The commission investigating the insurrection accuses the tycoon of passivity while the vice president’s advisers said goodbye to their loved ones over the radio
Where was Donald Trump during the critical three hours when his supporters vandalized the Capitol looking for the vice president and congressional leaders to lynch them? In the famous Tension Room destined for moments of crisis? Meeting in the Oval Office? No, in the dining room, watching TV.
To visualize the scene, the bipartisan committee investigating the insurrection showed last night, at its last hearing of the season, a scale model of the West Wing that even illustrates what it was seeing on the screens at the time: the assault in real time through FoxNews. It wasn’t until the anchor reported that the Pentagon had dispatched 1,800 troops to retake the legislative palace that Trump acceded to pleas to record a statement urging his supporters to come home.
The coup had failed, it was time to join those who defended democracy and act as president, rather than as leader of the mobs. The assault on the Capitol cost the lives of ten people, including four policemen who committed suicide in the days that followed and 140 who were injured. Everyone in the White House understood what was going on. “We were in shock,” admitted the national security adviser to whom the Committee guaranteed anonymity. “We all knew what it involved. This was no longer a demonstration. If Trump went to Capitol Hill it was going to become a coup, an insurrection.” And hence everyone tried to prevent it.
Trump did not get to read the statement that was written for him, but “what came out of his sleeve.” He began adding fuel to the fire, repeating the lie of the fraud that had led to the violence. «I understand you, I know what hurts. They have stolen the elections from us », he applauded them. “We love you, you are very special, but now you have to go home.”
Four hours of chaos
That’s what he did, go to his rooms and call it a day, despite the fact that at that time the windows in the Capitol were still being jumped and the National Guard was storming in. The chief of staff, General Mark Milley, estimated to the leaders of Congress that it would take a minimum of “four or five hours” to regain control of the building and allow them to return to the chamber to certify the electoral results. The vote finally took place after 3 in the morning.
“Mike Pence has left me hanging,” was the only thing the president mumbled, whom he accompanied to his chambers that afternoon. Certainly the vice president, who holds a ceremonial position presiding over the vote, was known that day in the pillory. Trump had tried to persuade him to abort the process on the grounds that the elections had been fraudulent in some key states, but his lawyers had made it clear that there was no indication that this was true, nor did he have the legal capacity to prevent the certification of the results.
And Pence, who had been loyal to Trump throughout the presidency, decided that day that that was as far as he was concerned. Fearful that the president had sent the Secret Services to kidnap him, he refused to get into the limousine when the violence began and they wanted to evacuate him. “Pence has folded, Hang Mike Pence!” the mob yelled. So chilling was the situation that members of his team “began to fear for their own lives” and came to say goodbye to their loved ones, said the national security adviser who testified anonymously. “There was a lot of screaming, a lot of personal radio calls, it was very disturbing, I don’t like to talk about it,” he recalled traumatized. “There were calls to their relatives to say goodbye.”
As Pence gave orders to Pentagon leaders to send in troops and take back control, Trump remained holed up alone in the dining room hoping his supporters would change the course of history. “Well, I guess they’re angrier than you are with the outcome of the election,” he told House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had called to plead with him to intervene.
did not accept the results
At least two senior White House officials, who testified under oath yesterday, resigned that day because they did not want to have to “defend the indefensible,” Sarah Matthews, Assistant Secretary for Communications, testified last night. If Pat Cipollone, White House counsel, did not resign, it was because he feared that he would be replaced by “someone who had given the president very bad advice,” she said in veiled reference to Rudy Giuliani. That same night, as if nothing had happened, the former mayor of New York called several senators to try to convince them not to accept the election results, according to the message he left recorded with his own voice on the wrong answering machine when he tried to call Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of many unpublished documents heard last night. Trump himself the next day, when Congress had already finished the electoral work, refused to accept it. “I don’t want to say that the elections are over,” he stirred in one of the fake shots aired yesterday, in which her daughter Ivanka is heard in the background, instructing him to record the message with which to save face.
“Trump did not err by not acting, but chose not to act,” concluded his party’s congressman Adam Kizinger, part of the committee. “The mob was achieving its objective, of course it was not going to intervene.” Those 187 minutes of silence, alone, in front of the television screen, are the most conclusive proof that the president was an accomplice, actively or passively, in that attempted coup that could have changed the world.
With that conclusion, the committee rests until September, the date on which it promises to return with a new season of the drama that has had half the country glued to television for a month and a half. The recess will allow the collection of testimonies from other witnesses who feel compelled to testify, now that the truth has come to light, if only to save their place in history, as Trump’s children wanted their father to do that day.
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