Trump Refused to Call Off Rioters for Hours as Pence Security Detail Scrambled, January 6 Committee Shows

White House aides and members of the Trump family urged former president Donald Trump to put out a message telling his supporters to leave the Capitol during the riots on January 6, 2021, for hours to no avail, according to the latest January 6 committee hearing.

Former White House aides and security officials testified in a primetime hearing of the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot on Thursday, offering a timeline of the 187 minutes between Trump’s speech at the Ellipse and when he finally released a video urging protesters to go home.

Representative Elaine Luria (D., Va.), who led the hearing along with Representative Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.), said Trump was informed just 15 minutes after leaving the stage at the Ellipse that the Capitol was under attack.

Trump then entered a private dining room off of the Oval Office at 1:25 p.m. where he remained watching Fox News until about 4 p.m.

As White House aides, lawmakers, and Trump’s own family members urged him to call off the mob, he instead spent his time in the dining room calling several senators to ask them to delay the certification of the election of Joe Biden as president, Luria said. He also called Rudy Giuliani, who was serving as his personal lawyer at the time and his leading efforts to overturn the election.

Meanwhile, as the attack unfolded at the Capitol, members of the Secret Service detail for Vice President Mike Pence spoke over their radios to express fear for their lives, including some agents asking others to say goodbye to their family members, an unnamed White House security official told the committee.

The security detail “thought this was about to get very ugly,” the official said. “It was just chaos.”

Kinzinger said there was a “desperate scramble for everyone to get President Trump to do anything.”

“All this occurred, and the president still did not act,” he added.

Keith Kellogg, who served as a national security adviser to Pence, told the committee that Ivanka Trump discussed doing something to discourage the rioters with her father twice.

The committee showed texts between Donald Trump Jr. and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which the younger Trump said of his father, “He’s got to condemn this sh**. Asap. The captiol [sic] police tweet is not enough.”

Meadows replied, “I am pushing it hard. I agree.”

“This his one you go to the mattresses on,” the younger Trump said. “They will try to f*** his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.”

During a discussion about a pending call with the Pentagon to plan a response to the riot, White House attorney Eric Herschmann told White House attorney Pat Cipollone that “the president didn’t want to do anything,” Luria said, citing the unnamed security official.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley expressed frustration in a recorded deposition before the committee that the president failed to act.

“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?” he said. “No call? Nothing? Zero?”

Former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, who resigned on January 6, told the committee she believed the president “needed to be out there immediately to tell these people to go home and condemn the violence that we’re seeing.”

Instead, at 2:24 p.m., Trump sent a tweet accusing Pence of not having the courage to block the certification of Biden’s victory, sending a new wave of anger through the mob toward the vice president.

Pence, who ultimately came within about 40 feet of the rioters, was evacuated to a secure location on Capitol Hill minutes after the tweet.

Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser under Trump, testified that the tweet about Pence led him to his decision to resign on January 6.

“I was disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty,” he said.

Trump ultimately did not release a statement asking rioters to disperse until 4:17 p.m., at which point he released a video asking rioters to “go home,” telling them, “we love you, you’re very special.”

Trump later added in a tweet, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.… Go home with love & peace. Remember this day forever!”

The former president posted on Truth Social after the hearing accusing the committee of peddling “so many lies and misrepresentations.” He called Representative Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.), who is vice chair of the committee, a “sanctimonious loser.”

Cheney said the committee plans to hold more hearings in September.