https://ift.tt/wEcZxH congressional investigation into the riot at the U.S. Capitol last January is zeroing in on why then-President Donald Trump did nothing for more than three hours to stop his supporters from ransacking the building and clashing with police as lawmakers sought to certify that he had lost the 2020 election, the panel’s chairman said Sunday.
Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the nine-member investigative panel wants to know what Trump was doing during “187 minutes of inaction,” as he watched the riot unfold on television from a dining room off the Oval Office at the White House.
“We came perilously close to losing our democracy,” Thompson contended.
One of the committee’s two Republicans, Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a vocal critic of Trump, told ABC’s “This Week” show, “He could have told [the rioters] to stand down. He didn’t do it.”
Thompson said, “The president has been in court trying to prevent us from seeing the record” of his phone calls, other messages and documents as his daughter Ivanka Trump, Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials urged him to make a statement urging more than 800 of his supporters inside the Capitol to leave the building.
“What he’s doing is typical Donald Trump modus operandi,” Thompson said. “He sues, goes to court, tries to delay. But we’re convinced we’ll have access to those 187 minutes.”
A U.S. appellate court in Washington has ruled that the investigative committee has a “uniquely vital interest” in seeing any documents related to the riot and its planning, but Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s ruling, saying his White House documents should be shielded from public release.
At a rally near the White House before the January 6, 2021 rioting unfolded, Trump urged supporters to “fight like hell” at the Capitol to keep lawmakers from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated him in the November 2020 election. More than 725 of the rioters have been arrested and charged with an array of offenses, from minor ones like trespassing to more serious crimes, including attacks on police.