January 6 Committee's Eighth Hearing: 187 Minutes: Trump's Dereliction Of Duty

The House Select Committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol will hold its eighth public hearing on Thursday evening, July 21 (8 PM ET). It will focus on Donald Trump's more than three hours of inactivity while the armed and violent mob that he incited rampaged through the Capitol.

(From a live thread: "To most Americans, the evidence that we hear today will be absolutely shocking. . . . As historically shocking as the House January 6 Committee hearings have been . . . what you have heard so far—if you've only watched the HJ6C hearings—is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to January 6.")

It has been widely reported that Trump "gleefully" watched the violence on television, and refused all requests and demands to stop it. He was "excited" and "delighted" by the violence being done in his name.

The time period under discussion is the 187 minutes between 1:10 PM, when Trump told his supporters to march to the Capitol, to 4:17 PM, when a video was posted online of Trump telling his "very special" supporters "We love you", but they should go home.

Vice Chair Liz Cheney:

You will hear a moment-by-moment account of the hourslong attack from more than a half-dozen White House staff, both live in the hearing room and via videotaped testimony. There is no doubt that President Trump was well aware of the violence as it developed. Not only did President Trump refuse to tell the mob to leave the Capitol, he placed no call to any element of the U.S. government to instruct that the Capitol be defended. He did not call his Secretary of Defense on January 6th. He did not talk to his Attorney General. He did not talk to the Department of Homeland Security.

Committee member Elaine Luria referred to Trump's "supreme dereliction of duty":

We're going to talk about dereliction of duty — what were his duties, as the president of the United States, to ensure the laws were faithfully executed? Did the president live up to his oath and his responsibility to the American people?

Towards the end of the last hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin said:

Our hearing next week will be a profound moment of reckoning for America.

From Wednesday's Washington Post: "Even A Day After Jan. 6, Trump Balked At Condemning The Violence". On January 7:

. . . Trump's advisers urged him to give an address to the nation to condemn the violence, demand accountability for those who had stormed the halls of Congress and declare the 2020 election to be decided.

He struggled to do it. Over the course of an hour of trying to tape the message, Trump resisted holding the rioters to account, trying to call them patriots, and refused to say the election was over, according to individuals familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The public could get its first glimpse of outtakes from that recording Thursday night, when the committee plans to offer a bold conclusion in its eighth hearing: Not only did Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it. He reluctantly condemned it — in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 — only after the efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed and after aides told him that members of his own Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

I knew Trump kept going off script during the filming of this message, praising the rioters and ranting about imaginary vote fraud, stubbornly refusing to say the lines he was supposed to say. It would be great to see some of those failed attempts.

There is also a gap of more than seven hours in Trump's White House phone records for that day (from 11:17 AM ET to 6:54 PM ET), which is not suspicious at all.

One expected witness, Sarah Matthews, a former White House press aide, has told the committee that Trump's infamous 2:24 PM tweet attacking Mike Pence was like "pouring gasoline on the fire". After the tweet was read out loud by the rioters, a deafening chant of "hang Mike Pence" began. Another scheduled witness, former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger, said he resolved to resign once he saw that particular tweet.

The Committee is also attempting to get texts sent within the Secret Service on January 5 and 6. However, the Secret Service deleted the requested information after receiving two written requests from the Committee. It has issued a series of changing (and highly) dubious excuses for this possibly criminal act. (There must be some seriously incriminating stuff in those texts.) One person in the Secret Service recieving a lot of attention lately is Tony Ornato, a well-documented Trump lackey and the Assistant Director of the SS's Office of Training, who also likes to lie. (More info on a possible Secret Service scandal here and here.)

A damning editorial of exactly what the Secret Service has done:

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, a watchdog agency, has known since February 2022 that the Secret Service purged nearly all cellphone texts from around the time of the insurrection, but decided not to tell Congress. This surprising information comes from two whistleblowers who worked with Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari.

P.S.: Trump is, of course, still criming. Back on July 8, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that most of the state's absentee ballot drop boxes are illegal. This ruling applies only to future elections, but it also prompted Trump to call Robin Vos, Wisconsin's house speaker, "within the last week" claiming this ruling means the 2020 presidential election can be overturned. Vos tried to explain the truth to Trump, who posted online: "What a waste of a brilliant and courageous decision by Wisconsin's Highest Court." Which decision, again, applies only to future elections.