Donald Trump “poured fuel on the fire” during the attack on Capitol Hill, according to investigators

Donald Trump “failed in his duty” during the assault on Capitol Hill and should be held legally accountable, said members of Congress who spent a year investigating the violent attack on January 6, 2021.

The former Republican president has opened the door to “lawlessness and corruption,” said Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House committee in charge of the investigation.

Trump “tried to destroy our democratic institutions,” he said in a highly anticipated prime-time hearing Thursday night.

According to him, all those responsible for the attack, including the White House, they will have to “account for their actions before the law”. “It will have serious consequences, otherwise I fear our democracy will not recover,” he warned.

On Thursday, members of the Commission completed a series of high-profile hearings and devoted two and a half hours to the events of January 6, 2021, detailing Donald Trump’s day “minute by minute”.

What Trump did, minute by minute

They reproached him for following the violence of his followers for three hours without reacting“violating his duty as commander in chief”.

It was he who summoned them to Washington on the day the MPs they had to certify the victory of their democratic rival Joe Biden in the presidential election.

Around noon, in a fiery speech in the heart of the capital, he asked them to “fight in cold blood” against alleged “major electoral frauds”.

Then he returned to the White House as the mob launched a ferocious assault on the temple of American democracy.

Barricaded in the private dining room of the White House, Trump followed the attack on television “as his close advisors and family begged him to intervene,” Democratic MP Elaine Luria described.

In a video clip of his statement, former White House adviser Pat Cipollone confirmed he said around 2:00 pm “We clearly needed an immediate and clear public statement asking people to leave the Capitol.”

But “President Trump refused to act because of their selfish desire to stay in power, “estimated Elaine Luria.

All against Mike Pence

Worse still, according to her, at 2:24 pm she sent a tweet criticizing her vice president Mike Pence for not wanting to block the certification of the election results, fueling the complaints of the rioters.

Then Deputy White House spokesperson Sarah Matthews, who resigned shortly afterwards because she claimed she could not support what was happening, said that that tweet was “pouring fuel on the fire”.

On Capitol Hill, the crowd yelled “Hang Mike Pence!” testified Matt Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser.

The then vice president had to escape from the Congress building.

Over the next two hours, the president sent two more tweets, contenting himself with urging the crowd to “be peaceful.”

Matthews said Trump has finally agreed to send the message himself after his daughter Ivanka intervened.

And when he finally recorded a video inviting his supporters to leave the Capitol, he did not respect the text written by his advisers.

“I know your pain”, he chose to say, presenting himself again as the victim of a “stolen” election.

Never, during those 187 minutes, did she pick up the phone to “give orders or offer help” to the police or the military, Elaine Luria said, showing the presidency phone records.

Late reaction

The day after when many White House employees resigned, Donald Trump has agreed to record a video condemning the violence.

But some fragments revealed their reticence. “I don’t mean the elections are over,” he says annoyed.

“This is not the story of inertia in times of crisis, but the latest act of Donald Trump’s plan to stay in power”, concluded at the end of the session the deputy Liz Cheney, who together with Adam Kinzinger are the only ones Republicans in commission.

He believes Trump has “instrumented the patriotism and sense of justice” of his supporters to get them to act. His action was “premeditated”, “conscious”, “indefensible”, insisted the deputy, repudiated by her party.

This public session is the eighth in six weeks and the second to air prime time across the country. The precedents have focused, among other things, on the role of the far right in the assault or on the pressure exerted on electoral agents by Trump.

The new hearings will take place in September, Bennie Thompson reported. A final report is expected in the autumn.

Regardless of his recommendations, the decision to prosecute Donald Trump will fall on Attorney General Merrick Garland, who doesn’t rule him out.

“Nobody is above the law,” he insisted Wednesday.

Trump, 76, who has repeatedly hinted that he will run again in the 2024 elections, denounces the work of the committee and if he is prosecuted he could present himself as the victim of a political conspiracy.

Source: AFP

CB