Members of the House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol made two stunning revelations on Monday night.
First, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) revealed that three Fox News pundits – Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, and Brian Kilmeade – texted Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, while rioters had overtaken the Capitol. “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham wrote. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
Similar messages came from Kilmeade (“Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.”) and Hannity (“Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”)
It’s long been known that Trump’s White House enjoyed an unusually close relationship with Fox News, but the recently uncovered texts suggest that the political commentators were comfortable giving advice to the president’s inner circle. The messages also surface questions about potential coordination – did Trump and his cable news defenders frequently confer on messaging? Did they collaborate on policy? What other journalistic norms were abandoned?
The texts are particularly noteworthy because they stand in sharp contrast to the network’s January 6th coverage. The Washington Post explains:
While Ingraham that afternoon called the attack “disgraceful” and said that “the president needs to tell everyone to leave the building,” later that night, she suggested on-air that some of the rioters might have been left-wing agitators rather than Trump supporters. “I have never seen Trump rally attendees wearing helmets, black helmets, brown helmets, black backpacks — the uniforms you saw in some of these crowd shots,” she said.
Kilmeade made a similar point in an appearance that night on Fox. “I do not know Trump supporters that have ever demonstrated violence that I know of in a big situation,” he said.
While Hannity expressed his displeasure with the riot — “I don’t want to ever see our Capitol building breached like this ever again” — he also cast doubt about whether Trump supporters were largely responsible. Of the Jan. 6 participants, Hannity said that “the majority of them were peaceful.”
The second revelation from Monday’s House committee meeting is still shrouded in mystery, but it has chilling implications. The day after the attack, an unidentified member of congress texted Meadows, “Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I’m sorry nothing worked.”
The ambiguous phrase “we tried everything” raises the specter that sitting members of Congress may have aided the attack. (Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) said she saw “members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol [on January 5th] … a reconnaissance for the next day.”)
At the very least, the text reiterates that there was an organized campaign to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. Indeed, another unnamed lawmaker texted Meadows in the weeks after Trump’s defeat and said “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 other words, multiple members of Congress were working with the White House to undermine a democratic election.
“A day after a failed attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, an elected lawmaker tells the White House chief of staff, ‘I’m sorry nothing worked.’ That is chilling,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat on the committee. “We would like to ask Mr. Meadows what he thought about that.”
The House committee obtained the text messages directly from Meadows, who handed over 9,000 documents before he abruptly stopped cooperating. On Monday night, the committee took steps to hold Meadows in contempt.
Among those documents were texts Donald Trump, Jr. sent Meadows during the Capitol attack. “He’s got to condemn this sh** ASAP,” Trump Jr. wrote.
“I’m pushing it hard,” Meadows replied. “I agree.”
“We need an Oval address,” Trump Jr. wrote later that day. “He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”
“By revealing these messages,” writes CNN’s Zachary Wolf, “the House panel pierced the fog of amnesia that has allowed conservative pundits and many Republicans to forget how serious the Capitol insurrection felt in real time, while also dealing a blow to Meadows’ claims that he should not have to testify before the committee.”
The New York Times reports on additional revelations discovered in Meadows’ documents, including plans to declare a state of emergency and deploy troops to protect pro-Trump protesters”
The emails that Mr. Meadows provided to the committee showed that he discussed encouraging state legislators to appoint slates of pro-Trump electors instead of the Biden electors chosen by the voters. They also show that he encouraged Justice Department investigations of unfounded claims of voter fraud, and that he promised the National Guard would be present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to “protect pro-Trump people.”
The committee is also scrutinizing a 38-page PowerPoint document containing plans to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. That document, which Mr. Meadows provided to the committee, included a call for Mr. Trump to declare a national emergency, and it promoted an unsupported claim that China and Venezuela had obtained control over the voting infrastructure in a majority of states.
“We have to be Paul Revere every chance we get to let people know what is at risk and why it is at risk. We live it. Every time we eat breakfast we think about these things. I don’t think you can be overly concerned about this,” Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee told CNN at a gathering of the Democratic Governors Association over the weekend.
“We cannot be satisfied with incomplete answers or half truths,” Cheney said Monday night, after reading from Meadows’ text messages. “And we cannot surrender to President Trump’s efforts to hide what happened.”
