President Biden made rare comments Monday about testimony presented by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurgency, harshly criticizing former President Donald Trump for his alleged inaction as the attack on the Capitol unfolded .
In a prime-time hearing Thursday, the committee showed evidence that Trump resisted multiple requests from senior aides to call off the crowd that was storming the Capitol on his behalf, even as members of the detail of Vice President Mike Pence’s security feared for their lives. Trump spent his time during the attack watching television, committee members said.
Biden addressed this Monday in virtual statements at the conference of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, first recounting how law enforcement officers on January 6 were “assaulted before our eyes : thrown, sprayed, trampled, brutalized” as a pro- Trump mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of Biden’s victory in the electoral college. The siege resulted in five deaths and injured around 140 members of law enforcement.
Trump deleted lines of speech calling for the prosecution of the rioters on January 6
“And for three hours, the defeated former president of the United States watched it happen as he sat in the comfort of the private dining room off the Oval Office,” Biden said. “While doing so, the 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 defeated president.”
“The police were heroes that day,” Biden continued. “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-America.”
Senior reporter Rhonda Colvin breaks down the main takeaways from the Jan. 6 hearings so far. (Video: Casey Silvestri/The Washington Post)
Biden has often spoken out strongly against the Jan. 6 attack, calling it “one of the darkest periods in our nation’s history,” but has rarely weighed in directly on the committee’s proceedings. When asked about the committee’s first televised hearing in June, Biden said he had not seen it, but stressed the importance of the bipartisan panel’s work.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters last week that Biden, who tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, watched some of the committee’s hearings that night.
Thursday’s hearing ended six weeks of televised testimony, but members of the Jan. 6 committee stressed that their work will continue through the summer and that there will be additional hearings in the fall.
On Sunday, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s vice chairwoman, said investigators have several interviews scheduled for the coming weeks, including with more senior members of Trump’s cabinet and his campaign. Lawmakers remain focused on gathering information from the Secret Service, which the committee recently subpoenaed following reports that the agency deleted text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after the Office of Inspector General of the Department of National Security had requested them.
Cheney also said the committee could subpoena Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for her attempts to pressure the Trump White House to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
New testimony released by the Jan. 6 select committee on July 25 shows that President Donald Trump edited parts of his speech on Jan. 7, 2021. (Video: The Washington Post)
On Monday morning, the committee released new evidence showing that Trump apparently deleted lines from the prepared text of a January 7, 2021 speech calling for the prosecution of rioters.
“President Trump took more than 24 hours to address the nation again after his January 6 Rose Garden video in which he affectionately told his supporters to go home in peace. There were more things he was not willing to say,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) tweeted Monday, along with a video that included previously unreleased testimony from several people close to Trump.
In one portion of the Jan. 6 video, committee investigators showed Ivanka Trump, Trump’s eldest daughter and former senior presidential adviser, a draft document titled “Remarks on National Healing.”
The document contained handwritten edits that Ivanka Trump identified as her father’s. He had apparently deleted any mention of the Justice Department prosecuting the rioters. Cut from the prepared remarks were these lines: “I am directing the Department of Justice to ensure that all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We must send a clear message, not with mercy but with JUSTICE. The legal consequences must be swift and firm.”
This message was also underlined to those who had committed the violence: “I want to be very clear: you do not represent me. You don’t represent our movement.” At the start of the document, Trump also appeared to strike out that he was “sick” of the violence.