The January 6 House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, revealed at Thursday’s primetime hearing unseen raw footage of President Donald Trump on the day of, and day after, the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump recorded and released a video message from the White House Rose Garden while the riot was underway on Capitol Hill, urging the mob to disperse and telling his supporters, “We love you. You’re very special.”
The hearing was held to find out what Trump did and didn’t do in the 187 minutes before he finally called off the attack, after hours of pleas from his inner circle.
“I know your pain, I know you’re hurt,” Trump said in the footage that was eventually released. “But you have to go home now, we have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order.”
The next day he recorded another video from inside the White House. Outtakes of both videos were shown during the hearing on Thursday.
“The staff that remained at the White House on Jan. 7 knew the president needed to address the nation again and they had a speech prepared for him that morning. But he refused for hours to give it,” Rep. Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat and former Navy officer who sits on the Jan. 6 panel, said at Thursday’s hearing.
Luria said the committee heard testimony that Trump was finally convinced to deliver the message later in the evening of Jan. 7 by advisors who warned of “concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th Amendment or by impeachment.”
The outtakes, Luria said, were taken more than 24 hours after the video filmed in the White House Rose Garden.
After a few takes, Trump is seen saying, “This election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” before stopping himself and saying on camera, “I don’t want to say the election is over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election is over, okay?”
His daughter and former senior advisor, Ivanka Trump, can be heard off camera coaching the president on the precise words to say in the video.
In a later moment of footage, Trump stumbles over the word “yesterday” and asks for it to be taken out of the prepared remarks.
In another video shown during the hearing, he smacks the presidential podium while repeating the line: “My only goal was to secure the integrity of the vote.”
Thursday marked the last in a series of televised hearings the committee scheduled this summer.
