
On Thursday, ahead of the latest public hearing by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) released a clip showing some of the information that will be discussed during the hearing.
One of the key points laid out in the video — which depicts various witnesses sitting for depositions — is that former President Donald Trump was removed from the fray, watching everything on television and not doing anything to respond to the violence.
\u201cWhat was Donald Trump doing while the Capitol was under siege? Take a look.\u201d— Adam Kinzinger (@Adam Kinzinger) 1658409378
The question of what the former president was actually doing during the attack has loomed large over the proceedings, as it has bearing on whether or not Trump can be considered culpable for the attackers' actions, and whether he approved of their actions.
This comes amid other evidence that the former president did not activate the National Guard to protect members of Congress during the attack, and other people lower or even outside of the chain of command had to step in to keep them safe — something several retired generals and admirals publicly condemned as a "dereliction of duty."
A previous witness, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that insofar as Trump wanted to do anything, it was to travel to the Capitol and join the rioters — and that at one point he even lunged at his own security detail for refusing to take him to the scene.
The Secret Service has denied this account of events, but their own leadership has come under intense scrutiny after the inspector general reported a trove of text messages from January 6 were deleted from agents' phones in violation of federal records policy.