The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. insurrection has information from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge that describe what then-President Donald Trump was doing during the violent riot, CNN reports.
Citing numerous interviews, the news network reported that “Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney revealed the existence of some of those details on Sunday, making the case that the information underscores how Trump did nothing to stop the violence, which they see as a dereliction of duty,” and intentional criminality.
“We have significant testimony that leads us to believe that the White House had been told to do something,” Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“We want to verify all of it so that when we produce our report and when we have the hearings, the public will have an opportunity to see for themselves,” he said. “The only thing I can say, it’s highly unusual for anyone in charge of anything to watch what’s going on and do nothing.”
Cheney also told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that “the committee has firsthand testimony now that he was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television as the assault on the Capitol occurred.”
“We know his daughter — we have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to ‘please stop this violence,'” Cheney said before adding:
“I think that that we’re in a situation where people have got to understand the danger of President Trump and the danger that he posed on that day.”
“This is a man who has demonstrated that he is at war with the rule of law,” she added. “He’s demonstrated that he’s willing to blow through every guardrail of democracy, and he can never be anywhere near the Oval Office again.”
Trump announced last month that he would hold a news conference from Mar-a-Lago on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, at the same time that Democrats host a prayer service marking the occasion.
