Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned against Trump encouraging protests at state capitols 'esp with weapons' in newly disclosed text to Mark Meadows

  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • A text made public Wednesday by the January 6 select committee involves Fox News' Laura Ingraham.

  • She said Trump should discourage armed protests at state capitols "given how hot the situation is."

  • Ingraham advised Trump's former chief of staff to get the boss "on camera" after the insurrection.

The Fox News opinion host Laura Ingraham once again appeared in records disclosed by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

A Wednesday letter from the committee to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy included January 12, 2021, correspondence between Ingraham and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time, in which the pundit gave communications-strategy advice for how President Donald Trump should handle protests planned at several state capitols.

"Remarks on camera discouraging protest at state capit[o]ls esp with weapons will be well advised given how hot the situation is," Ingraham texted Meadows, according to the committee's letter. "[E]veryone needs to calm down and pray for our country and for those who lost their lives last week."

A January 11, 2021, FBI bulletin said armed protests were "being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the US Capitol from 17 January through 20 January." And in spring 2020, protesters carried assault weapons into the Michigan Capitol in Lansing.

Fox News did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the latest texts disclosed by the committee.

Ingraham, along with a few of her prominent Fox News colleagues, privately pleaded with Meadows to get Trump to call off his supporters as the Capitol riot unfolded.

Ingraham condemned the violence during special coverage as the Capitol siege was happening and suggested antifa, a loosely organized leftist militant movement, was at least partly to blame for the riot, despite no evidence supporting that claim. At the same time, she privately sent a text message to Meadows, pushing him to have the president call off his supporters.

"Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy," she texted Meadows on January 6, 2021.

Ingraham's January 12, 2021, exchange with Meadows was disclosed in the context of the committee asking McCarthy to come forward with any information and documents he had in connection with the day's events, including his conversations with the Trump White House.

Read the original article on Business Insider