Candid Video Shows Top Lawmakers Begging Law Enforcement To Stop Jan. 6 Mob
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WASHINGTON – New behind-the-scenes video shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other top lawmakers working the phones to get more police at the U.S. Capitol as a mob ransacked the building on Jan. 6, 2021.
The House select committee investigating the insurrection played the never-before-seen footage during a Thursday hearing intended partly to establish former President Donald Trump’s total indifference to the riot he incited.
“We have got to finish the proceedings, or else they will have a complete victory,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the video as she fled the House floor.
Later, the video shows Pelosi making a series of phone calls from secure rooms in the Capitol basement.
“They’re breaking the law in many different ways, quite frankly much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States,” Pelosi said to then-Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on a phone call in the video.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) then chimed in: “Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility? A public statement they should all leave.”
This previously unseen footage shows Congressional leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—as they were taken to a secure location during the January riot.
Everyone involved was actively working to address the violence. All of them did what President Trump refused to do. pic.twitter.com/fcF4zBLGWm— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) October 13, 2022
Another clip shows Pelosi and Schumer talking to Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on the phone alongside Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
In another video, Pelosi said McConnell had told her he wanted Congress to reconvene and finish certifying Trump’s loss in the election.
“We’re getting a counterpoint that could take the time to clean up the poo-poo that they’re making all over, literally and figuratively, in the Capitol and that it may take days to get back,” Pelosi said in regards to the questionable condition of the House floor that rioters ransacked.
The video was filmed by Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker. CNN announced after the hearing that it would air more of the video on Thursday night.
While congressional leaders huddled in the basement, several administration officials said in a video testimony that Trump watched the carnage at the Capitol on TV from his dining room at the White House.
“Members of Congress and other government officials stepped into the gigantic leadership void created by the president’s chilling and steady passivity that day,” committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified William Barr as the attorney general on the phone with Pelosi and Schumer.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
