The Jan. 6 committee is detailing how Trump failed to act while the Capitol was attacked

The outtakes shown during Thursday’s hearing of former President Trump’s video on Jan. 7 reflected only a portion of a lengthy taping session in the White House.  

A White House official and a person familiar with the matter said the taping lasted roughly an hour as Trump and his aides, including his daughter Ivanka, made multiple attempts at recording the 3-minute video. 

The taping in the Diplomatic Reception Room stretched across the hour because of Trump’s multiple revisions and his struggles reading from the prompter, one of the people said. 

Former President Trump struggled to condemn the violence at the US Capitol a day after it took place, and refused to say “the election is over,” according to outtakes from his Jan. 7, 2021, video message played during Thursday’s House Select Committee hearing. 

“I don’t want to say the election’s over, I just want to say ‘Congress has certified the results’ without saying the election’s over, okay?” Trump says in one of the outtakes after reading the line and stopping. 

“If you broke the law … can’t say that,” Trump says in another outtake while reading the remarks as written, appearing to take issue with how forcefully he was condemning the rioters and also having trouble with the diction of the text itself during certain portions of the remarks.  

At various points, Trump grew frustrated by his own inability to read the statement as written, slapping the podium. 

Ivanka Trump can be heard in the background, off-camera giving her father advice and direction in some of the outtakes.

CNN reported Wednesday that the committee planned to show footage of Trump having difficulty working through efforts to tape a message to his supporters on Jan. 7, 2021. 

Watch Trump’s outtakes here:

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Jan. 6 select committee member, said former President Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, “is a stain on our history” and was a “complete dereliction of his duty to our nation.”

Kinzinger added that when the committee presents the findings from its investigation it will “recommend changes to laws and policies to guard against another Jan. 6,” warning that the forces Trump “ignited” are still a present threat.

“The reason that’s imperative is that the forces Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away. The militant, intolerant ideologies, the militias, the alienation and the disaffection, the weird fantasies and disinformation — they’re all still out there, ready to go. That’s the elephant in the room. But if Jan. 6 has reminded us of anything, I pray it has reminded us of this — laws are just words on paper,” he said.

“They mean nothing without public servants dedicated to the rule of law and who are held accountable by a public that believes oaths matter more than party tribalism or the cheap thrill of scoring political points. We, the people, must demand more of our politicians and ourselves. Oaths matter. Character matters. Truth matters. If we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles, this great experiment of ours, our shining beacon on a hill, will not endure,” he continued.

Matthew Pottinger, the Trump administration deputy national security adviser who resigned in protest after Jan. 6, 2021, told the House select committee Thursday that the events of January 6 emboldened America’s enemies.

Pottinger added that he was concerned US adversaries would be tempted to test US resolve, noting that in late December Trump sent a warning to Iran after an Iranian-backed attack on the US embassy in Baghdad. 

Pottinger also testified about how the events off Jan. 6 alarmed US allies who were concerned about what it meant for American democracy.

“I heard from a lot of friends in Europe, in Asia, allies, close friends and supporters of the United States that they were concerned about the health of our democracy,” he said. “And so I think it’s incumbent upon us to put their minds at ease to put our own hearts at ease, by investigating what happened on the sixth and making sure that it never happens again.”

Then-Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia wrote a memo to President Trump after the Capitol riot asking if the Cabinet could convene — a more formal entreaty than was previously known to have existed, and a hint at how Trump’s appointees attempted to confront him after the violence. 

On the morning of Jan.7, 2021, “The most constructive thing I could think of was to seek a meeting of the Cabinet,” Scalia said in a taped interview the House select committee played. “I thought that trying to work within the administration to steady the ship was likely to have greater value than resigning, after which point I would have been powerless to really affect things within the administration.”

His memo to Trump was titled “Request for Cabinet Meeting,” the committee showed. 

The documents said: “I believe it is important to know that while President, you will no longer publicly question the election results — after Wednesday, no one can deny this is harmful.”

“A Cabinet meeting is also an opportunity for us to discuss how the Cabinet and senior White House advisers, acting within our respective roles, can assist as you make the remaining important decisions of your Administration,” Scalia’s memo also said. 

Scalia also put in writing that he believed “private citizens” had “served [Trump] poorly with their advice,” according to the document.

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone also told the committee about the Cabinet meeting discussion, and Mark Milley, the then-joint chiefs of staff chairman, spoke in his own interview about Cabinet members’ concern with Trump’s well-being. 

Scalia did not appear to raise the possibility the Cabinet could consider removing Trump from the presidency using the 25th Amendment, though that had been raised by members of Congress at the time. 

Still, a formal Cabinet meeting and the Cabinet making demands of Trump were serious steps within the executive branch.

Sarah Matthews, a former Trump deputy press secretary, called Jan. 6, 2021, “one of the darkest days in our nation’s history” during her testimony at the House select committees eighth public hearing this summer.

Matthews said because of Trump’s response to the insurrection earlier in the day, she had already decided to resign, but a tweet by then-President Trump at 6:01 p.m. ET further cemented that decision.

Trump said in the tweet: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever.”

During Thursday’s hearing, the House select committee played several taped interviews with White House staffers denouncing then-President Donald Trump’s last tweet on Jan. 6, 2021, when he told rioters he loved them and that they should remember the day forever.  

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long,” Trump tweeted at 6:01 p.m. on Jan. 6. “Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, who resigned that day, told the committee that the tweet further cemented her decision to leave the White House. “I thought that Jan. 6, 2021 was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history, and President Trump was treating it as a celebratory occasion with that tweet,” Matthews said.

Nicholas Luna, a former White House aide who worked closely with President Trump, told the committee in a recorded interview played during Thursday’s hearing that he told Trump the tweet “would lead some to believe that potentially he had something to do with the events that happened at the Capitol.” 

“I don’t think it’s a patriotic act to attack the Capitol,” Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for the Trump 2020 presidential campaign, told the committee in video played at the hearing. “(T)hey trespassed, destroyed property and assaulted the US Capitol.”

Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone told the committee the Capitol attack “cannot be justified in any form or fashion” and Greg Jacob, former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief counsel, said Trump’s tweet “was inappropriate.” 

Sarah Matthews, former White House deputy press secretary, said that former President Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence and act on Jan. 6, 2021 is “indefensible.”

Matthews said that while she was relieved when Trump finally sent out a video to his Twitter followers that urged rioters to “go home,” the overall messaging left her disturbed.

“I was struck by the fact that he chose to begin the video by pushing the lie that there was a stolen election. And as the video went on, I felt a small sense of relief because he finally told these people to go home, but that was immediately followed up by him saying, ‘We love you. You’re very special.’ And that was disturbing to me because he didn’t distinguish between those that peacefully attended his speech earlier that day and those that we watched cause violence at the Capitol,” Matthews said.

Matthews said that following the release of the video, she decided she had to resign because she could not defend the President’s message.

On Jan. 6, 2021, when former President Donald Trump went up to the White House residence for the night, his final comment to a White House employee was that “Mike Pence let me down,” according to the committee. 

Kinzinger did not identify the White House employee. 

Trump was angry at Pence on January 6 because Pence followed the law and refused to use his ceremonial role during the joint session of Congress to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.

Trump and many of his allies spent weeks pressuring Pence to cast aside dozens of President Biden’s electoral votes and replace them with pro-Trump electors, handing Trump a second term. 

Pence refused, and has since said Trump’s plan would have been “un-American.”