Jan 6 hearing: Trump said ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in speech outtake one day after riot – as it happened

Trump said ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in outtake video message

One of the most revelatory parts of this hearing are the outtakes from Trump’s video message on 7 January.

“I don’t want to say the election is over,” he says in one clip. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results.”

Here’s the clip:

Trump says ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in outtake video message – video

Updated at 23.22 EDT

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Closing summary

It was a big night for revelations by the January 6 committee, which described in more detail than has been known in the past what Donald Trump was doing as the Capitol was attacked.

Here’s a rundown of what happened:

January 6 committee vice chair Liz Cheney reminded the public tonight that, essentially, the most serious evidence against Donald Trump in the “dereliction of his duty” as president has been presented by erstwhile allies and supporters.

Cheney, herself the Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, has been unsparing in her verbal flaying of Trump and his conduct.

Former Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone, who was beaten by rioters during the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, was at the hearing this evening and was harassed on the street afterwards.

Fanone also called right-winger Josh Hawley a clown – and worse. Said he understood the laughter in the hearing room when video was shown of Hawley, who had raised a clenched fist in solidarity with rioters earlier on January 6, running away later, but that it also pissed him off.

Over the course of nine public hearings, the panel has sought to lay out the case that Trump orchestrated a multilayered plot to seize another term in office despite being told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that his myth of a stolen election was baseless.

Culling from hundreds of thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews, the committee showed that Trump, having been turned back by the courts at every level, became increasingly desperate in his bid to overturn the results of an election his own Attorney General deemed free and fair.

It documented the pressure campaign Trump waged against state and local officials in states Biden won, pushing them to reverse their electoral votes. It detailed his efforts to lean on the Department of Justice officials to support his scheme. And it showed how, as the day drew nearer for Congress to count the electoral votes, Trump began to publicly and privately push his vice president to reject or delay the proceedings, an unprecedented act that one witness told the panel in June would have been “tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis.”

Taken together, the panel has sought to offer a full public accounting of the events of January 6 for the American people and for the historical record.

Its work, however, is not done. The committee continues to receive new information and said on Thursday that it would resume public hearings in September.

But already, the committee has presented evidence that lawmakers and aides have suggested could be used as a foundation for bringing a criminal case against the former president. Among the possible charges that have been discussed are conspiracy to defraud the American people and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. The committee has also raised the prospect of witness tampering, announcing at its last hearing that Trump had attempted to contact a witness cooperating with its investigation.

“The facts are clear and unambiguous,” Congressman Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chair of the committee, said on Thursday.

The Justice Department is pursuing a separate investigation into the events of January 6 that has resulted in hundreds of arrests, including rare seditious conspiracy charges against the leaders of violent far-right extremist groups involved in the breach of the Capitol.

“No person is above the law in this country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday. “I can’t say it any more clearly than that.”

Trump has dismissed the panel’s inquiry as politically motivated and a witch hunt. He remains the most popular figure in the Republican party and a clear favorite to win the nomination in 2024.

But there are nevertheless signs that the committee’s work is having an impact. Half of Americans say Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the attack, and nearly 6 in 10 say the former president bears a “great deal” or “quite a bit of responsibility” for the violence carried out in his name.

Lloyd Green

Thursday night’s congressional hearing on the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol lived up to its billing as a season finale. A modern-day Nero, Trump watched reports of the invasion of the Capitol on Fox News from the comfort of his private White House dining room. The commander-in-chief ignored repeated calls to end the mayhem.

“The mob was his people.” Trump never reached out to the military, the FBI, the defense department or the national guard to intervene. He rebuffed entreaties from Ivanka Trump, Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone to end the downwardly spiraling situation.

The tumult of 6 January was not spontaneous. Trump knew that that the crowd was armed, but sought to accompany them to the Capitol. He wanted to obstruct the certification of the election with a phalanx behind him.

Carnage and destruction were OK. The ends justified all means. Here, past was prelude. In 2016, Trump signaled that he might not accept the election’s results if they did not meet his expectations. As Covid descended in the spring of 2020, he began to refer to November’s upcoming ballot as rigged, months before a single vote had been cast. The events of 6 January horrify and shock, but they cannot be characterized as a surprise.

A recording of Steve Bannon evidenced that Trump’s reaction was premeditated. The prosecution has rested in his criminal case; he will not be taking the stand.

Trump’s standing slowly erodes, even as Trumpism retains its firm grip on Republicans.

Read the rest here.

Another word or two on Trump’s “criminal exposure”, when panel member Adam Kinzinger talked to reporters after the hearing.

A big question circling over these hearings is whether they’ll spark a prosecution of Donald Trump.

Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois congressman who is one two Republicans on the panel and led part of tonight’s session, said the president’s conduct appears criminal.

A reminder: it’s up to the department of justice, headed by Merrick Garland, to decide whether Trump gets prosecuted over what the January 6 committee is finding.

The January 6 committee now has a month and a week – at least – before its next public hearing, which will come in September.

Speaking after today’s session, committee members made clear they’re very interested in what the Secret Service knows about Trump’s actions on the day of the attack. Here’s what Democratic representative Jamie Raskin told the press:

The Secret Service’s deletion of text messages is increasingly evolving into a scandal for the agency best-known for protecting the president. Democratic committee member Zoe Lofgren confirmed that two top officials who worked with Trump now have retained their own attorneys.

Ornato is the former head of Trump’s security detail, whom the president named as his deputy chief of staff in 2019. Engel was Trump’s lead secret Service agent during the attack, and his text messages were among those that the agency apparently deleted.

Updated at 23.34 EDT

One point Cheney made tonight was that it was often Donald Trump’s own appointees who spoke up against his actions on and leading up to January 6.

“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 … his own family,” she said.

But she also noted that the women who testified have had to brave especially vicious personal attacks. Of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who testified earlier, Cheney said: “She knew all along she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60-, 70-year-old men who themselves hide behind executive privilege.”

Similarly, Sarah Matthews, was attacked on the House Republican conference Twitter account – despite the fact that she has worked for the House Republican conference – in a post that has since been taken down.

– MS

Updated at 23.14 EDT

Takeaways from tonight’s January 6 committee hearing

The January 6 committee has just concluded its final scheduled hearing, but its work is far from over. The committee will hold more hearings in September, and vice-chairwoman Liz Cheney said “the dam has begun to break” on the details of what happened that day.

Here’s more about what took place at tonight’s hearing:

The video of Josh Hawley running away not long after he cheered on the January 6 mob is a moment that’s likely to endure for a while after this hearing.

There was audible laughter in the room after the clip played. And now online it’s being set to various soundtracks:

– Maanvi Singh

Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, who lead the committee, are now delivering closing remarks.

Cheney ended with this thought: “Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”

– Maanvi Singh

“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 Jan 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation,” Kinzinger said.

Republican congressman condemns Trump’s ‘dishonor and dereliction of duty’ – video

It’s unclear whether these hearings will break through and convince many fellow Republicans. Polls prior to this hearing finale found that while the majority of Americans think Trump is responsible for the deadly insurrection, stark party divisions remain.

A Monmouth poll found that fewer Republicans now see January 6 as an insurrection than did last year.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated at 23.26 EDT

Trump said ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in outtake video message

One of the most revelatory parts of this hearing are the outtakes from Trump’s video message on 7 January.

“I don’t want to say the election is over,” he says in one clip. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results.”

Here’s the clip:

Trump says ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in outtake video message – video

Updated at 23.22 EDT

The day after the attack, White House staff pressed Trump to give another speech to the nation condemning the attack on the Capitol, which committee member Elaine Luria said Trump was motivated to do “because of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th amendment, or by impeachment”.

The committee just showed video of him recording that speech and struggling to accept that the election was finished.

“But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” Trump said in the speech, before saying to his staff: “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?”

“One day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie, President Trump still could not say that the election was over,” Luria said.

Updated at 22.29 EDT