Trump 'chose not to act' as mob attacked U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6 panel hears

Despite desperate pleas from aides, allies, Republican congressional leaders and even his family, Donald Trump refused to call off the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol, instead "pouring gasoline on the fire" by aggressively tweeting his false claims of a stolen election and telling the crowd of supporters in a video address from the Rose Garden how special they were.

The next day, he declared anew, "I don't want to say the election is over." That was in a previously unaired outtake of a speech he was to give, shown at Thursday night's prime-time hearing of the House investigating committee.

The committee documented how for some 187 minutes, from the time Trump left a rally stage sending his supporters to the Capitol to the time he ultimately appeared in the Rose Garden video, nothing could move the defeated president, who watched the violence unfold on TV.

Even a statement prepared for Trump to deliver — which said, "I am asking you to leave the Capitol Hill region NOW and go home in a peaceful way." — could not be delivered as written, without Trump editing it to repeat his baseless claims of voter fraud that sparked the deadly assault. "So go home," he did say, adding, "We love you. You're very special. ... I know how you feel."

He also had wanted to include language about pardoning the rioters in that speech, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified previously.

"President Trump didn't fail to act," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a fellow Republican but frequent Trump critic who flew fighter jets in Iraq and Afghanistan. "He chose not to act."

Plunging into its second prime-time hearing on the Capitol attack, the committee aimed to show a "minute by minute" accounting of Trump's actions that fateful day, how he summoned the crowd to Washington with his false claims of a stolen election and then dispatched them to fight for his presidency.

With the Capitol siege raging, Trump poured "gasoline on the fire" by tweeting condemnation of Mike Pence's refusal to go along with his plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory, former aides told the Jan. 6 investigating committee in a prime-time hearing Thursday night.

Two Trump aides resigned on the spot.

"I thought that Jan. 6 2021, was one of the darkest days in our nation's history," said former White House aide Sarah Matthews testifying before the panel. "And President Trump was treating it as a celebratory occasion. So it just further cemented my decision to resign." 

The committee played audio of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reacting with surprise to the former president's reaction to the attack.

"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? No call? Nothing Zero?" he said.

Matt Pottinger, a former national security aide testifying Thursday, said that when he saw Trump's tweet he immediately decided to resign, as did former White House aide Matthews, who said she was a lifelong Republican but could not go along with what was happening. She was the witness who called the tweet "pouring gasoline on the fire."

Earlier, an irate Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol after his supporters had stormed the building, well aware of the deadly attack, but then returned to the White House and did nothing to call off the violence, despite appeals from family and close advisers, witnesses testified.