Trump ignored pleas to stop riot, as VP's security 'prepared to die'
Despite desperate pleas from aides, allies, Republican congressional leaders and even his family, Donald Trump refused to call off the mob attack on the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021.
Instead, Trump was “pouring gasoline on the fire” by aggressively tweeting his false claims of a stolen election and celebrating his crowd of supporters as “very special," the committee investigating events of that day have heard.
Chilling testimony also came from a former White House security official, whose voice was disguised to protect their identity.
The former official described the tense situation as events unfolded, especially with concerns about the safety of former Vice President Mike Pence.
“The members of the VP detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There was a lot of yelling. There were a lot of very personal calls over the radio, so it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it," the official told the inquiry.
"There were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth … for whatever reason it was on the ground, the VP detail thought this was about to get very ugly," they said.
Plunging into its second prime-time hearing on the Capitol attack, the committee aimed to show a “minute by minute” accounting of Trump’s actions with new testimony and never-before-seen video footage.
In a gripping moment, the panel showed Trump refusing to deliver a speech the next day declaring the election was over, his daughter, Ivanka Trump, heard off camera, encouraging him to read the script.
The committee documented how for some 187 minutes, from the time Trump left a rally stage sending his supporters to the Capitol to the time he ultimately appeared in the Rose Garden video, nothing could
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