating it at the end there they mentioned that 224 tweet 2 24 pm tweet from former president trump saying mike pence didn't have the courage it coincides with the vice president being evacuated to an underground safe space you heard that his detail was concerned about their own safety and whether the vice president was compromised but there's something else the senate's blocked off the senators are evacuated the mob starts moving away from the senate some get in the chamber but now they want to find members so they come over here to the house side you'll recall it around 2 45 pm they're smashing the windows trying to get inside one of them is shot after she breaches the capitol and reaches that window but here's the thing the members in the house hadn't escaped yet they're sheltering behind a barricaded door some of them beneath the chairs this was an infusion of energy from the 224 pm tweet nora it's not just inaction this committee's alleging it's that he's adding fuel to the fire through his posts i think we're going to hear more about that with his 4 17 p.m twitter video later in the hearing scott mcfarland thank you want to bring in our chief washington correspondent major garrett and again not only the president's inaction as scott talked about but the president knew there was violence he was watching it on tv he was stoking the violence in many ways he was placid and he was pleased about what he was seeing and as these phone logs limited though they are now suggests the president was still trying to provoke further delay in the certification the peaceful transfer of power one other point i'd like to make building on what john dickerson just said i covered the trump white house for a good number of years and what you would hear covering the white house when president president trump was in office was how active he was and how his fury how his rage how his penchant for chaos could get things done could move things that were seemingly immovable and there was a great sense of pride among those who served and believed in president trump that that was sort of a secret sauce to his presidency and at this moment of maximum peril for people for the democracy for the capital itself the president who prided himself on action and changing things and changing them quickly with the force of his either ego or direction did nothing major garrett thank you want to bring in uh jeff begayes who is our chief justice correspondent and jeff i know you were on the capitol grounds on january 6 about new you witnessed it firsthand that violence and at the same time i know you cover many areas of law enforcement i'm just thinking about the secret service i mean if you want a fly on the wall right to tell you what was going on it's the secret service agents right i mean they're there with the principles they're listening to the chatter they're talking to one another and yet that's a gaping hole in terms of now that their text messages have been deleted yeah there is this separately from the hearing we haven't heard anything really about these missing text messages the the messages that the committee wants to get its hands on as well as other investigations the dhs ig investigation uh but what we heard tonight nora is you know testimony from others who were in contact with the security detail members of the secret service and they talked about how there were these messages that they were hearing about a secret service agents as you noted who are trained to protect presidents and other dignitaries concerned about their safety sending messages or hoping messages would get back to their families and as i was listening to that just wondering if their families were reaching out to see how they were doing and perhaps that led to some text exchanges between family we don't know yet because we haven't seen nor has uh the have the investigators seen some of these text messages there is an investigation underway that could perhaps down the road lead to some sort of criminal investigation but what you saw in these images or how concerned they were about the safety of the vice president at that time and it just reminds me nora of the stress that law enforcement that day because they were outnumbered because they didn't have reinforcements the stress that they were under the members of the mpd members of capitol police who were trying to push these angry crowds back and again these crowds they were so consumed with anger all these chants of hang mike pence you know when have you heard people speak in that manner but they were serious that day this was not a tour these were crowds of people some have called them mobs of people who clearly wanted to take action against political leaders in this country it's an excellent point jeff and as you point out learning those new details too from that radio law enforcement chatter that we had not heard prior jeff begayes thank you want to go now to capitol hill and nicole killian who is up there and the co-chair of the committee liz cheney saying that while this is their last hearing for the summer there's going to be more hearings she said plural in the fall yeah that's right and the committee has been hinting at this for some time and what the vice church said today is that they are going to after this hearing use the month of august to kind of press forward with more leads that they have gotten throughout the course of this investigation you know many members have said that they continue to get new information almost daily and so they do intend to pursue those avenues and follow up with yet another hearing probably again in september sometime in the fall at minimum just to at least start to provide the outlines of a report that this committee will eventually put together nicole killian thank you as we await the hearing to resume you know there is also um the matter of josh hawley and i think it's just worth touching on i mean here is a senator who it was noted uh at the time had walked outside and raised his fist up to the crowd that the crowd reacted positively towards that fist step and then the committee chose to show video of him running out of the capital and evacuating what do you think the point they was they were trying to make there john well i think that's a little uh one of the points was he was in safety when he held his fist up and the capitol police officers who were protecting him and allowing him to do that safely were the ones at the point of contact the ones who were overrun the ones who were beaten and uh so i think it's basically trying to make again the point that you made earlier that this was not some group of tourists and that those who would uh sort of delight in the fantasy play of insurrection that this was deadly serious and that in the end it's the kind of thing you have to run away from not the kind of thing in the safety of the moment you can raise your fist to yeah there was nothing spontaneous about this political it wasn't a spontaneous political rally it was a planned motivated stoked um led directly by the president as the committee is alleged in these hearings and nora i do want to note that we also heard corroboration of cassidy hutchinson's testimony about at minimum a scuffle a very heated moment inside the beast the president's vehicle as he demanded to be taken to the capitol that was notable as well let's listen in by this time the president had been in his dining room for an hour i want you to just think of what you would have done if you were in his shoes and had the power to end the violence you would have immediately and forcefully told the rioters to stop and leave like stop and leave done as you heard that's exactly what his senior staff had been urging him to do but he resisted and he kept resisting for another almost two hours in the meantime all the president did was post two tweets one at 238 and the other at 3 13. one said quote stay peaceful the other said quote remain peaceful but the president already knew that the mob was attacking the police and had invaded the capitol neither tweet condemned the violence or told the mob to leave the capitol and disperse to appreciate how obvious it was that president trump was not meeting this moment it's helpful to look at the real-time reactions of his own son don jr to the first tweet captured in a series of text messages with mark meadows i'll warn the audience that these messages contain some strong language as you can see don junior's fir don jr first texted mr meadows at 2 53 he wrote he's got to condemn this asap the capitol police tweet is not enough mr meadows replied i am pushing it hard i agree don jr responded this is one you go to the mattresses on they will try to his entire legacy if this on this if it gets worse here's what don jr told us he meant by go to the mattresses 258 when you say that he need that mr meadows needs to go to the mattresses on this issue when you say go to the mattresses what does that mean just a reference for going all in i think it's a godfather reference sean hannity agreed and he also turned to mark meadows for help after the president's second tweet as you can see mr hannity texted at 3 31 to say trump needed to deliver a statement to the nation telling the rioters to leave the capitol mr meadows responded that he was quote on it don jr and sean hannity were not the only ones who implored mr meadows to get the president to speak to the nation and tell the mob to leave to go home go home throughout the attack mr meadows received texts from republican members of congress from current and former trump administration officials from media personalities and from friends like president trump's staff they knew president trump had to speak publicly to get the mob to stop let's look at just a few of these text messages fox news personality laura ingram said the president needs to tell the people in the capitol to go home former chief of staff mick mulvaney urged mark he needs to stop this now fox news personality brian kilmeade said please get him on tv destroying everything that you guys have accomplished when we interviewed white house counsel pat sipoloni he told us that he knew the president's two tweets were not enough let's listen to what he said i think the question did you believe that between square not anything about your advice to the president no i believe more needed to be done okay i believed that a public statement needed to be made 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 who would you put in that category well i i would put half philbin eric hirschman overall mark meadows ivanka once jared got there jared um general kellogg i'm probably missing some but kaylee i think was was there but i don't dance kavino and who on the staff did not want people to leave the capitol on the staff in the white house how about i i can't think of anybody you know on that day who didn't want people to get out of the the capital wants to you know particularly once the violence started no i mean what about the president yeah she said the staff so i answered no i said in the white house oh i'm sorry i apologize i thought you said who else on the staff i don't i can't reveal communications but obviously i think you know go let's pause on that last statement although pat cipolloni is being careful about executive privilege there really is no ambiguity about what he said almost everybody wanted president trump to instruct the mob to disperse president trump refused to understand how inadequate the president's tweets were let's examine his 238 tweet in more detail for context here's what was happening at that time [Applause] outside we have no way out we were just told that there has been tear gas in the rotunda and were being instructed to each of us get gas masks we went from a peaceful protest and this is a very dangerous situation right now um that there are i'm being told these protesters on the inside are around both chambers and there is now tear gas inside the capitol rotunda in fact members locked in the house are being instructed to put on masks ms matthews after president trump's tweet about vice president pence you told us you spoke to uh immediately you spoke to kaylee mcinanny what did you tell her and where did she go afterwards after the tweet about the vice president i found kaylee and told her that i thought the president needed to immediately send out a tweet that condemned the violence that we are seeing and that there needed to be a call to action to tell these people to leave the capitol and she agreed and walked over to the oval dining room to find the president we interviewed miss mcinning and others who were in the dining room with the president urging him to put out a statement ms matthews miss mcaney told us she came right back to the press office after meeting with the president about this particular tweet what did she tell you about what happened in that dining room when she got back she told me that a tweet had been sent out and i told her that i thought the tweet did not go far enough that i thought there needed to be a call to action and he needed to condemn the violence and we were in a room full of people but people weren't paying attention and so she looked directly at me and in a hush tone shared with me that the president did not want to include any sort of mention of peace in that tweet and that it took some convincing on their part those who were in the room and she said that there was a back and forth going over different phrases to find something that he was comfortable with and it wasn't until ivanka trump suggested the phrase stay peaceful that he finally agreed to include it the president resisted writing stay peaceful in a tweet he told mark meadows that the writers were doing what they should be doing and the writers understood they were doing what president trump wanted them to do president trump's message was heard clearly by stop the steel organizer ali alexander at 238 he told another organizer potus is not ignorant of what his words would do rioters storming the capital also heard president trump's message in this video you'll see surveillance footage from the rotunda that shows a group of oath keepers including jessica watkins who's been charged with seditious conspiracy you'll hear her walkie-talkie communications with others as they share intelligence and communicate about president trump's 238 tweet in real time again we warn the audience that this clip also contains strong language [Applause] cnn just said that they evacuated all members of congress into a safety room there's no safe place in the united states for any of these right now let me tell you i hope they understand that we are not joking around military principle 105 military principle 105 cave means grave trump just tweeted please support our capitol police they are on our side do not harm them that's saying a lot by what he didn't say he didn't say not to do anything to the congressman well he did not ask him to stand down he's just said uh stand by the capitol police they are on our side and they are good people so uh it's getting real down there i got it on tv and it's uh it's looking pretty freaking radical to me cnn said that trump has egged this on that he is egging it on and that he is watching the country burn two weeks before he leaves office he is not leaving office i don't give a what they say we are in the mezzanine we are in the main dome right now we are rocking it they're throwing grenades they're freaking shooting people with paintballs but we're in here be safe be safe god bless and godspeed and keep going get it jess do your this is what we lived up for everything we trained for took over the capitol overran the capitol we've now seen how president trump's supporters reacted to his tweets mr pottinger you told us that you considered the tweets sent to this point to be quote wholly inadequate given the urgency of the crisis what in your view would have been needed yeah i it was insufficient i think what you could count me among those who was uh hoping to see an unequivocal strong statement uh clearing out the capital telling people to stand down leave go home i i think that's what we were hoping for so something a lot more kind of definitive and not ambiguous because he has that power over his folks ms matthews you told us about a colleague who said during the attack that the president should not condemn the violence can you please tell us about how that about that moment and your reaction yes so a conversation started in the press office after the president sent out those two tweets that i deemed were insufficient and a colleague suggested that the president shouldn't condemn the violence because they thought it would be quote handing a win to the media if he were to condemn his supporters and i disagreed i thought that we should condemn the violence and condemn it unequivocally and i thought that he needed to include a call to action and to tell these people to go home and a debate ensued over it and i became visibly frustrated and my colleagues were well aware of that and i couldn't believe that we were arguing over this in the middle of the west wing talking about the politics of a tweet being concerned with handing the media a win when we had just watched all of that violence unfold at the capitol and so i motioned up at the tv and i said do you think it looks like we're effing winning because i don't think it does and i again reiterated that i thought that the president needed to condemn the violence because it didn't matter if it was coming from the left or the right that you should condemn violence a hundred percent of the time we've we've heard this evening how everyone in the president's orbit was pushing him to do more to tell the mob to leave the capitol one of these people one of those people was republican leader kevin mccarthy he managed to get the president on the phone and told him to call off his supporters as you will hear the president refused and so leader mccarthy reached out for help to ivanka trump who was at the white house and jared kushner who that afternoon had just arrived back on a flight from the middle east so at some point in the afternoon mr um mccarthy uh placed a phone call to mr scovino's desk line and it was transferred to the president is that correct that's generally what i recall okay were you involved in making that transferring that call i i yes okay where was the president at the time that he took that call he was in the dining room would you personally reach out to the president for more support i've already talked to the president um i called them um i think we need to make a statement um make sure that we can calm individuals down did mr mccarthy indicate that he had been in touch with president trump he indicated that uh he had had some conversation i don't recall whether he was with the president or somebody at the white house but i think he he expressed frustration that not taking the circumstance as seriously as they showed that moment i asked kevin mccarthy who's a republican leader about this and he said he called donald trump he finally got through to donald trump and he said 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 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 uh you know theft than you are and that's you know you've seen widespread reports of kevin mccarthy and the president having a basically a swearing conversation that's when the swearing convinced because the president was basically saying nah i'm okay with this leader mccarthy the president 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 i i conveyed to the president what i think is best to do and i'm hopeful the president will do it and have you spoken with his chief of staff i've spoken to the president i've spoken to other people in there into the white house as well who else reached out to miss trump that you know of that afternoon about the attack on the capitol i believe at one point mccarthy did some i heard my phone ringing turned the shower off saw was leader mccarthy who had a good relationship with he told me he was getting really ugly over at the capitol and said please you know anything you could do to help i would appreciate it i don't recall specific ass just anything you could do again i got the sense that you know they were they were you know they were scared they meaning missed mccarthy and people on the hill because of the violence that he was scared yes think about that leader mccarthy who was one of the president's strongest supporters was scared and begging for help president trump turned him down so he tried to call the president's children republican house member mike gallagher also employed the president to call off the attack 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 president-elect joe biden also went live on tv to demand that president trump tell the mob to leave i call on president trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the constitution and demand an end to this siege there was a desperate scramble for everyone to get president trump to do anything all this occurred and the president still did not act i yield to my friend from virginia thank you mr kinziger president trump finally relented to the pleas from his staff his family and from capitol hill for him to do something more at 417 187 minutes more than three hours after he stopped speaking at the ellipse after he stopped speaking to a mob that he had sent armed to the capitol that's when he tweeted a video telling the rioters to go home while also telling him them that they were special and that he loved them by that time although the violence was far from over law enforcement had started to turn the tide reinforcements were on the way and elected officials were in secure locations the writing was already on the wall the rioters would not succeed here's what was showing on fox news the channel the president was watching all afternoon back to brett bear with more information now brett what do you have yeah our pentagon team jen griffin lucas tomlinson confirming the defense department has now uh mobilized the entire d.c national guard 1800 troops take several hours as i was mentioning before to get them up and running the army secretary ryan mccarthy is setting up a headquarters at the fbi you just heard from david spunt that the fbi is also sending troops to the capitol it's no coincidence then that president trump finally gave in and went out to the rose garden at 403. his staff had prepared a script for him to read but he refused to use it as you can see on the screen you can see the script as stamp president has seen the script said quote i'm asking you to leave the capital region now and go home in a peaceful way the president was urged to stick to this script but he spoke off the cuff eric hirschman and nick luna went with the president to film the message in the rose garden let's hear what they had to say and see the never-before-seen raw footage of the president recording this video message ultimately these remarks that we're looking at here in exhibit 25 were not the remarks that the president delivered in the rose garden do you know why the president decided not to use these i don't know sir no i do not know why did the president use any written remarks to your knowledge or did he just go off the cuff to my knowledge it was off the cuff sir good chase yeah when you're ready sir you tell me when you're ready sir who's behind me he's gone he's got around we're all clear now i know your pain i know you're hurt we had a election let me say i know your pain i know you're hurt we had an election that was stolen from us it was a landslide election and everyone knows it especially the other side but you have to go home now we have to have peace we have to have law and order we have to respect our great people in law and order we don't want anybody hurt it's a very tough period of time there's never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us from me from you from our country this was a fraudulent election but we can't play into the hands of these people we have to have peace so go home we love you you're very special you've seen what happens you see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil i know how you feel but go home and go home at peace when i got there basically the president just had finished uh filming the video and i think he was basically retiring for the day was there any discussion about the president releasing a second video that day not that i recall when when he finished this video i think everyone was like day's over people are pretty drained we're pretty what drained uh but we say day day over there were still people in the capital at that point weren't there there were people in the capital but i believe by this stage you know law enforcement have to go back and look but i believe law enforcement was either there moving in or going to take charge i i just tell you people were emotionally drained by the time that videotape was done emotionally drained at the white house here's what was happening at the same time at the capitol we warned the audience that this clip also contained strong language and violence [Music] [Applause] everybody we need gas masks we need strong angry patriots to help our boys [Applause] [Applause] while president trump refused to even lift another finger to help other leaders honored their oaths and acted to clear the capitol and resumed the joint session for instance here are never before seen photos and video of congressional leaders in action during the attack the video is a portion of a call they had at approximately 4 45 with acting secretary of defense chris miller we're not going to let these people keep us from finishing our business so we need you to get the building cleared give us the okay so we can go back in session and finish up the people's business as soon as possible mr secretary and senator schumer some people here in the capitol police believe it would take us several days to secure the building do you agree with that analysis so what is the earliest thing we could safely resume uh our proceedings in the senate and house chambers the earliest we could safely resume uh here's my assessment but i'm i prefer to be on the ground which i personally would prefer to be right now but i need to be here i would say the vice president also worked the phones from his own secure evacuation location including conversations with acting secretary of defense miller and other military leaders well past president trump's 417 video let's look at some never-before-seen photographs of the vice president during this critical time and hear about the vice president's conversation with military leaders to secure the capital ensure everyone was safe vice president pence there were two or three calls with vice president pence he was very animated and he issued very explicit uh very direct unambiguous orders there was no question about that and he was and and i can get to the exact quotes i guess from some of our records somewhere but he was very animated very direct very firm to secretary miller get the military down there get the guard down here put down this situation et cetera as you heard earlier in the hearing the president did not call the vice president or anyone in the military federal law enforcement or d.c government not a single person but general milley did hear from mark meadows the contrast between that call and his calls with vice president pence tell you everything you need to know about president trump's dereliction of duty let's listen he said this from memory he said um we have we have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions uh we need to establish the narrative that um you know that the president is still in charge and that things are steady or stable or wood surfing i immediately interpret that as politics politics politics red flags for me personally no action but i remember distinctly and i don't do political narratives so while president trump and his advisors were drained other leaders upheld their oaths to do the right thing maybe it was exhausting to get the president to put out that video but think about the law enforcement officers who were attacked by the mob that day president trump had summoned them himself to washington and what about president trump he watched tv tweeted called senators to try to delay the count of electoral votes called rudy giuliani and argued with his staff who were insinuating or who were insisting that he should call off the attack ms matthews what was your reaction to president trump's message to the mob at 417 i was struck by the fact that he chose to begin the video by pushing the lie that there was a stolen election and as the video went on i felt a small sense of relief because he finally told these people to go home but that was immediately followed up by him saying we love you you're very special and that was disturbing to me because he didn't distinguish between those that peacefully attended his speech earlier that day and those that we watched cause violence at the capitol instead he told the people who we had just watched storm our nation's capital with the intent on overthrowing our democracy violently attack police officers and chant heinous things like hang mike pence we love you you're very special and as a spokesperson for him i knew that i would be asked to defend that and to me his refusal to act and call off the mob that day and his refusal to condemn the violence was indefensible and so i knew that i would be resigning that evening and so i finished out the work day went home and called my loved ones to tell them of my decision and resign that evening thank you indefensible let's hear what some of your colleagues in the press office told us about their reaction to the same 417 message i felt like it was the absolute bare minimum of what could have been said at that point or something on camera what else do you think should have been said um so a more forceful a more forceful um dismissal of the violence a more forceful command to go home a more forceful respect for law enforcement even a comparison to the respect that we have given law enforcement as it relates to what was done to them in the prior summer and i thought it was important that an acknowledgement be given to the u.s capitol building itself what it's a symbol of what it means not only to the people that work there but to the american people generally and the work of congress that by law needed to be conducted that day do you wish in hindsight that the president had asked the protesters to leave the capitol earlier than he ended up asking them to do that of course i would love it if the go home message would have happened earlier in the day the president's words matter we know that many of the rioters were listening to president trump we heard from one last week stephen ayers let's listen to what he had to say about the 417 message from the president and see how rioters reacted to the president's message in real time when we were there as soon as that come out everybody started talking about it and that's it seemed like it started to disperse you know some of the crowd i'm here delivering the president's message [Music] [Applause] he says go home but just as mr ayers said police were still fending off the last throws of the brutal assault i yield to the gentleman from illinois well everyone else was working to get congress back in session what did president trump do at 601 just one minute after the city-wide curfew went into effect he posted his last tweet of the day after officers engaged in multiple hours of hand-to-hand combat with over a hundred of them sustaining injuries president trump tweeted at 601 and justified the violence as a natural response to the election he said quote these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long go home with love and peace remember this day forever he called the mob great patriots he told people to remember the day forever he showed absolutely no remorse a few minutes later at 6 27 the president left the dining room and he went up to the white house residence for the night on the screen is the last photograph of the president that night as he went into the residence as he was gathering his things in the dining room to leave president trump reflected on the day's events with the white house employee this was the same employee who had met president trump in the oval office after he returned from the ellipse president trump said nothing to the employee about the attack he said only quote mike pence let me down mrs matthews what was your reaction to president trump's 601 tweet um at that point i had already made the decision to resign and this tweet just further cemented my decision i thought that january 6 2021 was one of the darkest days in our nation's history and president trump was treating it as a celebratory occasion with that tweet and so it just further cemented my decision to resign others agreed with your assessment of that tweet let's look at what they had to say who asked you about this tweet before it was sent the president tell us about that conversation everything that you said and he said to the best of your recollection sure so um he said what do you think of this and i believe i saw the text message or the on his phone and i i remember saying to him the wording on the first sentence um i guess it's one long sentence but uh the wording on the first sentence would lead some to believe that potentially he had something to do with the events that happened at the capitol what did he say i don't recall him saying anything in response to that i believe that was in the conversation did he change anything in light of your comments no sir he did not and what about this made you think that someone might perceive the president having a role in the violence at the capitol it was my interpretation of the words i mean i'm i'm not a you know i don't write speeches or anything but the phrase these are the things that happen to me sounded as if as if culpability was associated with it to me i don't think it's a patriotic act to attack the capital but i have no idea how to characterize the the people other than they trespassed destroyed property and uh assaulted the u.s capital i think calling them patriots is uh let's say a stretch to say the least is that all it is a stretch or just flatly wrong i don't think it's a patriotic act to attack the us capital would you call it unpatriotic criminal unpatriotic sure what happened at the capitol cannot be justified in any form or fashion it was wrong and it was tragic and a lot and and it was a terrible day it was a terrible day for this country i thought it was inappropriate why uh to my mind it was a day that should be remembered and infamous that wasn't the tenor of this tweet despite the violence of the day the effort to delay the certification continued that evening rudy giuliani called several of president trump's closest political allies in the hour before the joint session resumed representative jim jordan and senators marsha blackburn tommy tuberville bill hagerty lindsey graham josh hawley and ted cruz we know why mr giuliani was calling them because at 702 he left a voicemail for senator tuberville which later became public let's listen to just the start of it senator tuberville or i should say coach doberkos is rudy giuliani president's lawyer i'm calling you because i want to discuss with you how they're trying to rush this hearing and how we need you our republican friends to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislators to get more information to you mr giuliani did not even mention the attack on the capitol instead he was pushing on behalf of president trump to get members of congress to further delay the certification even though some members did proceed with objections vice president pence and congress stood firm and successfully concluded the joint session in the early morning hours of january 7th here are some of what members of the president's party said in the days and weeks after the attack there's no question none that president trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day no question about it the people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth the violence destruction and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable undemocratic and unamerican it was the saddest day i've ever had as serving as a member of this institution madam speaker today the people's house was attacked which is an attack on the republic itself there is no excuse for it a woman died and people need to go to jail and the president should never have spun up certain americans to believe something that simply cannot be well after three in the morning congress certified the 2020 election results soon after this statement by president trump was posted on dan scavino's twitter account because the president's account by now had been suspended as you can see president trump stuck with his big lie that the election was stolen but he did say there would be an orderly transition we learned though that the statement was not necessarily his idea jason miller a campaign advisor told us that after the joint session started he heard nothing from president trump or the white house about assuring the nation that the transfer of power would take place so mr miller took it upon himself to draft the statement and call the president at 9 23 that night to convince him to put it out let's listen to what he had to say about the call did he disagree with something that you would put in a statement some particular word or phrase that he did not want included uh i'd say just a wanted to say peaceful transition and i said that ship's kind of already sailed so we're gonna say orderly transition um that was that was about the extent of disagreement or pushback from the conversation the last person president trump spoke to by phone that night was johnny mcentee his head of personnel mr mcinty told us that they talked about the events of the day and the multiple resignation by administration officials the decision whether to resign was one that weighed heavily on people in the administration on the one hand people like mr pottinger and ms matthews here as proud as they were to have served refused to be associated with president trump's dereliction of duty but others were sincerely worried that leaving president trump to his own devices would put the country at continued risk listen to what we heard about that tension from pat sipoloni from general mark milley and eugene scalia who was the secretary of labor and then after that some people were resigning obviously over january 6 we know who they they were did i consider it yes did i do it no concerned about as if if people in the council's office left who would who would replace me and i had some concerns that it might be somebody who you know had been giving bad advice on the morning of the seventh the decision that i arrived at was that the most constructive thing i could think of was to seek a meeting of the cabinet you know i thought that trying to work with any administration to steady the ship was likely to have you know greater value um than uh simply resigning after which point i would have been powerless to uh really affect things with the she thought that administration should be a cabinet meeting do you know why mark thought it would not be i i i don't remember why i i think it probably had something to do with mark's view of how the president might react and you know but things like that now there was a couple of calls where uh you know meadows and or pompeo but more meadows um you know how's the president doing like pompeo might say how's the president doing and meadows would say well he's in a really dark place but here's one for example on the seventh of january so this is uh day after right potus is very emotional and in a bad place as you heard secretary scalia wanted president trump to convene a cabinet meeting he put his request in a memo to the president and here's what it said you can see that secretary scalia recommended that the president quote no longer publicly question the election results after wednesday no one can deny this is harmful secretary scalia also highlighted the importance of the public knowing the president would invoke his cabinet in decision making and not quote certain private individuals though secretary scalia did not say it he was referring to rudy giuliani and the rest of the so-called clown car working with president trump to try to overturn the election secretary scalia understood that the president needed to do more to reassure the public about the last few weeks of the trump administration mr pottinger when you made the decision to resign did you walk out of the white house immediately no i wanted to first talk to my immediate boss that was the national security advisor robert o'brien uh robert o'brien was traveling on the sixth i reached him at about 4 30 and told him that i was submitting my resignation he accepted the resignation but he also asked whether i could stay until he could get back to the white house and uh and i agreed to that we we both uh wanted to make sure that i was leaving in a responsible way uh we we still have foreign adversaries to worry about you know hackers terrorists uh nation states uh and um i did not want to leave my chair empty given that i was the top national security staffer uh in the white house so i ended up staying at my desk through the night when robert o'brien arrived back at the white house the next morning the morning of the 7th i debriefed with him and left for the last time so you and i both share a passion for national security of our country can you share with me what's your view on how january 6 impacted our national security well when you have a presidential transition even under the best circumstances it is a it's a time of vulnerability it's a time of vulnerability um for you know when you have a contested election um i i was certainly concerned that some of our adversaries would be tempted to probe or test u.s resolve as an example in late december the iranian government attacked the u.s embassy in baghdad they did that using some of their terrorist proxies uh president trump did handle that he he sent a very clear uh warning to the ayatollah and his regime which uh i i think had a had a useful effect um i think that we would have handled other threats of that nature and luckily no other threats uh uh materialized uh before the inauguration on the 20th but our national security was harmed in a different way by the 6th of january and that is that it [Music] i think it emboldened uh our our enemies by uh helping give them ammunition to feed a narrative that our system of government doesn't work that the united states uh is in decline uh china uh the the putin regime in russia tehran uh they're fond of pushing those kinds of narratives and by the way they're wrong the you know we've been hearing for the entirety of u.s history from kings and despots that the united states is is in decline and those kings and despots have been proven wrong every single time but nonetheless january 6 helped feed a perception that i think emboldens our adversaries the you know the the other part i i think is simply our our allies i heard from a lot of friends in europe in asia allies close friends and supporters of the united states that they were concerned about the health of our democracy and so i think it's incumbent upon us to put their minds at ease to put our own hearts at ease by investigating what happened on the sixth and making sure that it never happens again look i've always said democracies are not defined by bad days they're defined by how they recover from those bad days and that's what we're doing here is to bring accountability to that so we can actually come back even stronger than when we went into january 6. ms matthews as you left the white house for the last time that night january 6. what did you think americans needed to hear from president trump i think that the american people needed to hear and see him publicly commit to a peaceful or at least orderly transition of power in the aftermath of the capital attack it wasn't just enough for us to ask him to condemn the violence he needed to agree that he would peacefully transfer power over to the incoming administration because that's one of our fundamentals and what it means to live in a democracy and so that evening when i resigned the resignation statement that i drafted i referenced this and i said our nation needs a peaceful transfer of power in hopes that it would put some sort of public pressure on the white house and president trump to publicly agree to an orderly transition thank you i yield to my friend from virginia thank you mr kensinger the staff who remained at the white house on the morning of january 7th knew the president needed to dress the nation again and they had a speech prepared for him that morning but he refused for hours to give it as you heard cassidy hussion testify previously president trump finally agreed to record an address to the nation later that evening the evening of january 7th because of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th amendment or by impeachment we know these threats were real sean hannity said so himself in a text message that day to press secretary kelly mciney he wrote no more stolen election talk yes impeachment and 25th amendment are real we obtained the never-before-seen raw footage of the president recording his address to the nation that day on january 7th more than 24 hours after the last time he had addressed the nation from the rose garden let's take a look whenever you're ready sir i would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday and to those who broke the law you will pay you do not represent our movement you do not represent our country and if you broke the law you can't say that i'm not you i already said you will pay the demonstrators who infiltrated the capital have defied the seat of justice it's defiled right see i can't see it very well okay i'll do this i'm going to do this let's go but this election is now over congress has certified the results i don't want to say the election's over i just want to say congress has certified the results without saying the election's over okay now congress yeah right now congress i didn't say over so let me see don't go to the paragraph before okay i would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday yesterday's a hard word for me ah good take the word yesterday because it doesn't work with the heinous attack on our country say on our country want to say that no no my only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote my only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote on january 7th one day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie president trump still could not say that the election was over mr pottinger you've taken the oath multiple times in the marines and as an official in the executive branch can you please share with us your view about the oath of office and how that translates into accepting election results and a transfer of power sure you know this isn't the first time that we've had a close election in this country and president trump certainly had every right to challenge in court the results of these various elections but once you've had due process under the law you have to conform with the law no matter how bitter the result once you've presented your evidence in court judges have heard that evidence judges have ruled if you continue to contest an election you're not just contesting an election anymore you're actually challenging the constitution itself you are challenging the societal norms that allow us uh to remain unified um i think that one example for example you've got vice president uh richard nixon back in 1960 had lost a hard-fought election against senator john f kennedy there were irregularities in that vote according to a lot of the histories and a lot of vice president nixon's supporters asked him to fight contest it don't concede but in one of his finest moments vice president nixon said no he said it would tear the country to pieces and he conceded to jack kennedy and announced that he was going to support him as the next president we have an example of a democratic candidate for president vice president al gore who faced a very similar dilemma he strongly disagreed with the supreme court decision that lost his election bid and allowed president george w bush to take office but he gave a speech of concession in late december mid or late december of of 2000 where he said this is for the sake of the unity of of us as a people and for the strength of our democracy i also am going to concede i'm going to to support uh the the new president his speech is actually a pretty good model i think for any candidate of for any office up to it including the president and from any party to read particularly right now um you know the the oath that our presidents take it's very similar to the oath of office i took as a u.s marine officer and the oath i took as a white house official uh it is to to support and defend the constitution it's to protect the constitution to bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution and it is a sacred oath it's an oath that we take before our families we take that oath before god um and um um i i think that um we have um an obligation to live by by that oath and i do still believe that we have the most ingenious system of government on earth despite its imperfections i don't envy countries that don't have this system that actually allows for a predictable peaceful transfer of government every four to eight years and it's not something that we should take for granted thank you as we heard at the start of the hearing in the immediate aftermath of january 6 republican leader kevin mccarthy understood that president trump bore responsibility for that day and should have taken immediate action to stop the violence he was even more candid in calls with republican colleagues as you'll hear in a moment recordings of some of these calls that were made were later published by the new york times the context for these calls was that a resolution had been introduced in the house calling for vice president pence and the cabinet to remove president trump from power under the 25th amendment let's listen i've had it with this guy what he did is unacceptable nobody can defend that and nobody should the defend discussion i would have with him is that i think this will pass and it will be my recommendation you should be done i mean that would be my take but i don't think he would take it but i don't know but let me be very clear to all of you and i've been very clear to the president he bears responsibilities for his words and actions no way fans or buts i asked him personally today does he hold responsibility for what happened does he feel bad about what happened he told me he does have some responsibility for what happened um and he need to acknowledge that president trump has never publicly acknowledged his responsibility for the attack the only time he apparently did so was in that private call with kevin mccarthy there's something else president trump has never acknowledged the names and the memories of the officers who died following the attack on the capitol we're honored to be joined tonight by police and first responders who bravely protected us on january 6th your character and courage give us hope that democracy can and should prevail even in the face of a violent insurrection we on this dies can never thank you enough for what you did to protect our democracy on january 9th two of president trump's top campaign officials texted each other about the president's glaring silence on the tragic death of capitol police officer brian sicknick who succumbed to his injuries the night of january 7th these campaign officials were tim murtagh trump's director of communications and one of his deputies matthew walking their job was to convince people to vote for president trump so they knew his heart his mind and his voice as well as anyone and they knew how he connects with his supporters here's what they had to say about their boss murtaugh said also shitty not to have acknowledged the death of the capitol police officer walking responded that's enraging to me everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie to which murtaugh replied you know what this is of course if he acknowledged the dead cop he'd be implicitly faulting the mob and he won't do that because they're his people and he would also be close to acknowledging that what he'd lit at the rally got out of control no way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault no way president trump did not then and does not now have the character or courage to say to the american people what his own people know to be true he is responsible for the attack on the capitol on january 6th thank you and i yield to the gentleman from illinois thank you miss gloria tonight's testimony and evidence is as sobering as it is straightforward within minutes of stepping off the ellipse stage donald trump knew about the violent attack on the capitol from the comfort of his dining room he watched on tv as the attack escalated he sent tweets that inflamed and expressed support for the desire of some to literally kill vice president mike pence for three hours he refused to call off the attack donald trump refused to take the urgent advice he received that day not from his political opponents or from the liberal media but from his own family his own friends his own staff and his own advisors in the midst of an attack when there was no time for politics the people closest to trump told him the truth it was his supporters attacking the capital and he alone could get through to them so they pled for him to act to place his country above himself still he refused to lead and to meet the moment to honor his oath it was only once the vice president and the members of congress were in secure locations and the officers defending the capital began to turn the tide that then president trump engaged in the political theater of telling the mob to go home and even then he told them all they were special and that he loved them whatever your politics whatever you think about the outcome of the election we as americans must all agree on this donald trump's conduct on january 6th was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation it is a stain on our history it is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service of our democracy when we present our full findings we will recommend changes to laws and policies to guard against another january 6th the reason that's imperative is that the forces donald trump ignited that day have not gone away the militant intolerant ideologies the militias the alienation and the disaffection the weird fantasies and disinformation they're all still out there ready to go that's the elephant in the room but if january 6 has reminded us of anything i pray it has reminded us of this laws are just words on paper they mean nothing without public servants dedicated to the rule of law and who are held accountable by a public that believes oath matters oaths matter more than party tribalism or the cheap thrill of scoring political points we the people must demand more of our politicians and ourselves oaths matter character matters truth matters if we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles this great experiment of ours our shining beacon on a hill will not endure i yield to the gentlewoman from virginia thank you mr kenzinger throughout our hearings we've provided many facts and painted a vivid picture of the events of january 6. the violence the human toll both emotional and physical including the tragic loss of life the threats to our constitution the rule of law and the danger to this nation a nation we all love as americans in tonight's hearing we've gone into great detail about the events inside the white house on january 6th we've described how the president of the united states who was bound by oath to the constitution and by duty to ensure the laws are faithfully executed took no action when the cornerstone of our democracy a peaceful transition of power was under attack but it's more than that donald trump summoned a violent mob and promised to lead that mob to the capitol to compel those he thought would cave to that kind of pressure and when he was thwarted in his effort to lead the armed uprising he instigated the attackers to target the vice president with violence a man who just wanted to do his constitutional duty so in the end this is not as it may appear a story of inaction in a time of crisis but instead it was the final action of donald trump's own plan to assert the will of the american people and remain in power not until it was clear that his effort to violently disrupt or delay the counting of the election results had failed did he send his message a message to his supporters in which he commensurated with their pain and he told them affectionately to go home that was not the message of condemnation and just punishment for those who broke the law that we expect from a president whose oath and duty is to ensure the laws are faithfully executed but instead it was his newest version of stand back and stand by to me this is personal i first swore an oath to support and defend the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic when i entered the u.s naval academy at age 17. [Music] i spent two decades on ships at sea defending our nation from known and identifiable foreign enemies who sought to do us harm i never imagined that that enemy would come from within i was not as prescient as abraham lincoln who 23 years before the civil war said if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and its finisher donald trump was the author and we the people for ourselves and our posterity should not let donald trump be the finisher thank you and i yield to the vice chair thank you very much mrs luria i want to thank our witnesses for joining us today the members of the select committee may have additional questions for today's witnesses and we ask that you respond expeditiously in writing to those questions without objection members will be permitted 10 business days to submit statements for the record including opening remarks and additional questions from our witnesses i'd now like to turn things to chairman thompson for a few closing words the members of the committee and i appreciate and thank all persons who've come forward voluntarily to provide information to help protect our democracy and our work continues as we've made clear throughout these hearings our investigation is going forward we continue to receive new information every day we are pursuing many additional witnesses for testimony we will reconvene in september to continue laying out our findings to the american people and pushing for accountability in the first hearing of this series i asked american people to consider the facts and judge for themselves the facts are clear and unambiguous i thank the american people for their attention over the past several weeks i wish you all a pleasant evening and let me again thank our witnesses today we've seen bravery and honor in these hearings and miss matthews and mr pottinger both of you will be remembered for that as will cassidy hutchinson she sat here alone took the oath and testified before millions of americans she knew all along that she would be attacked by president trump and by the 50 60 and 70 old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege but like our witnesses today she has courage and she did it anyway cassidy sarah and our other witnesses including officer caroline edwards shea moss and her mother ruby freeman are an inspiration to american women and to american girls we owe a debt to all of those who have and will appear here and that brings me to another point this committee has shown you the testimony of dozens of republican witnesses those who served president trump loyally for years the case against donald trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies it is instead a series of confessions by donald trump's own appointees his own friends his own campaign officials people who worked for him for years and his own family they have come forward and they have told the american people the truth and for those of you who seem to think the evidence would be different if republican leader mccarthy had not withdrawn his nominees from this committee let me ask you this do you really think bill barr is such a delicate flower that he would wilt under cross-examination pat sipoloni eric hirschman jeff rosen richard donahue of course they aren't none of our witnesses are at one point in 2016 when he was first running for office donald trump said this i could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody and i wouldn't lose any voters that quote came to mind last week when audio from trump adviser steve bannon surfaced from october 31st 2020 just a few days before the presidential election let's listen and what trump's going to do is just declare victory right he's going to declare a victory but that doesn't mean he's a winner he's just going to say someone the democrats more of our people vote early that count theirs voted mail and so they're going to have a natural disadvantage and trump's going to take advantage of that's our strategy he's going to claim himself a winner so when you wake up wednesday morning it's going to be a firestorm also also if trump is if trump is losing by 10 or 11 o'clock at night it's going to be even crazier no because he's going to sit right there and say they stole it if biden's winning trump is going to do some crazy and of course four days later president trump declared victory when his own campaign advisors told him he had absolutely no basis to do so what the new steve bannon audio demonstrates is that donald trump's plan to falsely claim victory in 2020 no matter what the facts actually were was premeditated perhaps worse donald trump believed he could convince his voters to buy it whether he had any actual evidence of fraud or not and this same thing continued to occur from election day onward until january 6th donald trump was confident that he could convince his supporters the election was stolen no matter how many lawsuits he lost and he lost scores of them he was told over and over again in immense detail that the election was not stolen there was no evidence of widespread fraud it didn't matter donald trump was confident he could persuade his supporters to believe whatever he said no matter how outlandish and ultimately that they could be summoned to washington to help him remain president for another term as we showed you last week even president trump's legal team led by rudy giuliani knew they had no actual evidence to demonstrate the election was stolen again it didn't matter here's the worst part donald trump knows that millions of americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation where it threatened they would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her and he is preying on their patriotism he is preying on their sense of justice and on january 6th donald trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our capital and our constitution he has purposely created the false impression that america is threatened by a foreign force controlling voting machines or that a wave of tens of millions of false ballots were secretly injected into our election system or that ballot workers have secret thumb drives and are stealing elections with them all complete nonsense we must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation in late november of 2020 while president trump was still pursuing lawsuits many of us were urging him to put any genuine evidence of fraud forward in the courts and to accept the outcome of those cases as january 6 approached i circulated a memo to my republican colleagues explaining why our congressional proceedings to count electoral votes could not be used to change the outcome of the election but what i did not know at the time was that president trump's own advisers also republicans also conservatives including his white house counsel his justice department his campaign officials they were all telling him almost exactly the same thing i was telling my colleagues there was no evidence of fraud or irregularities sufficient to change the election outcome our courts had ruled it was over now we know that it didn't matter what any of us said because donald trump wasn't looking for the right answer legally or the right answer factually he was looking for a way to remain in office let's put that aside for a moment and focus just on what we saw today in our hearing tonight you saw an american president faced with a stark and unmistakable choice between right and wrong there was no ambiguity no nuance donald trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement to threaten our constitutional order there is no way to excuse that behavior it was indefensible and every american must consider this can a president who is willing to make the choices donald trump made during the violence of january 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again in this room in 1918 the committee on women's suffrage convened to discuss and debate whether women should be granted the right to vote this room is full of history and we on this committee know we have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many americans have fought and died for ronald reagan's great ally margaret thatcher said this let it never be said that the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it let me assure every one of you this our committee understands the gravity of this moment the consequences for our nation we have much work yet to do and we will see you all in september i request those in the hearing room remain seated until the capitol police have escorted witnesses and members from the room without objection the committee stands adjourned and the january 6 committee making the case tonight that donald trump betrayed his oath as president of the united states to preserve protect and defend the constitution and that instead of working towards the peaceful transition of power he willfully sat silent in his dining room watching the violence and even stoking the violence by his tweets and his inaction as his former press secretary said he put gasoline on the fire um margaret brennan there was a lot we learned today and new evidence and congressman kinsinger saying president trump did not fail to act he chose not to act what are the implications of that well congressman kensinger has been clear here that he sees this as the true test for his fellow republicans saying failure to act is that a strong leader is that the character of someone you want leading the party it's a test of the kind of republican party he and congresswoman cheney are standing for versus what president trump and his behavior as you heard was laid out tonight also interesting to hear kenzinger lay out the ongoing threat again bringing that back to he said the militant intolerant ideologies the militias the alienation the disaffection the fantasies and dis information they're all out there ready to go so this isn't just a prosecution of the past it's a warning of the future a warning to the party it felt in some ways like a closing argument but then we also heard this is not it in the fall we will also potentially get more hearings one if not two we learned that tonight as well and you see we just saw many of the members of the committee hugging those capital police officers who were there that that sought to defend uh the symbol of democracy the u.s capitol on january 6. there was a lot of talk about oaths tonight you had two members of congress who served you had one of the witnesses a marine um that the oath that everybody who serves and the president takes has to mean something those words have to mean something and today was the most acute failure on the president's part and just to go back to margaret's point about the party there is no job of responsibility where a failure this grave of your central task wouldn't bounce you from the job immediately you cannot say that out loud as a republican right now without getting in trouble about donald trump and that's an extraordinary thing to have such a failure be something you just cannot say as a republican or else you end up like liz cheney who is facing uh possibly uh losing her seat and then robert the the contrast i mean everyone in the white house wanted donald trump to try and stop the violence and he refused he even refused to talk about something being peaceful when he finally went before the cameras um there were new details that we did learn today from this hearing that we didn't know previously tonight's testimony showed how close the united states came to a very dark moment new testimony new footage we saw in a secure location the congressional leaders of the united states democrats and republicans huddled around a phone talking to the acting secretary of defense chris miller wondering can this building be secure can we do our jobs it was an open question that night on january 6 whether american democracy would continue as it should as based on the constitution and this testimony was all new it was new information coming to light it has political implications but more importantly consequences for democracy as people watch this and digest it a bipartisan moment there as well another one that has consequences for potentially the future of the republican party is former vice president mike pence considers a run for president himself he was working the phones the commander-in-chief wasn't but the vice president was calling the pentagon and others trying to get them to act and bring in the national guard we heard the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff praising vice president pence saying he was firm he was direct he took on the role of shadow president because the actual president wasn't doing anything other than creating more chaos and there was also a fascinating thing there was the details of the white house uh lawyers and otherwise absolutely ringing with sweat because they'd finally gotten the president to make a statement then they all sort of collapsed mike pence had another half a day ahead of him at the capitol to get the vote secure right so it wasn't just that he was on the phone to milly asking about the military he then worked another half a day to make sure the vote could be taken and stay at his post another way in which mike pence was doing the job of the day while the president of the united states had had fled the field scott we also learned tonight that members of vice president pence's secret service detail were saying goodbye to family members they were concerned about their own physical safety it was that close to where they were they were concerned they couldn't even evacuate mike pence and his family that were there that radio traffic really landed vice president pence's security detail his secret service detail concerned about calling their families that they may be in danger that the former vice president was compromised as you see him here being evacuated down a staircase down to an underground hiding area they were worried they may die but it's worth noting in these 187 minutes the committee described there were people who died there were five deaths and there were police suicides among the first responders in the days after it's also worth noting in those 187 minutes there was ongoing kinetic confrontations and fighting police officers traumatized and nora it's also worth noting there are 850 people now charged with crimes many of whom are soon headed to prison we also saw some of this video of donald trump practicing what he was going to say a script had been agreed upon by others and then him practicing and changing uh the words we could we all sat here while they were playing that and saying if trump sees this now he's going to be angry about that because it makes him look foolish right and that phrase he wouldn't say the election is over and that's one of those um characteristics of the president uh the former president that came up time and again throughout these hearings which was you hear from people in the military and others who swore an oath of allegiance to defend the country against all enemies foreign and domestic allegiance to the constitution you heard that time and time again with mike pence with donald trump you hear about he didn't want to look weak he didn't want to say something that would make it look like he lost that he was a loser you that's one of the contrasts that you heard laid out here throughout the hearings i also thought it was interesting nora at the end of it that that congresswoman cheney button something up here um and that is you know when you can't argue something on the substance you go on the process right that's what lawyers always say and she made the point there that it was a decision by kevin mccarthy the republican leader not to go ahead and seat republicans on this panel uh that adam kinzinger and cheney were on there because of pelosi they've been complaining and donald trump is saying no one's defending me this would be so different if there were more republicans on the committee and liz cheney's point was her point was this was their decision and that look you had all these trump republicans you had bill barr you had pat sipoloni up there were they not tough enough to answer those questions they seemed to do just fine so what were you afraid of on the process there i thought that was an interesting point because it's one of the things used to sort of discredit this committee politically do you think bill barr is such a delicate delicate flower and they've also made this tried to paint this narrative that there are these courageous young republican women who are coming forward while there's 50 60 and 70 year old men who are hiding behind privilege well yeah and it's actually not not a narrative they have to paint because it turns out to be the truth um you know one thing that strikes me is that the defense here could be no donald trump took actions x y and z but you had an extraordinary tweet go out tonight while this hearing is going on a hearing about an attack on congress the twitter account of the house republican conference chairman elise stefanik said this is all hearsay well first of all that's not true right so that's a lie because it's direct testimony of people who were involved but what's interesting about that more to the point is that this is one of the tactics that led to january 6 which is when there's something serious going on you divert the attention by saying something that's not true and that's the way in which this is still a live issue for democracy this is not about the past this is about people employing the deception of the of the past in real time to make people look away from a very serious moment which is a president of the united states not doing his job well threatening them i mean threatening the safety in many ways of these people who have come forward to testify in the case of furthering an understanding about just what happened and how close we came to defiling the symbol of our democracy this moment is a crossroads a reckoning for the republican party after hearing all this where do they go do they back trump again in 2024 it's also a reckoning in a crossroads for attorney general merrick garland as his department hears all this reviews this information reviews the new evidence do they make a decision that former president trump had criminal intent as he sat there on january 6. so let's answer that question because we have we have followed this is now the eighth hearing that we've all watched together they've interviewed more than a thousand people the case has been very damning about what the president did in terms of uh inviting stoking inflaming this mob but can he be held criminally responsible and for what will it go further than these public hearings will the attorney general move on donald trump in a way that only ends up making him legally culpable right and that's a huge legal and political question um and that's something i think merrick garland said just this week george jeff piguets was no one is above the law but that doesn't answer the question of on what basis can you prosecute it's also one of the arguments for the committee to have been set up in the first place within congress which was this public airing for the record and that was compelling to people like you heard today these republicans who went for it and testified like matt pottinger who were appealed to on the basis of duty and public record that there was value in this even if the justice department doesn't go ahead with the prosecution that this will be there for the public record in the end nicole killing is still up on the hill for us and nicole while this was the eighth and final hearing this summer we did hear from co-chair liz cheney that there will be more hearings in september what more are they hoping to show us well at this point we know the committee is working on a report so we expect them to start putting forth some of those findings again as soon as september in the form of some type of interim report and perhaps something a little later in the year and they say the midterms will not be a factor in their decision to release that report in addition you will have you know legislative solutions that's also a goal of something of this committee we already saw this week in the senate some reforms that were proposed to the electoral count act to really make the process easier going forward and to kind of clear up any ambiguities in terms of the law as far as the electoral process the role of the vice president you also as you all have referenced the doj investigation as well as this separate investigation that's happening in fulton county georgia looking into the former president's efforts there to pressure state officials so there's still a lot going on with respect to a number of investigations but i also just want to point out a little bit of color here being at the capitol capitalist people are coming out here because again as you heard towards the end of that hearing uh that reference to some of the officers uh to some of the widows and family members who were in the room and i thought what was striking is that many of them told me going in they didn't expect to hear anything new but yet we still heard a number of new revelations and you saw towards the end of that hearing many of them holding hands as they were acknowledged tonight and i think that is striking because many of them were crying in that first hearing and it's just a testament to the resolve that many of these families here and why they felt it was important to be here again tonight nicole killian thank you thanks to everyone here scott mcfarlane margaret brennan robert costa john dickerson thanks to all of our collet major garrett jeff begays thanks to everyone that's been involved in our coverage tonight more will happen on our cbs news streaming your local news and tomorrow on cbs mornings this has been a cbs news special report thank you for joining us i'm nora o'donnell in washington cbs news sunday morning with jane pauley on cbs

Channel: CBS News

Views: 854,256

Keywords: cbs, cbs news, live, live news, livestream, news, house, house select committee, assault on the capitol, capitol riot, january 6, insurrection, trump, joe biden, 2020, U.S. Capitol, january 6 house committee, capitol attack, jan 6 hearing, donald trump, mike pence, vice president, 2020 presidential election, jan. 6, trump aides, politics

Id: 2BJEZlRm9kg

Length: 186min 20sec (11180 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 22 2022