Former President Donald Trump likely hasn't read the 845-page report detailing the findings of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the attempt to overthrow the election, but it doesn't mean he is staying silent.
Taking to his own personal social media site on Thursday night, Trump proclaimed, "The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the 'Peacefully and Patrioticly' words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT!"
It's not the first time Trump pointed to those words as a way to excuse himself from other behavior around the attack. The detail in the report describes Trump being told over and over again that the election wasn't fraudulent from his own people. It also makes it clear that Trump was prepared to call on the Jan. 6 crowd to march on Congress and knew that his followers were armed and ready to fight. Whether he said the word "peacefully" or not doesn't dismiss his call for the supporters to "fight" 20 times in his speech that day, the report explains.
At one point in his speech, Trump told the crowd, "our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not
going to be cheering so much for some of them.”
The House Select Committee explained that "President Trump used the phrase scripted for him by his White House
speechwriters, “peacefully and patriotically” once, about 20 minutes into his speech. Then he spent the next 50-or-so minutes amping up his crowd with lies about the election, attacking his own Vice President and Republican Members of Congress, and exhorting the crowd to fight."
He told the crowd “And we fight. We fight like hell” The crowd was chanting, “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!" It was a chant that they continued all the way to the Capitol.
His speech continued where he told the crowd to go to “take back our country" and where to do it. “So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give . . . we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
House Republican Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson, in the middle of Trump's speech to ask her, “Do you guys think you’re coming to my office[?]” She swore that they weren't.
“Figure it out. Don’t come up here,” McCarthy told her, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service was alert, discussing over email that they needed to filter through the crowd, a tactic they use to ensure they can alert uniformed officers to step in before violence breaks out. The Secret Service officers were also told to "establish an emergency plan 'if things go south.'" They began working on the best route to get Trump there. The staffers, however, were "in a state of shock." The report said that they were aware if Trump joined the march, that this would "no longer be a rally."
“[W]e all knew . . . that this was going to move to something else if he physically walked to the Capitol,” one White House employee told the committee, according to the report. “I don’t know if you want to use the word ‘insurrection,’ ‘coup,’ whatever. We all knew that this would move from a normal democratic . . . public event into something else.”
The logistics were a nightmare and made Trump's march to the Capitol all but impossible.
Read more of Raw Story's coverage of the Jan. 6 report here.
