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At 1:49 p.m., just as the DC Metropolitan Police officially declared a riot and the Capitol Police were calling for help from the National Guard to address the crisis, President Trump sent a tweet with a link to a recording of his speech at the Ellipse.471
At about that point, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone became aware of the Capitol riot. The Committee collected sworn testimony from several White House officials, each with similar accounts. The President’s White House Counsel Pat Cipollone testified that he raced downstairs, and went to the Oval Office Dining Room as soon as he learned about the violence at the Capitol—likely just around or just after 2 p.m. Cipollone knew immediately that the President had to deliver a message to the rioters—asking them to leave the Capitol.
Here is how he described this series of events:
. . . the first time I remember going downstairs was when people had breached the Capitol… But I went down with [Deputy White House Counsel] Pat [Philbin], and I remember we were both very upset about what was happening. And we both wanted, you know, action to be taken related to that . . . But we went down to the Oval Office, we went through the Oval office, and we went to the back where the President was. . . . I think he was already in the dining room . . . I can’t talk about conversations [with the President]. I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response, statement, public statement, that people need to leave the Capitol now.472
Cipollone also left little doubt that virtually everyone among senior White House staff had the same view:
There were a lot of people in the White House that day . . . Senior people who, you know, felt the same way that I did and who were working very hard to achieve that result….
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[Cassidy Hutchinson:]
And I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, “The rioters have gotten to the Capitol, Mark. We need to go down and see the President now.” And Mark looked up at him and said, “He doesn’t want to do anything, Pat.” And Pat said something to the effect of—and very clearly said this to Mark—something to the effect of, “Mark something needs to be done, or people are going to die and the blood’s gonna be on your F’ing hands. This is getting out of control. I’m going down there….
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The testimony of a White House employee with national security responsibilities also corroborated these facts. This employee testified about a conversation between Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann in which Herschmann indicated that the President did not want to do anything to halt the violence. That employee told the Select Committee that he overheard Herschmann saying something to the effect of “the President didn’t want anything done.”478….
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Testimony from both Deputy Press Secretary Matthews and White House Counsel Cipollone indicated that it would have been easy, and nearly instantaneous, for Trump to make a public statement insisting that the crowd disperse. As Matthews explained, he could have done so in under a minute:
. . . 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 is 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.480
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At 2:13 p.m., rioters broke into the Capitol and flooded the building.482
As the violence began to escalate, many Trump supporters and others outside the White House began urgently seeking his intervention. Mark Meadows’s phone was flooded with text messages. These are just some of them:
[Editor’s note: in brackets are two more messages from members of Congress sent at this time, as well as the remainder of a few messages not included in the Executive Summary but available on pages 602 and 604 of the Report}
[Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, 2:28 p.m.: “Mark I was just
told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol Please
tell the President to calm people[.] This isn’t the way to solve anything.”229]
2:32 p.m. from Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham: “Hey Mark, The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home.”483 [“This is hurting all of us.” “He is destroying his legacy and playing into every stereotype . . .we lose all credibility against the BLM/Antifa crowd if things go South.” “You can tell him I said this.”230]
2:35 p.m. from Mick Mulvaney: “Mark: he needs to stop this, now. Can I do anything to help?”484
[Representative Barry Loudermilk, 2:44 p.m.: “It’s really bad up here
on the hill.” “They have breached the Capitol.”232 At 2:48 p.m.,
Meadows responded: “POTUS is engaging.”233 At 2:49 p.m., Loudermilk responded: “Thanks. This doesn’t help our cause.”234]
2:46 p.m. from Rep. William Timmons (R–SC): “The president needs to stop this ASAP”485
2:53 p.m. from Donald Trump, Jr.: “He’s got to condem [sic] this shit. Asap. The captiol [sic] police tweet is not enough.”486 [7 Meadows
responded: “I am pushing it hard. I agree.”238 Later, Trump, Jr.,
continued: “This his [sic] one you go to the mattresses on. They will
try to fuck his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.”239]
3:04 p.m. from Representative Jeff Duncan (R–SC): “POTUS needs to calm this shit down”487
3:09 p.m. from former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus “TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!”488
3:13 p.m. from Alyssa Farah Griffin: “Potus has to come out firmly and tell protestors to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed.”489
3:15 p.m. from Representative. Chip Roy (R–TX): “Fix this now.”490
3:31 p.m. from Fox News anchor Sean Hannity: “Can he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to peacefully leave the capital [sic]”491
3:58 p.m. from Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade: “Please get him on tv. Destroying every thing you guys have accomplished”492
Others on Capitol Hill appeared in the media, or otherwise appeared via internet. Representative Mike Gallagher (R–WI) issued a video appealing directly to the President:
Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is over. Call it off!493
Some Members of Congress sent texts to President Trump’s immediate staff or took to Twitter, where they knew the President spent time:
Senator Bill Cassidy (R–LA) issued a tweet: @realDonaldTrump please appear on TV, condemn the violence and tell people to disband.494
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Representative. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R–WA) sent a text to Mark Meadows: We need to hear from the president. On TV. I hate that Biden jumped him on it.495
Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy tried repeatedly to reach President Trump, and did at least once. He also reached out for help to multiple members of President Trump’s family, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.496 Kushner characterized Leader McCarthy’s demeanor on the call as “scared”….
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The Committee has evidence from multiple sources regarding the content of Kevin McCarthy’s direct conversation with Donald Trump during the violence.
Representative. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R–WA), to whom McCarthy spoke soon after, relayed more of the conversation between McCarthy and President Trump:
And he said [to President Trump], “You have got to get on TV. You’ve got to get on Twitter. You’ve got to call these people off.” You know what the President said to him? This is as it’s happening. He said, “Well Kevin, these aren’t my people. You know, these are Antifa. And Kevin responded and said, “No, they’re your people.They literally just came through my office windows and my staff are running for cover. I mean they’re running for their lives. You need to call them off.” And the President’s response to Kevin to me was chilling. He said, “Well Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election, you know, theft than you are”.500
Representative. Herrera Beutler’s account of the incident was also corroborated by former Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who testified that Leader McCarthy told him several days later that President Trump had said during their call: “Kevin, maybe these people are just more angry about this than you are. Maybe they’re more upset.”501
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At 2:16 p.m., security records indicate that the Vice President was “being pulled” to a safer location.507
In an interview with the Select Committee, a White House Security Official on duty at the White House explained his observations as he listened to Secret Service communications and made contemporaneous entries into a security log. In particular, he explained an entry he made at 2:24 p.m.:
Committee Staff: Ok. That last entry on this page is: “Service at the Capitol does not sound good right now.”
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Official: Correct.
Committee Staff: What does that mean?
Official: The members of the VP detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There were a lot of—there was a lot of yelling, a lot of—I don’t know—a lot [of] very personal calls over the radio. So—it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say good-bye to family members, so on and so forth. It was getting—for whatever the reason was on the ground, the VP detail thought that this was about to get very ugly….
Also at 2:24 p.m., knowing the riot was underway and that Vice President Pence was at the Capitol, President Trump sent this tweet:
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” 509
Evidence shows that the 2:24 p.m. tweet immediately precipitated further violence at the Capitol. Immediately after this tweet, the crowds both inside and outside of the Capitol building violently surged forward.510 Outside the building, within ten minutes thousands of rioters overran the line on the west side of the Capitol that was being held by the Metropolitan Police Force’s Civil Disturbance Unit, the first time in history of the DC Metro Police that such a security line had ever been broken.511
Virtually everyone on the White House staff the Select Committee interviewed condemned the 2:24 p.m. tweet in the strongest terms.
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Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger told the Select Committee that the 2:24 p.m. tweet was so destructive that it convinced him to resign as soon as possible:
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 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 we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation. And that is why I had said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured on the fire.
So that was the moment that I decided that I was going to resign, that that would be my last day at the White House. I simply didn’t want to be associated with the events with the events that were unfolding at the Capitol.512
Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews had a similar reaction:
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.
P.88
And 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 people, telling them that what they were doing at the steps of the Capitol and entering the Capitol 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 were seeing.
And I am 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 have seen the impact that his words have on his supporters. They truly latch onto 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.513
Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere stated the following:
Committee Staff: What was your reaction when you saw that tweet?
Deere: Extremely unhelpful.
Committee Staff: Why?
Deere: It wasn’t the message that we needed at that time. It wasn’t going to—the scenes at the U.S. Capitol were only getting worse at that point. This was not going to help that.514
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told the Select Committee, “I don’t remember when exactly I heard about that tweet, but my reaction to it is that’s a terrible tweet, and I disagreed with the sentiment. And I thought it was wrong.”515
Likewise, Counselor to the President Hope Hicks texted a colleague that evening: “Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him.”516
At 2:26 p.m., Vice President Pence was again moved to a different location.517
President Trump had the TV on in the dining room.518 At 2:38 p.m., Fox News was showing video of the chaos and attack, with tear gas filling the air in the Capitol Rotunda. And a newscaster reported, “[T]his is a very dangerous situation.”519 This is the context in which Trump sent the tweet.
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Testimony obtained by the Committee indicates that President Trump knew about the rioters’ anger at Vice President Pence and indicated something to the effect that the Vice President “deserves it.”520 As Cassidy Hutchinson explained:
I remember Pat saying something to the effect of, “Mark, we need to do something more. They’re literally calling for the Vice President to be f’ing hung.” And Mark had responded something to the effect of, “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.” To which Pat said something, “[t]his is f’ing crazy, we need to be doing something more,” briefly stepped into Mark’s office, and when Mark had said something—when Mark had said something to the effect of, “He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong,” knowing what I had heard briefly in the dining room coupled with Pat discussing the hanging Mike Pence chants in the lobby of our office and then Mark’s response, I understood “they’re” to be the rioters in the Capitol that were chanting for the Vice President to be hung.521
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Cipollone: And for anyone to suggest such a thing as the Vice President of the United States, for people in that crowd to be chanting
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that I thought was terrible. I thought it was outrageous and wrong. And I expressed that very clearly to people. 522
Almost immediately after the 2:24 p.m. tweet, Eric Herschmann went upstairs in the West Wing to try to enlist Ivanka Trump’s assistance to persuade her father to do the right thing.523 Ivanka rushed down to the Oval Office dining room. Although no one could convince President Trump to call for the violent rioters to leave the Capitol, Ivanka persuaded President Trump that a tweet could be issued to discourage violence against the police.
At 2:38 p.m., President Trump sent this tweet:
“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”524
While some in the meeting invoked executive privilege, or failed to recall the specifics, others told us what happened at that point. Sarah Matthews, the White House Deputy Press Secretary, had urged her boss, Kayleigh McEnany, to have the President make a stronger statement. But she informed us that President Trump resisted using the word “peaceful” in his message:
Committee Staff: Ms. Matthews, Ms. McEnany 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?
Sarah Matthews: 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 hushed 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.525
At 3:13 p.m., President Trump sent another tweet, but again declined to tell people to go home: “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order—respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”526
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Almost everyone, including staff in the White House also found the President’s 2:38 p.m. and 3:13 p.m. tweets to be insufficient because they did not instruct the rioters to leave the Capitol. As mentioned, President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., texted Meadows:
He’s got to condem [sic] this shit. Asap. The captiol [sic] police tweet is not enough. 527
Sean Hannity also texted Mark Meadows:
Can he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to peacefully leave the capital [sic].528
None of these efforts resulted in President Trump immediately issuing the message that was needed. White House staff had these comments:
Pottinger: Yeah. It was insufficient. I think what—you could count me among those who was hoping to see an unequivocal strong statement clearing out the Capitol, telling people to stand down, leave, go home. I think that’s what we were hoping for. 529
Matthews: Yeah. So a conversation started in the press office after the President sent out those two tweets that I deemed were insufficient. . . . 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. 530
And they were right. Evidence showed that neither of these tweets had any appreciable impact on the violent rioters. Unlike the video-message tweet that did not come until 4:17 finally instructing rioters to leave, neither the 2:38 nor the 3:13 tweets made any difference.
At some point after 3:05 p.m. that afternoon, President Trump’s Chief of Staff—and President Trump himself—were informed that someone had been shot.531 That person was Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot at 2:44 p.m. as she and other rioters tried to gain access to the House chamber.532 There is no indication that this affected the President’s state of mind that day, and we found no evidence that the President expressed any remorse that day….
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President Trump could have done this [told the rioters to leave the Capitol immediately], of course, anytime after he learned of the violence at the Capitol. At 4:17 p.m., 187 minutes after finishing his speech (and even longer after the attack began), President Trump finally broadcast a video message in which he asked those attacking the Capitol to leave:
“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. 535 [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 in peace.277, p.606]
President Trump’s Deputy Press Secretary, Sarah Matthews testified about her reaction to this video message:
[H]e told the people who we had just watched storm our nation’s Capitol 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.” 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. 536
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At 6:01 p.m., President Trump sent his last tweet of the day, not condemning the violence, but instead attempting to justify it:
These are the things and events that happen when a sacred election landslide victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!541
Staff in President Trump’s own White House and campaign had a strong reaction to this message:
Sarah Matthews: 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.542
Tim Murtaugh: I don’t think it’s a patriotic act to attack the Capitol.But I have no idea how to characterize the people other than they trespassed, destroyed property, and assaulted the U.S. Capitol. I think calling them patriots is a, let’s say, a stretch, to say the least. .
. . I don’t think it’s a patriotic act to attack the U.S. Capitol.543
Pat Cipollone: [W]hat happened at the Capitol cannot be justified in any form or fashion. It was wrong, and it was tragic. And a lot—and it was a terrible day. It was a terrible day for this country.544
Greg Jacob: I thought it was inappropriate. . . . To my mind, it was a day that should live in infamy.545
At 6:27 p.m., President Trump retired to his residence for the night. As he did, he had one final comment to an employee who accompanied him to the residence. The one takeaway that the President expressed in that moment, following a horrific afternoon of violence and the worst attack against the U.S. Capitol building in over two centuries, was this: “Mike Pence let me down.”546
President Trump’s inner circle was still trying to delay the counting of electoral votes into the evening, even after the violence had been quelled. Rudolph Giuliani tried calling numerous Members of Congress in the hour before the joint session resumed, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R–OH) and Senators Marsha Blackburn (R–TN), Tommy Tuberville (R–AL), Bill Hagerty (R–TN), Lindsey Graham (R–SC), Josh Hawley (R–MO), and Ted Cruz (R–TX).547 His voicemail intended for Senator Tuberville at 7:02 p.m. that evening eventually was made public:
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Guiliani: Sen. Tuberville? Or I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Guiliani, the 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 legislatures to get more information to you.548
Reflecting on President Trump’s conduct that day, Vice President Pence noted that President Trump “had made no effort to contact me in the midst of the rioting or any point afterward.”549 He wrote that President Trump’s “reckless words had endangered my family and all those serving at the Capitol.”550
President Trump did not contact a single top national security official during the day. Not at the Pentagon, nor at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the D.C. Mayor’s office.551 As Vice President Pence has confirmed, President Trump didn’t even try to reach his own Vice President to make sure that Pence was safe.552 President Trump did not order any of his staff to facilitate a law enforcement response of any sort.553 His Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who is by statute the primary military advisor to the President—had this reaction:
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General Milley: You know, you’re the Commander in Chief. You’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there’s nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?554
General Milley did, however, receive a call from President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that day. Here is how he described that call:
He said, “We have to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative, you know, that the President is still in charge and that things are steady or stable,” or words to that effect. I immediately interpreted that as politics, politics, politics. Red flag for me, personally. No action. But I remember it distinctly. And I don’t do political narratives.555
Some have suggested that President Trump gave an order to have 10,000 troops ready for January 6th.556 The Select Committee found no evidence of this. In fact, President Trump’s Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller directly refuted this when he testified under oath:
Committee Staff: To be crystal clear, there was no direct order from President Trump to put 10,000 troops to be on the ready for January 6th, correct?
Miller: No. Yeah. That’s correct. There was no direct—there was no order from the President.557
Later, on the evening of January 6th, President Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, texted Katrina Pierson, one of President Trump’s rally organizers, that the events of the day were the result of a “sitting president asking for civil war” and that “This week I feel guilty for helping him win” now that “. . . a woman is dead.” Pierson answered: “You do realize this was going to happen.” Parscale replied: “Yeah. If I was Trump and knew my rhetoric killed someone.” “It wasn’t the rhetoric,” Pierson suggested. But Parscale insisted: “Yes it was.”558
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