The Pursuit of Violence

The House Select Committee's primetime hearing made clear that the Jan. 6 attack was no story of inaction by Donald Trump, but a premeditated plan

The eighth televised hearing on July 21, 2022 of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack. (Photo by Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images)

For 220 years, from 1801 when John Adams relinquished power to Thomas Jefferson until Jan. 6, 2021, the United States of America demonstrated its commitment to the peaceful transfer of power. This has been a sacred expression of our leaders' recognition of their duty to the Constitution and to their belief in serving the democratic will of the people.

Yet Donald Trump, in his desperation to hold onto power by any means necessary, brought an end to that special heritage—a tragic fact that the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 precisely and chillingly detailed Thursday night in its eighth hearing, televised in prime time.

If you were among those viewers who started the evening convinced that Trump’s behavior was a study in inaction, the committee put an end to that view: They made it clear that his absence from 1:10 PM when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and then returned to the White House, until 4:17 PM when he finally tweeted that they should go home, was not simply an unhinged man glued to his TV screen in the Oval Office dining room. This was a willful, premeditated effort by him to increase the prospects that his violent backers would help him stop the certification and overturn the election.

Both the contours and many of the details of that outrageous, infuriating, depressing day have been known. But I didn’t expect to feel all those original emotions or more deeply grasp just how engaged and culpable Trump was.

As Vice-Chair Liz Cheney noted in her opening, Trump had a “seven-part plan to overturn the election, stretching from election day to Jan. 6.” Among them: “to pressure his vice president to illegally reject votes and delay the proceedings...to try and convince state officials and state legislators to flip their electoral votes from Biden to Trump…to try and corrupt our Department of Justice to aid his scheme.” When “none of that had worked,” Cheney continued, what he had left was “the angry, armed mob that [he] sent to the Capitol…and forced the vote-counting to stop.”

Calling the day an “armed uprising” that “targeted the vice president with violence,” Rep. Elaine Luria said in her closing statement that this was “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 usurp the will of the American people and remain in power.” She and her co-lead, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, emphasized their backgrounds in the military, wherein “dereliction of duty” is a punishable offense.

“Why did he not take immediate action in a time of crisis?” Kinzinger asked. “Because President Trump’s plan was to halt or delay Congress’ official proceeding to count the votes. The mob attacking the Capitol quickly caused the evacuation of the House and Senate…The mob was accomplishing his purpose, so President Trump did not intervene.”

He didn’t intervene, despite his knowledge of the danger. As one White House security official described in an audio recording, “The White House was aware of multiple reports of weapons in the crowd” early on.

And he didn’t intervene despite the repeated entreaties of a variety of close aides, members of Congress, lawyers and family members to make a statement and end the violence. Rather, Kinzinger said, drawing on text messages and audio from Capitol attackers, “He told [chief of staff] Mark Meadows that the rioters were doing what they should be doing and the rioters understood they were doing what President Trump wanted them to do.”

As White House counsel Pat Cipollone, the Joint Chiefs’ Gen. Mark Milley and other recorded witnesses noted under questioning, Trump didn’t call his Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the National Guard or other law enforcement, including the FBI. Nope.

Who did he call amid the Capitol siege? What we know for sure is he talked to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and various GOP senators to make sure they would do their part to delay the certification.

In one of the new and more disturbing insights, the committee shared Secret Service radio traffic and testimony from a White House security official. He explained that, as protestors were bearing down, Mike Pence’s security detail “were starting to fear for their own lives…a lot of very personal calls over the radio…there were calls to say goodbye to family members.”

And rather than quell the growing anger toward Pence, Trump’s 2:24 PM tweet exacerbated the problem, insisting that his own vice president “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States the chance to certify a corrected set of facts.”

That’s when Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser and one of Thursday’s live witnesses, handed in his resignation. “I read [that tweet] and was quite disturbed by it,” he said. “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.”

Added Sarah Matthews, a former deputy press secretary and the other live witness: “It was essentially giving them the green light in what they were doing. To tweet that about Mike Pence was putting gasoline on the fire.”

As we know, it wasn’t until 4:17—after 187 minutes when he refused to stem the violence—that he finally tweeted out a video. And as we learned last night, he ignored the remarks scripted by his aides, instead supporting the attackers and repeating the lies of election fraud.

“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt,” Trump said. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side.” He added these infamous words: “We love you. You’re very special.”

Trump also told his supporters to go home, but the comments were a far cry from what his aides had written for him to say:

“I urge all of my supporters to do exactly as 99.9% of them have already been doing—express their passions and opinions PEACEFULLY. My supporters have a right to have their voices heard, but make no mistakes—NO ONE should be using violence to express themselves. Especially at the US Capitol. Let’s respect our institutions. Let’s all do better.”

No, that was not the message Trump wanted to convey. Not at 1:10, not at 2:24, not at 4:17 or finally at 6:27 when he returned to the residence and told an aide, “Mike Pence let me down.” And not the next day on Jan. 7, when in outtakes we saw an angry Tump refusing to say the election is over.

Liz Cheney announced at the hearing that the work will continue and there will likely be more hearings in September: “New witnesses have bravely stepped forward…and the dam has begun to break.” But it was Adam Kinzinger who offered particularly vehement closing remarks.

“Whatever your politics,” he said, “whatever you think about the election, we all must agree on this: Donald Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 [were] a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of 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.”

As we await the next episode in September, all eyes turn to the Department of Justice. After this eighth hearing and the detail of Trump’s active refusal to stop the seditious, criminal violence, the idea that he could escape prosecution and run for president again has never been more intolerable. Either America is a country of laws or it isn’t.

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