WASHINGTON — President Biden on Monday blasted former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to act decisively to stop the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, saying his predecessor “didn’t have the courage to act ” and betrayed the police officers he said. support
Mr. Biden, who has largely avoided discussing the former president or the Jan. 6 investigation by a House select committee, spoke during a statement to an organization representing black leaders of the app of the law
“The police were heroes that day,” the president said in videotaped remarks from the White House residence, where he is recovering from Covid-19. “Donald Trump didn’t have the courage to act. The brave men and women in blue across this nation should never forget that. You can’t be pro-insurgency and pro-police. You can’t be pro-insurgency and pro-democracy. You can’t be pro-insurgency and pro-American.”
The president’s comments came just four days after the House committee wrapped up its summer hearing series with a prime-time meeting outlining the inaction of Mr. Trump as crowds of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the recount of the Electoral College vote. seal his defeat in re-election. Mr. Trump did not call his vice president, his defense secretary, his military chief, his attorney general, his homeland security secretary or anyone else to send help to the Capitol that day.
Instead, according to the testimony, Mr. Trump spent the afternoon watching the violence unfold on Fox News and resisting aides who implored him to act. A call from a Pentagon official to coordinate a response initially went unanswered because “the president didn’t want anything done,” according to a White House lawyer whose account was presented during the hearing. The tweets and video he eventually released did not condemn the attack and in some cases appeared to add fuel to the fire.
Key revelations from the January 6 hearings
Mr. Trump and his allies have no role in the committee’s proceedings because Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, chose not to appoint anyone to the panel after Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected a pair of your initial choices. The president has not otherwise rejected the account of his refusal to act that day.
But his political action committee published an article on Monday recalling a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general last November that noted that Mr. Trump told his defense secretary three days before Jan. 6 that many protesters would be coming and that he would have to make sure there was enough security to make it a safe event.
As the hearings have unfolded, Mr. Biden has not commented, let alone addressed Mr. Trump by name, focusing instead on his own agenda. But some Democrats have been disappointed that he has been so quiet on the issue.
Mr. Biden did not seem at all reticent in Monday’s remarks to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, delivered from a lectern with the presidential seal and an American flag behind it.
“On Jan. 6, we trusted law enforcement to save our democracy,” the president said. “We saw what happened. Capitol Police, DC Metropolitan Police and other law enforcement agencies were attacked and assaulted before our eyes. Thrown, sprayed, stomped on, brutalized. Lives were lost. And for three hours, the defeated former President of the United States watched as he sat in the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office.”
“While doing this,” Biden added, “brave law enforcement officers were subjected to medieval hell for three hours, dripping with blood, surrounded by carnage, face to face with a maddened mob that believed the lies of the vanquished . president.”