Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) posted a video to Twitter on Monday featuring previously unpublished testimonials from several people close to Trump, targeting a speech he would deliver on January 7, 2021.
“It took more than 24 hours for President Trump to address the nation again after his January 6 Rose Garden video, in which he lovingly told his followers to go home in peace,” Luria tweeted. “There were more things he didn’t want to say.”
According to video testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump aides urged him to record another speech the day after the attack to dispel rumors of his impeachment or removal from office. suppressed through the 25th amendment.
In part of the video Luria posted, Jan. 6 commission investigators Ivanka Trump — Trump’s eldest daughter and a former senior presidential adviser — showed a draft paper titled “Notes on National Healing.”
The document featured handwritten edits that Ivanka Trump identified as her father’s. He apparently had removed every mention of the Justice Department prosecuting the rioters. Crossed out from the prepared comments were these lines: “I instruct 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 grace but with JUSTICE. Legal consequences must be swift and firm.”
This message was also crossed out to those who committed the violence: “I want to be very clear: you do not represent me. You do not represent our movement.” At the beginning of the document, Trump also apparently crossed out that he was “sick” from the violence.
Luria’s tweet was a reference to Thursday’s committee hearing, in which videotapes of the January 7 speech showed Trump refusing to say “the election is over” and appearing frustrated, raising his hand several times. the lectern slammed while recording. . He was also hesitant to slander the rioters in that speech, according to the outtakes.
During Thursday’s hearing, former deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews testified that Trump “wouldn’t include any mention of peace” in a tweet that aides urged him to send as the Capitol riot unfolded.
John McEntee, former director of the White House presidential personnel office, testified that he was asked to “push” Trump along to make sure he delivered the January 7 speech. When asked what gave him the impression that Trump was reluctant to give the speech, McEntee told the committee, “The fact that someone has to tell me to push it forward.”