January 6 United States Capitol attack |
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Timeline • Planning |
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The following article is a broad timeline of the course of events surrounding the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, by rioters supporting United States President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Pro-Trump rioters stormed the United States Capitol after assembling on the Ellipse of the Capitol complex for a rally headlined as the "Save America March". [1] [2] [3]
At the rally, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and several Republican members of Congress addressed the crowd and repeated Donald Trump's false claims that electoral fraud affected the 2020 election outcome. In his hour-long speech, President Trump suggested marching towards the Capitol, assuring his audience he would be with them, to demand that Congress "only count the electors who have been lawfully slated", and "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard". Towards his conclusion, he said "we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." [4] [5] [6]
The demonstrations turned violent with attendees breaching multiple police perimeters; assaulting Capitol police officers; and occupying, vandalizing, [7] [8] and ransacking [9] parts of the building for several hours. [9] [10] Four people died that day: rioter Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer; two died of heart conditions; another died of an amphetamine intoxication. The next day, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died after suffering two strokes, having been physically attacked and pepper sprayed during the riot. [11] [12] [13] [14]
All times are specified or approximated in Eastern Time, or UTC-5:00.
We stand ready and are standing by to answer the call from our President should the need arise that We The People are needed to take back our country from the pure evil that is conspiring to steal our country away from the American people. We are ready to enter into battle with General Flynn leading the charge. We will not act unless we are told to. And we will not act on our own as TTPO, but rather as a united body of American patriots.
— The National Council, The Three Percenters – Original [40]
wildprotest.com
is registered to host a website advertising a protest near the Capitol building from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on January 6. [98] MarchtoSaveAmerica.com
is registered. [98] wildprotest.com
website settles on a protest location just northeast of the Capitol building. [98] On New Year's Eve, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser requests a limited national guard deployment as downtown merchants began boarding up their businesses. [120] “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all – in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. ‘No legislative act,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, ‘contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.’ The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ‘That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.’ 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all.” [156]
At noon, Trump began an over one-hour speech at the Ellipse, encouraging protesters to march to the U.S. Capitol. At 12:49 p.m., Capitol Police responded to reports of an explosive device, later identified as a pipe bomb. At 12:53 p.m., eighteen minutes before Trump's speech ended, rioters overran police on the west perimeter of restricted Capitol grounds. At 2:13 p.m., rioters first gained entry to the interior of the Capitol after smashing windows on the Senate wing near S139.
At 2:44 p.m., a Capitol Police officer inside the Speaker's Lobby adjacent to the House chambers shot and killed rioter Ashli Babbitt as she climbed through a broken window of a barricaded door. Minutes later, Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam activated all available assets of the State of Virginia including the Virginia National Guard to aid the U.S. Capitol, although the Department of Defense still had not authorized it. By 3:15 p.m., assets from Virginia began rolling into D.C.
An hour later, at 4:17 p.m, a video of Trump was uploaded to Twitter in which he instructed "you have to go home now." Fifteen minutes later, Secretary Miller authorized the D.C. National Guard to actually deploy.
States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!" [174] [175]
Pence had not shown it to the White House Counsel in advance. [217]It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.
If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore....We're going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country...The Democrats are hopeless—they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But 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.
A White House employee breaks the news to Trump that a TV network did not broadcast the entirety of his speech in favor of footage of the Capitol riot. When the employee tells him (roughly) “they’re rioting down there at the Capitol,” Trump says (roughly) “Oh, really?” and asks to see it on TV. As they walk to the Oval Dining Room, the employee takes off Trump’s “outer coat,” brings the TV into the dining room, rewinds it to the beginning of Trump’s speech rather than the live coverage, and hands Trump the remote. The employee leaves briefly and returns with a Diet Coke, at which time Trump is still watching the TV coverage. (As told by the White House employee when interviewed by the January 6 House select committee.) [231] [232]
According to the final report of the January 6 House select committee:
"Here’s what President Trump did during the 187 minutes between the end of his speech and when he finally told rioters to go home: For hours, he watched the attack from his TV screen. His channel of choice was Fox News. He issued a few tweets, some on his own inclination and some only at the repeated behest of his daughter and other trusted advisors. He made several phone calls, some to his personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, some to Members of Congress about continuing their objections to the electoral certification, even though the attack was well underway. Here’s what President Trump did not do: He did not call any relevant law enforcement agency to ensure they were working to quell the violence. He did not call the Secretary of Defense; he did not call the Attorney General; he did not call the Secretary of Homeland Security. And for hours on end, he refused the repeated requests—from nearly everyone who talked to him—to simply tell the mob to go home." [233]
Trump's aides confirmed that he watched the television coverage, [234] but Trump himself has refused to admit doing so. [235] Two months after the attack on the Capitol, he told journalist Jonathan Karl: "When I get back [to the White House], I saw—I wanted to go back [to the Capitol]. I was thinking about going back during the problem to stop the problem, doing it myself. Secret Service didn't like that idea too much." [222]
Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful! [174]
I know your pain, I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don't want anybody hurt. It's a very tough period of time. There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us—from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.
"D.C. has requested the National Guard, and it’s been denied by DOD. I’d like to know a good fucking reason why it’s been denied. We need them fast. We’ve all had to— I’ve never seen anything like this."
At some point during the "afternoon", Trump tried to call into Lou Dobbs Tonight , which aired every weekday at 5 p.m., but Fox executives decided it would be "irresponsible" to allow him on the air. [43]
When Twitter reinstated Trump's account in November 2022, this tweet was gone. [269] Trump "knew exactly what he was doing" in making this tweet—the U.S. House select committee on January 6 alleged when criminally referring him for insurrection—especially as a White House staffer, Nick Luna, had warned him not to tweet it since it would imply his complicity in the Capitol riot, yet "he tweeted it anyway." [276] [335]These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever! [174]
Also
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)President Trump immediately began to pressure Rosen and Donoghue, just as he had Barr.
'I think that it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there,' Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified to the House Jan. 6 committee.
It contained places for Rosen and Donoghue to affix their signatures, which they steadfastly refused to do.
Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Cleta Mitchell Production), CM00015477.
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has generic name (help)I believe President Trump believed he [Pence] had more of a substantive role than a pro forma role. ... I texted the person who I trusted most as it came to constitutional law, Elliot Gaiser, a question... I think I sent that text close to 10:00 p.m. ... on the night of January 5th.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Following Vice-President Mike Pence's refusal to reject the election's results, Trump urged his supporters to march upon the Capitol Building
...Trump said...that he pressed to march on the Capitol with his supporters but was stopped by his security detail. 'Secret Service said I couldn't go. I would have gone there in a minute,' he said.
Soon after his speech on the Ellipse ended on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump stepped into the back of a black Suburban bearing the presidential seal.
If you listen to this one very sick individual, in order to get the Secret Service to take me to the Capitol, I grabbed one around the neck," he [Trump] said to laughs in the audience in a ballroom at the InterContinental Miami [on October 5, 2022]. "I almost didn't want to dispute it, because a lot of people said, 'I never knew you were that physically tough.'
I had heard that [i.e., learned about the attack on the Capitol] afterwards, and actually, on the late side. I was having meetings. I was also with Mark Meadows and others. I was not watching television. I didn't have the television on. ... I then later turned it on, and I saw what was happening. I also had confidence that the Capitol [police ... would] be able to control this thing. ... they did lose control. — Donald Trump, April 27, 2021, interviewed by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)As explained throughout this Report and in this Committee's hearings, President Trump was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob to Washington, DC, urging them to march to the Capitol, and then further provoking the already violent and lawless crowd with his 2:24p.m. tweet about the Vice President. Even though President Trump had repeatedly been told that Vice President Pence had no legal authority to stop the certification of the election, he asserted in his speech on January 6 that if the Vice President "comes through for us" that he could deliver victory to Trump: "if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election." This created a desperate and false expectation in President Trump's mob that ended up putting the Vice President and his entourage and many others at the Capitol in physical danger. When President Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m., he knew violence was underway. His tweet exacerbated that violence.
[Cassidy] Hutchinson believes that this conversation took place after the 2:24 p.m. tweet, but the context suggests that it may have taken place after the 2:38 p.m. or 3:13 p.m. tweets.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)(A) At one point I became aware of, I don't know why I knew this, but they had moved Mr. Pence to a secure location. ... (Q) And what exactly did you tell the President? (A) I said they had moved Vice President Pence to a secure location. (Q) What did he say? (A) I don't recall what he said in response to that, no.
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: CS1 maint: others (link)Donovan Ray Crowl [was] part of the group charged with conspiracy a year ago but [was] not included in the seditious conspiracy indictment.
To my knowledge, it was Mark Meadows who made that decision.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)At approximately 9:30 p.m. this evening (January 7, 2021), United States Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty. Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters. He returned to his division office and collapsed. He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The death of Officer Sicknick will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department's Homicide Branch, the USCP, and our federal partners. Officer Sicknick joined the USCP in July 2008, and most recently served in the Department's First Responder's Unit.