[Pages S615-S644]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

TRIAL OF DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Senators, will you please be seated.

The Journal

If there is no objection--I hear none--the Journal of proceedings of
the trial are approved to date.
The Sergeant at Arms will make the proclamation.
The Acting Sergeant at Arms, Jennifer A. Hemingway, made the
proclamation as follows:

Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons are commanded to keep
silence, on pain of imprisonment, while the Senate of the
United States is sitting for the trial of the Article of
Impeachment against Donald John Trump, former President of
the United States.

Recognition of the Majority Leader

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.

Order of Business

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, no
motions were filed this morning. So we will proceed to the House
managers' presentation. We anticipate two 10-minute breaks and a 45-
minute dinner break around 6 p.m.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 47,
the managers for the House of Representatives have 16 hours to make a
presentation of their case.
The Senate will now hear you. We recognize Mr. Manager Raskin to
begin the presentation of the case for the House of Representatives.
Mr. Raskin.

Managers' Presentation

Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Members of the Senate, good morning, good day.
Some people think this trial is a contest of lawyers or, even worse,
a competition between political parties. It is neither. It is a moment
of truth for America.
My late father, Marcus Raskin, once wrote:

Democracy [needs] a ground to stand upon. And that ground
is the truth.

America needs the truth about ex-President Trump's role in inciting
the insurrection on January 6 because it threatened our government, and
it disrupted--it easily could have destroyed--the peaceful transfer of
power in the United States for the first time in 233 years.
It was suggested yesterday by President Trump's counsel that this is
really like a very bad accident or a natural disaster, where lots of
people get injured or killed, and society is just out looking for
someone to blame. And that is a natural and normal human reaction,
according to the President's counsel, but he says it is totally unfair
in this case.
President Trump, according to Mr. Castor, is essentially an innocent
bystander who got swept up in this catastrophe but did nothing wrong.
In this assertion, Mr. Castor unerringly echoes his client, ex-
President Trump, who declared after the insurrection that his conduct
in the affair was ``totally appropriate,'' and, therefore, we can only
assume he could do and would do the exact same thing again because he
said his conduct was totally appropriate.
So now the factual inquiry of the trial is squarely posed for us. The
jurisdictional constitutional issue is gone. Whether you were persuaded
by the

[[Page S616]]

President's constitutional analysis yesterday or not, the Senate voted
to reject it. And so the Senate is now properly exercising its
jurisdiction and sitting as a Court of Impeachment conducting a trial
on the facts. We are having a trial on the facts.
The House says ex-President Donald Trump incited a violent
insurrection against Congress and the Constitution and the people. The
President's lawyers and the President say his conduct was totally
appropriate and he is essentially an innocent victim of circumstances,
like the other innocent victims that we will see getting caught up in
all of the violence and chaos, over the next several days.
The evidence will be for you to see and hear and digest. The evidence
will show you that ex-President Trump was no innocent bystander. The
evidence will show that he clearly incited the January 6 insurrection.
It will show that Donald Trump surrendered his role as Commander in
Chief and became the ``inciter in chief'' of a dangerous insurrection,
and this was, as one of our colleagues put it so cogently on January 6
itself, ``the greatest betrayal of the presidential oath in the history
of the United States.'
The evidence will show you that he saw it coming and was not remotely
surprised by the violence. And when the violence inexorably and
inevitably came as predicted and overran this body and the House of
Representatives with chaos, we will show you that he completely
abdicated his duty as Commander in Chief to stop the violence and
protect the government and protect our officers and protect our people.
He violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution, the government, and the people of the United States.
The evidence will show you that he assembled, inflamed, and incited
his followers to descend upon the Capitol to ``Stop the Steal,'' to
block Vice President Pence and Congress from finalizing his opponent's
election victory over him.
It will show that he had been warned that these followers were
prepared for a violent attack, targeting us at the Capitol through
media reports, law enforcement reports, and even arrests.
In short, we will prove that the impeached President was no innocent
bystander whose conduct was totally appropriate and should be a
standard for future Presidents, but that he incited this attack, and he
saw it coming.
To us, it may have felt like chaos and madness, but there was method
in the madness that day. This was an organized attack on the counting
of the electoral college votes in joint session of the U.S. Congress
under the Twelfth Amendment and under the Electoral Count Act to
prevent Vice President Mike Pence and to prevent us from counting
sufficient electoral college votes to certify Joe Biden's victory of
306 to 232 in the electoral college--a margin that President Trump had
declared a landslide in 2016.
When my colleague Mr. Neguse speaks after me, he will set forth in
detail the exact roadmap of all the evidence in the case. My fellow
House managers and I will then take you through that evidence step-by-
step so everyone can see exactly how these events unfolded.
But I want to tell you a few key reasons right now that we know this
case is not about blaming an innocent bystander for the horrific
violence and harm that took place on January 6. This is about holding
accountable the person singularly responsible for inciting the attack.
Let's start with December 12. You will see during this trial a man
who praised and encouraged and cultivated violence. ``We have just
begun to fight!'' he says more than a month after the election has
taken place, and that is before the second Million MAGA March, a rally
that ended in serious violence and even a burning of a church. And as
the President forecasted, it was only the beginning.
On December 19, 18 days before January 6, he told his base about
where the battle would be that they would fight next. January 6 would
be ``wild,'' he promised. ``Be there, will be wild!'' said the
President of the United States of America. And that, too, turned out to
be true.
You will see in the days that followed, Donald Trump continued to
aggressively promote January 6 to his followers. The event was
scheduled at the precise time that Congress would be meeting in joint
session to count the electoral college votes and to finalize the 2020
Presidential election.
In fact, in the days leading up to the attack, you will learn that
there were countless social media posts, news stories, and, most
importantly, credible reports from the FBI and Capitol Police that the
thousands gathering for the President's Save America March were
violent, organized with weapons, and were targeting the Capitol. This
mob got organized so openly because, as they would later scream in
these halls and as they posted on forums before the attack, they were
sent here by the President. They were invited here by the President of
the United States of America.
And when they showed up, knowing of these reports that the crowd was
angry and they were armed, here is what Donald Trump told them.
President Trump whipped the crowd into a frenzy, exhorting followers:

If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a
country anymore.

And then he aimed straight at the Capitol declaring:

You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have
to show strength, and you have to be strong.

He told them to ``fight like hell,'' and they brought us hell on that
day.
Incited by President Trump, his mob attacked the Capitol. This
assault unfolded live on television before a horrified nation.
According to those around him at the time, this is how President
Trump reportedly responded to the attack that we saw him incite in
public: Delight, enthusiasm, confusion as to why others around him
weren't as happy as he was.
Trump incited the January 6 attack, and when his mob overran and
occupied the Senate and attacked the House and assaulted law
enforcement, he watched it on TV like a reality show. He reveled in it,
and he did nothing to help us as Commander in Chief. Instead, he served
as the ``inciter in chief,'' sending tweets that only further incited
the rampaging mob. He made statements lauding and sympathizing with the
insurrectionists.
At 4:17 p.m.--over 3 hours after the beginning of the siege--for the
very first time, he spoke out loud--not on Twitter. He spoke out loud
to the American people. Here is what he said:
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. I know your pain. I know you're hurt.

So you might be saying: All right, the President is going to console
us now. He is going to reassure America. He knows our pain. He knows we
are hurt. We have just seen these horrific images of officers being
impaled and smashed over the head. We have just been under attack for 3
hours. But here is what he actually goes on to say:
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. 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.

So you would think he is about to decry the mayhem and violence, the
unprecedented spectacle of this mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, but he
is still promoting the big lie that was responsible for inflaming and
inciting the mob in the first place.
If anyone ever had a doubt as to his focus that day, it was not to
defend us; it was not to console us. It was to praise and sympathize
and commiserate with the rampaging mob. It was to continue to act as
``inciter in chief,'' not Commander in Chief, by telling the mob that
their election had been stolen from them.

Even then, after that vicious attack, he continued to spread the big
lie. And as everyone here knows, Joe Biden won by more than 7 million
votes and 306 to 232 in the electoral college. But Donald Trump refused
to accept his loss even after this attack, and he celebrated the people
who violently interfered with the peaceful transfer of power, for the
first time in American history, and did that at his urging.
And when he did, in this video, finally tell them to go home in
peace, he added this message:

We love you. You're very special.

[[Page S617]]

Distinguished Members of the Senate, this is a day that will live in
disgrace in American history; that is, unless you ask Donald Trump
because this is what he tweeted before he went to bed that night at
6:01 p.m.--not consoling the Nation, not reassuring everyone that the
government was secure, not a single word that entire day condemning the
violent insurrection.
This is what he says:

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!

``These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide
election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from
great patriots. . . . '' In other words, this was all perfectly natural
and foreseeable to Donald Trump. At the beginning of the day, he told
you it was coming. At the end of the day, he basically says: I told you
this would happen. And then he adds: ``Remember this day forever!'' But
not as a day of disgrace, a day of horror and trauma, as the rest of us
remember it, but as a day of celebration, a day of commemoration.
And if we let it be, it will be a day of continuation, a call to
action, and a rallying cry for the next rounds of insurrectionary
justice because all of this was totally appropriate.
Senators, the stakes of this trial could not be more serious. Every
American--young and old and in between--is invited to participate with
us in this essential journey to find the facts and share the truth.
Trials are public events in a democracy, and no trial is more public or
significant than an impeachment trial.
Because the insurrection brought shocking violence, bloodshed, and
pain to the Nation's Capitol, and we will be showing relevant clips of
the mob's attack on police officers and other innocent people, we do
urge parents and teachers to exercise close review of what young people
are watching here, and please watch along with them if you are allowing
them to watch.
The impeachment managers will try to give warnings before the most
graphic and disturbing violence that took place is shown.
We believe that the managers' comprehensive and meticulous
presentation will lead to one powerful and irresistible conclusion:
Donald Trump committed a massive crime against our Constitution and our
people and the worst violation of the Presidential oath of office in
the history of the United States of America. For this, he was impeached
by the House of Representatives, and he must be convicted by the United
States Senate.
Before I close, I want to address a constitutional issue still
lingering from yesterday's argument. The President, obviously, is still
exploring ways to change the subject and talk about anything other than
his responsibility for inciting the attack.
We heard a lot yesterday about his claim that this incitement of the
insurrection was perfectly appropriate because it is somehow protected
by the First Amendment, and this little diversion caught my eye because
I have been a professor of constitutional law and the First Amendment
for decades.
And as we will demonstrate over the course of the trial, the factual
premise and the legal underpinnings of that claim are all wrong. They
present President Trump as merely like a guy at a rally expressing a
political opinion that we disagree with, and now we are trying to put
him in jail for it. That has nothing to do with the reality of these
charges or his constitutional offense.
The particular political opinions being expressed are not why we
impeached the President and have nothing to do with it. It makes no
difference what the ideological content of the mob was, and if we
license and forgive incitement to violent insurrection by militant
Trump followers this week, you can be sure there will be a whole bunch
of new ideological flavors coming soon.
As we will demonstrate with overwhelming evidence, portraying Trump
as a guy on the street being punished for his ideas is a false
description of his actions, his intent, and the role that he played on
January 6, when he willfully incited an insurrectionary mob to riot at
the Capitol.
Last week, 144 constitutional scholars, including Floyd Abrams, a
ferocious defender of free speech; Charles Fried, President Reagan's
Solicitor General; Steven Calabresi, the cofounder of the Federalist
Society, released a statement calling the President's First Amendment
arguments ``legally frivolous''--``legally frivolous''--adding:

[W]e all agree that the First Amendment does not prevent
the Senate from convicting President Trump and disqualifying
him from holding future office.

They went on to say:

No reasonable scholar or jurist could conclude that
President Trump had a First Amendment right to incite a
violent attack on the seat of the legislative branch, or then
to sit back and watch on television as Congress was
terrorized and the Capitol sacked.

Incitement to violence is, of course, not protected by the First
Amendment. That is why most Americans have dismissed Donald Trump's
First Amendment rhetoric simply by referring to Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes's handy phrase: You can't shout ``fire'' in a crowded theater.
But even that time-honored principle doesn't begin to capture how
off-base the argument is. This case is much worse than someone who
falsely shouts ``fire'' in a crowded theater. It is more like a case
where the town fire chief, who is paid to put out fires, sends a mob
not to yell ``fire'' in a crowded theater but to actually set the
theater on fire; and who then, when the fire alarms go off and the
calls start flooding in to the fire department asking for help, does
nothing but sit back, encourage the mob to continue its rampage, and
watch the fire spread on TV, with glee and delight.
So then we say this fire chief should never be allowed to hold this
public job again and ``you are fired, and you are permanently
disqualified''--and he objects. And he says we are violating hi free
speech rights just because he is pro-mob or pro-fire or whatever it
might be.

Come on. I mean, you really don't need to go to law school to figure
out what is wrong with that argument. Here is the key. Undoubtedly, a
private person can run around on the street expressing his or her
support for the enemies of the United States and advocating to
overthrow the United States Government.
You have got a right to do that under the First Amendment, but if the
President spent all of his days doing that, uttering the exact same
words, expressing support for the enemies of the United States and for
overthrowing the government, is there anyone here who doubts that this
would be a violation of his oath of office to preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution of the United States and that he or she could
be impeached for doing that?
Look, if you are President of the United States, you have chosen a
side with your oath of office, and if you break it, we can impeach,
convict, remove, and disqualify you permanently from holding any office
of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
As Justice Scalia once said, memorably, ``You can't ride with the
cops and root for the robbers.'' And if you become ``inciter in chief''
to the insurrection, you can't expect to be on the payroll as Commander
in Chief for the Union.
Trump was the President of the United States, and he had sworn to
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. He had an affirmative,
binding duty, one that set him apart from everyone else in the country,
to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, including all the
laws against assaulting Federal officers, destroying Federal property,
violently threatening Members of Congress and the Vice President,
interfering with Federal elections, and dozens of other Federal laws
that are well known to all of you.
When he incited insurrection on January 6, he broke that oath. He
violated that duty. And that is why we are here today, and that is why
he has no credible constitutional defense.
I will tell you a final, sad story in this kaleidoscope of sadness
and terror and violence. One of our Capitol officers who defended us
that day was a longtime veteran of our force, a brave and honorable
public servant who spent several hours battling the mob as part of one
of those blue lines defending the Capitol and our democracy.

[[Page S618]]

For several hours straight, as the marauders punched and kicked and
mauled and spit upon and hit officers with baseball bats and fire
extinguishers, cursed the cops and stormed our Capitol, he defended us,
and he lived every minute of his oath of office. And afterward,
overwhelmed by emotion, he broke down in the Rotunda and he cried for
15 minutes and he shouted out:

I got called an n-word 15 times today.

And then he reported:

I sat down with one of my buddies, another Black guy, and
tears just started streaming down my face. [And] I said,
``What the [F], man? Is this America?''

That is the question before all of you in this trial: Is this
America? Can our country and our democracy ever be the same if we don't
hold accountable the person responsible for inciting the violent attack
against our country, our Capitol, and our democracy and all of those
who serve us so faithfully and honorably? Is this America?
Mr. Neguse will now provide a roadmap, a roadmap of our evidentiary
case.
Mr. Manager NEGUSE. Mr. President, distinguished Senators, counsel,
like several of you, I am a child of immigrants. And as a son of
immigrants, I believe firmly in my heart that the United States is the
greatest Republic that this world has ever known.
A hallmark of our Republic since the days of George Washington has
been the peaceful transfer of power. For centuries, we have accepted it
as fact.
Unfortunately, sadly, we know now that we can no longer take that for
granted because, as Lead Manager Raskin explained, on January 6, the
peaceful transition of power was violently interrupted when a mob
stormed this Capitol and desecrated this Chamber.
As you will see during the course of this trial, that mob was
summoned, assembled, and incited by the former President of the United
States, Donald Trump, and he did that because he wanted to stop the
transfer of power so that he could retain power, even though he had
lost the election. And when the violence erupted, when they were here
in our building, with weapons, he did nothing to stop it.
If we are to protect our Republic and prevent something like this
from ever happening again, he must be convicted.
Now, I want to be very clear about what we will show you during the
course of this trial. As my fellow managers present our case to you
today, tonight, and tomorrow, it will be helpful to think about
President Trump's incitement of insurrection in three distinct parts:
provocation, the attack, and the harm.
Let's start with the provocation. We will show, during the course of
this trial, that this attack was provoked by the President, incited by
the President, and, as a result, it was predictable, and it was
foreseeable. And, of course, that makes sense.
This mob was well orchestrated. Their conduct was intentional. They
did it all in plain sight--proudly, openly, and loudly--because they
believed, they truly believed that they were doing this for him; that
this was their patriotic duty.
They even predicted that he would protect them. And for the most
part, they were right. In his unique role as Commander in Chief of our
country and as the one person whom the mob was listening to and
following orders from, he had the power to stop it, and he didn't.
Now, some have said that President Trump's remarks, his speech on
January 6, was just a speech. Well, let me ask you this: When in our
history has a speech led thousands of people to storm our Nation's
Capitol with weapons, to scale the walls, break windows, kill a Capitol
Police officer?
This was not just a speech. It didn't just happen. And as you
evaluate the facts that we present to you, it will become clear exactly
where that mob came from, because here is the thing: President Trump's
words, as you will see, on January 6 in that speech, just like the
mob's actions, were carefully chosen. Those words had a very specific
meaning to that crowd. And how do we know this? Because in the weeks
prior to, during, and after the election, he used the same words over
and over and over again. You will hear over and over three things--you
can see them on the screens--first, what Lead Manager Raskin referred
to as the ``big lie,'' that the ``election was stolen, full of fraud,
rigged.'' You will hear over and over him using that lie to urge his
supporters to ``never concede'' and ``stop the steal.'' Finally, you
will hear the call to arms, that it was his supporters' patriotic duty
to fight like hell. To do what? To stop the steal. To stop the election
from being stolen by showing up in this very Chamber. To stop you. To
stop us.
I respectfully ask that you remember those three phrases as you
consider the evidence today--``The election was stolen,'' ``Stop the
Steal,'' and ``Fight like hell''--because they did not just appear on
January 6. Let me show you what I mean. Let's start with the ``big
lie.''
You will see during this trial that the President realized, really by
last spring, that he could lose, he might lose the election. So what
did he do? He started planting the seeds to get some of his supporters
ready by saying that he could only lose the election if it was stolen.
In other words, really what he did was create a no-lose scenario:
either he won the election or he would have some angry supporters--not
all but some--who believed that if he lost, the election had to be
rigged, and they would be angry because he was telling Americans that
their vote had been stolen. And in America, our vote is our voice. So
his false claims about election fraud, that was the drumbeat being used
to inspire, instigate, and ignite them, to anger them.
Watch this clip.
(Text of video presentation.)

President TRUMP. Because we are not going to let this
election be taken away from us. That's the only way they are
going to win this. We are not going to let it happen.
(Applause.)
It is the only way we can be--it is the only way we can
lose, in my opinion, is massive fraud.

We all know what happened after that. He lost. He lost the election.
But remember, he had that no-lose scenario that I referenced earlier.
He told his base that the election was stolen, as he had forecasted,
and then he told them: Your election has been stolen, but you cannot
concede. You must stop the steal.
(Text of video presentation.)

President TRUMP: You can't let another person steal that
election from you. All over the country, people are together
in holding up signs: `Stop the Steal.'
The Democrats are trying to steal the White House. You
cannot let them. You just can't let them.

Now, while he is inciting his supporters, he is also simultaneously
doing everything he possibly can to overturn the election.
First, he begins with the courts--a legitimate avenue, legitimate
avenue--to challenge the election, but he ignores all of their adverse
rulings when all of his claims are thrown out.
Then he moves on to try to pressure State election officials to block
the election results for his opponent even though he had lost in their
States. You will hear my fellow managers discuss that in detail.
Then he tries to threaten State election officials to actually change
the votes to make him the winner, even threatening criminal penalties
if they refused.
He had the Justice Department investigate his claims, and even they
found no support for those claims. So he tried to persuade some Members
of his party in Congress to block the certification of his vote with
attacks in public forums.
When that failed, he tried to intimidate the Vice President of the
United States of America to refuse to certify the vote and send it back
to the States.
None of it worked. So what does he do, with his back against the
wall, when all else has failed? He turned back to his supporters. He
had already spent months telling them that the election was stolen, and
he amplified it further. He turned it up a notch. He told them that
they had to be ready not just to stop the steal but to fight like hell.
(Text of video presentation.)

President TRUMP. We are going to fight for the survival of
our nation. And we are going to keep on fighting.
We will never surrender, we will only win.
Now is not the time to retreat. Now is the time to fight
harder than ever before.
We have to go all the way. We are going to fight like hell,
I will tell you right now.
We will not bend, we will not break, we will not yield. We
will never give in. We will never give up. We will never back
down. We will never, ever surrender.

[[Page S619]]

You will see that in the months the President made thes statements,
people listened. Armed supporters surrounded election officials' homes.
The secretary of state for Georgia got death threats. Officials warned
the President that his rhetoric was dangerous, and it was going to
result in deadly violence. And that is what makes this so different,
because when he saw firsthand the violence that his conduct was
creating, he didn't stop it. He didn't condemn the violence. He incited
it further, and he got more specific. He didn't just tell them to fight
like hell; he told them how, where, and when. He made sure they had
advance notice, 18 days' advance notice. He sent this ``save the date''
for January 6. He told them to march to the Capitol and fight like hell
on January 6, as Lead Manager Raskin said, the exact same day we were
certifying the election results. What time was that rally scheduled
for? The exact same time that this Chamber was certifying the election
results in joint session. When did he conclude his speech? Literally
moments before Speaker Pelosi had gaveled us into session.

Many of us were in the House during that joint session of Congress. I
was sitting two rows behind Leader Schumer and Leader McConnell. I
remember it vividly. And as we were standing there fulfilling our
solemn oath to the Constitution, the President was finishing his speech
just a couple of miles away. How did he conclude that infamous speech?
With a final call to action. He told them to march down Pennsylvania
Avenue, to come here; that it was their patriotic duty because the
election had been stolen. And when they heard his speech, they
understood his words and what they meant because they had heard it
before.
Let's take just a minute and really look at his words on January 6 as
he spoke at the Save America rally. Remember, I told you you would hear
three phrases: ``The election was stolen,'' ``Stop the Steal,'' and
``Fight like hell.'' Let's start with that first phrase.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
President TRUMP. All of us here today do not want to see
our election victory stolen.
There has never been anything like this. It is a pure theft
in American history. Everybody knows it. Make no mistake,
this election was stolen from you, from me, and from the
country.

Now, of course, each of you heard those words before. So had the
crowd. The President had spent months telling his supporters that the
election had been stolen, and he used this speech to incite them
further, to inflame them, to stop the steal, to stop the certification
of the election results.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. We will never give up, we will never
concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's
theft involved. And to use a favorite term that all of you
people really came up with: We will stop the steal.
We must stop the steal.

Finally, the President used the speech as a call to arms. It was not
rhetorical. Some of his supporters had been primed for this over many
months. As you will learn, days before this speech, as Lead Manager
Raskin noted, there were vast reports across all major media outlets
that thousands of people would be armed, that they would be violent.
You will learn that Capitol Police and the FBI reported in the days
leading up to the attack that thousands in the crowd would be targeting
the Capitol specifically, that they had arrested people with guns the
night before the attack on weapons charges.
And this is what our Commander in Chief said to the crowd in the face
of those warnings, right before they came here.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. We will not let them silence your voices.
We're not going to let it happen. Not going let it happen.
(People chanting: ``Fight for Trump.'')
President TRUMP. Thank you. And you have to get your people
to fight because you'll never take back our country with
weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be
strong. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't
fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

``You have to get your people to fight,'' he told them.
Senators, this clearly was not just one speech. It didn't just
happen. It was part of a carefully planned, months-long effort with a
very specific instruction: Show up on January 6, and get your people to
fight the certification.
He incited it. It was foreseeable. And again, you don't have to take
my word for it. The President's former Chief of Staff--he is a retired
marine, four-star general, was confirmed by this body to be the
Secretary of Homeland Security, overwhelming vote--that man was John
Kelly. On the day after the insurrection, he said this:
(Text of video presentation.)

Mr. KELLY. You know, the president knows who he's talking
to when he tweets or when he makes statements. He knows who
he is talking to. He knows what he wants them to do. And the
fact that he said the things, he has been saying the things
he has been saying since the election, and encouraging
people, there is no surprise, again, at what happened
yesterday.
No surprise. Think about that. No surprise. The President had every
reason to know that this would happen because he assembled the mob, he
summoned the mob, and he incited the mob. He knew when he took that
podium on that fateful morning that those in attendance had heeded the
words and they were waiting for his orders to begin fighting.
And that, of course, brings me, my fellow managers, to what happened
here in this building. As Lead Manager Raskin stated, my colleagues are
going to walk through the events of January 6 and the evidence in very
great detail. They are painful to watch and to recount, and I am not
going to repeat the evidence now.
But I do want to be clear about what also happened during that
terrible attack, and that is this: that President Trump, once again,
failed us because when the violence erupted, when we and the law
enforcement officials protecting you were under attack, as each of you
were being evacuated from this Chamber from a violent mob, as we were
being evacuated from the House, he could have immediately and
forcefully intervened to stop the violence. It was his duty as
Commander in Chief to stop the violence, and he alone had that power,
not just because of his unique role as Commander in Chief but because
they believed that they were following his orders. They said so.
(Text of videotape presentation.)

President Trump!
President Trump!
Fight for Trump!
Fight for Trump!
Fight for Trump!
We were invited by the President of the United States!
I thought I was following my President. I thought I was
following what we were called to do. President Trump
requested that we be in DC on the 6th.

You heard it from them. They were doing what he wanted them to do.
They wouldn't have listened to you, to me, to the Vice President of the
United States who they were attacking. They didn't stop in the face of
law enforcement, police officers fighting for their lives to stop them.
They were following the President. He alone, our Commander in Chief,
had the power to stop them and he didn't.
You will hear evidence tonight, tomorrow, throughout the trial, about
his refusal as Commander in Chief to respond to numerous desperate
pleas on the phone, across social media, begging him to stop the
attack. And you will see his relentless attack on Vice President Pence,
who was at that very moment hiding with his family as armed extremists
were chanting, ``Hang Mike Pence,'' calling him a traitor.
You will see that even when he did finally, 3\1/2\ hours into the
attack, tell these people to go home in peace, he added, as Lead
Manager Raskin said, I will quote:

You're very special. We love you.

Think for a moment--just a moment--of the lives lost that day, of the
more than 140 wounded police officers, and ask yourself if, as soon as
this had started, President Trump had simply gone onto TV, just logged
onto Twitter and said ``Stop the attack.'' If he had done so with even
half as much force as he said ``Stop the steal,'' how many lives would
we have saved? Sadly, he didn't do that.
At the end of the day, the President was not successful in stopping
the certification. That we know, thanks to the bravery of our law
enforcement and to the bravery of the Senators in this

[[Page S620]]

room, each of you who still fulfilled your constitutional duty even
under the threat of mortal peril. But there can be no doubt of the
grave harm that he caused to our elected leaders; to us, our families;
to all who work at the Capitol, our staff, your staff; to our brave
Capitol police, who defend us tirelessly with little thanks, who
believed that they had a Commander in Chief who would defend and
protect them, instead put them in harm's way; to those killed for
heeding his command; to our democracy and the system, which ensures
that we have a President elected by the people; to our national
security and our standing in the world. The harm was real. The damage
was real.
Five people lost their lives on that terrible, tragic day. A woman
was shot dead 50 feet from where we later certified the election
results. And for those who question just how bad it was, criminal
complaints recently unsealed by the Department of Justice are more than
revealing. You all see one of these documents on the screen. In the
charging affidavit of one of the leaders of the Proud Boys, we learned
that members of this group ``said that they would have killed . . .
Mike Pence if given the chance.''
In another, we learned of the tweet in realtime while they were in
the building stating:

We broke into the Capitol . . . we got inside, we did our
part. . . . We were looking for Nancy [Pelosi] to shoot her
in the friggin' brain but we didn't find her.

And for anyone who suggests otherwise, these defendants themselves
have told you exactly why they were here. You will se this in the
trial, that in the halls of the Capitol, on social media, in news
interviews, and in charging documents, they confirmed they were
following the President's orders. You can see some of the statements on
that screen, one who said:

Trump wants all able-bodied patriots.

Another:

President Trump is calling us to FIGHT! . . . This isn't a
joke.

Another:

I thought I was following my President. I thought I was
following what we were called to do.
Our President wants us here.
We wait and take orders from [the] president.

He made them believe, over many weeks, that the election was stolen
and they were following his command to take back their country.
As I prepared for today--yesterday, this trial--one memory that I
couldn't shake: It was on the night of January 6 and the feeling of
walking back onto the House floor and seeing many of you there. I
remember us finishing our task at 4 in the morning, and as I walked off
the floor, I was so grateful--so grateful--for the opportunity to thank
the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, for his actions,
for standing before us and asking us to follow our oath and our faith
and our duty.
We only got a couple of hours of sleep that morning. Early the next
day, I called my dad, who came to this country, as I mentioned, as an
immigrant 40 years ago, and I told him that the proudest moment, by
far, of serving in Congress, for me, was going back on to the floor
with each of you to finish the work that we had started.
I am humbled to be back with you today. And just as on January 6,
when we overcame that attack on our Capitol, on our country, I am
hopeful that at this trial, we can use our resolve and our resilience
to, again, uphold our democracy by faithfully applying the law,
vindicating the Constitution, and holding President Trump accountable
for his actions.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Senators, Representatives Joaquin Castro and Eric
Swalwell will now show the evidence of President Trump's long campaign
to delegitimize his electoral defeat and to galvanize his supporters to
help him retain his power at any cost.
So we are going to go, at this point, step by step to explain the
progression all the way up until the attack.
Mr. Manager CASTRO. Good afternoon, you all. My name is Joaquin
Castro. I represent San Antonio in the United States Congress. There is
a saying that ``[a] lie can travel halfway around the world before the
truth has a chance to put on its shoes.'' That was before the internet.
The point of that saying is the lie can do incredible damage and
destruction, and that is especially true when that lie is told by the
most powerful person on Earth, our Commander in Chief, the President of
the United States.
This attack did not come from one speech, and it didn't happen by
accident. The evidence shows clearly that this mob was provoked over
many months by Donald J. Trump. And if you look at the evidence, his
purposeful conduct, you will see that the attack was foreseeable and
preventable.
I will start by discussing President Trump's actions leading up to
the election when he set up his big lie. Beginning in the spring of
2020, President Trump began to fall behind in the polls, and by July,
President Trump had reached a new low. He was running 15 points behind
his opponent, and he was scared.
He began to believe that he could legitimately lose the election, so
he did something entirely unprecedented in the history of our Nation.
He refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power. Here is what he
said:
(Text of videotape presentation.)

Mr. WALLACE: Can you give a direct answer you will accept
the election?
Mr. TRUMP. I have to see. Look, I have to see. No, I'm not
just going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no.
Mr. WALLACE. Do you commit to making sure that there is a
peaceful transfer of power?
Mr. TRUMP. Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very
peaceful--there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a
continuation.

Senators, the President of the United States said: There won't be a
transition of power, frankly. There will be a continuation.
President Trump was given every opportunity to tell his supporters:
Yes, if I lose, I will peacefully transfer power to the next
President. Instead, he told his supporters the only way he could lose
the election is if it were stolen.

In tweet after tweet, he made sweeping allegations about election
fraud that couldn't possibly be true. But that was the point. He didn't
care if things were true. He wanted to make sure that his supporters
were angry, like the election was being ripped away from them.
On May 24, 6 months before the election, he tweeted:

It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history.

How could he possibly know it would be the greatest rigged election
in history 6 months before the election happened?
And, on June 22, more of the same:

RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!

Again--about an election that had not even happened.
On July 30:

2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in
history.

Again, just big words with nothing to prove them, but he wanted to
make his supporters believe that an election victory would be stolen
from him and from them. This was to rile up his base, to make them
angry.
Now, these were just a few of the many times President Trump tweeted
about this, and he did it in speeches, in rallies, and on television,
too.
(Text of video presentation of 7-31-2020.)

President TRUMP: This is going to be the greatest election
disaster in history.
Because the only way we are going to lose this election is
if the election is rigged. Remember that.
The only way they can take this election away from us is if
this is a rigged election. We are going to win this election.
It's a rigged election. That's the only way we are going to
lose.
But this will be one of the greatest fraudulent--most
fraudulent elections ever.

This is clearly a man who refuses to accept the possibility or the
reality in our democracy of losing an election, and there are dozens
more tweets and speeches of Donald Trump spreading his lie, but you get
the point. His supporters got the point as well. They firmly believed
that, if he lost, it was because the election was rigged.
(Text of video presentation of 9-15-2020.)

The Interviewer. Will you accept the result if Joe Biden
wins?
Unidentified Speaker. No.
The Interviewer. Under any circumstances?
Unidentified Speaker. No.
The Interviewer. Why is that?
Unidentified Speaker. Because it's lies and deceit and
corruption.
The Interviewer. Do you think that, when you get to
election night or in the following

[[Page S621]]

days, if Biden winds up somehow becoming the winner--do you
think it's rigged?
Unidentified Speaker. Oh, yes, very much so.
The Interviewer. On election night--
Unidentified Speaker. Yes.
The Interviewer.--if it ends up that Joe Biden wins--
Unidentified Speaker. Yes.
The Interviewer.--in your opinion, would that be the only
way that Trump could lose, that it would be a rigged
election? Is that the only way Joe Biden could win?
Unidentified Speaker. Absolutely. I agree with that because
there's no way in heck our President is going to lose, but,
yes, it would be a rigged election. There will be--some type
of cheating went on, what have you, and I firmly believe
that.

Now, all of us in this room have run for election, and it is no fun
to lose. I am a Texas Democrat, and we have lost a few elections over
the years, but can you imagine telling your supporters that the only
way you could possibly lose is if an American election were rigged and
stolen from you?
Ask yourself whether you have ever seen anyone at any level of
government make the same claim about their own election, but that is
exactly what President Trump did. He truly made his base believe that
the only way he could lose was if the election were rigged.
Senators, all of us know and all of understand how dangerous that is
for our country, because the most combustible thing you can do in a
democracy is convince people that an election doesn't count, that their
voices and their votes don't count, and that it has all been stolen,
especially if what you are saying are lies.
Let us turn now to the election.
As you know, the results were not fully reported on election night,
which is not unusual in our Nation's history. But by November 7, major
news networks, including FOX News, reported that, once the remaining
votes were counted, Joe Biden would be the likely victor. So President
Trump began urging his supporters to stop the count.
I would imagine that, if we went around this room, there would be
folks sitting here who started down on election night and ended up
coming back up and winning their races. Perhaps that is why some of you
are seated in this room today.
But imagine if you were behind, and the results started coming in,
and as you started pulling ahead, your opponent said: That's not fair.
Stop the count while I am still ahead.
That is what Donald Trump did, but that is not how America works.
Here, every vote counts. You don't just stop counting when one person
is ahead. We count every vote.
And let's be clear: President Trump knew that you just can't stop
counting votes, but he wanted to inflame his base. There was a purpose
behind this--to truly make them believe that counting votes would
result in a stolen, rigged election.
He said at 12:49 a.m. on election night:

They are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let
them do it.

A little over an hour later, at, roughly, 2:30 in the morning, before
all the votes were even close to being counted, he goes even further
and actually declares victory. Take a look.
(Text of video presentation of 11-4-2020.)

President TRUMP. This is a fraud on the American public.
This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting
ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this
election.

``Frankly, we did win,'' rather than calmly saying: Let's count the
votes. If there are legal issues, we will go to court, and we will
resolve them.
Instead, he told his supporters that he had actually won the election
and that the whole thing was a fraud. He said that on November 4, and
he has never renounced that statement since.
Despite President Trump's pressure at the time, election officials
around the country continued to carry out their duties, and as votes
were counted and his loss became more certain, he riled up his base
further. Take a look at these tweets.

On November 5, he tweeted, in all capital letters, as if shouting
commands:

STOP THE COUNT!
STOP THE FRAUD!

Senators, this is dangerous.
I also want you to remember these tweets for another reason, because
that is what it looks like when Donald Trump wants people to stop doing
something.
Bear in mind, this is not the President saying to his supporters that
somebody stole your cup of coffee. This is the Commander in Chief
telling his supporters ``your election is being stolen, and you must
stop the counting of American votes,'' and it worked. His words became
their actions. His commands led to their actions. Take a look at this.
The same day as those tweets--the same day as those tweets--around
100 Trump supporters showed up in front of the Maricopa County
elections center in Phoenix, some of them carrying rifles, literally
trying to intimidate officials to stop the count just as President
Trump had commanded. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said that
protesters were ``causing delay and disruption and preventing those
employees from doing their job.''
Let's call this what it was. We were facing a global pandemic, and
workers were risking their health to ensure the integrity of our
elections. President Trump's supporters were encircling them, trying to
prevent them from doing their own jobs. This was dangerous, it was
scary, and it was a blatant act of political intimidation.
In Philadelphia, that same day, police investigated an alleged plot
to attack the city's Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes were
being counted. Police took at least one man into custody who was
carrying a weapon. This happened all over. In Atlanta, in Detroit, and
in Milwaukee, his supporters used armed force to try to disrupt the
lawful counting of votes because they bought into Trump's big lie that
the election was stolen from them.
President Trump's months of inflaming and inciting his supporters had
worked. They believed it was their duty to, quite literally, fight to
stop the count. So they showed up at election centers across the
country to do just that.
(Text of video presentation of 11-5-2020.)

President TRUMP. This is a fraud on the American public.
This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting
ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this
election.
(People chanting: ``Yeah.'')
(People chanting: ``Stop the count.'')
(People chanting: ``They ain't taking it from us.'')
President TRUMP. We were winning in all the key locations
by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously
getting whittled away in secret.
(People chanting: ``They will pay. They will be destroyed
because America is rising.'')

And there it is. They had bought into his big lie. President Trump
told his supporters over and over again, nearly every day, in dozens of
tweets, speeches, and rallies, that their most precious right in our
democracy--their voice, their vote--was being stripped away, and they
had to fight to stop that. They believed him, and so they fought.
You may say: Well, he didn't know that they would take up arms. But
when he did know, when it was all over the news, President Trump didn't
stop. As Mr. Swalwell will show, after Donald Trump lost, he became
even more desperate and incited his base even further. He urged them
again and again, with increasingly forceful language, to fight to stop
the steal. Even as the certification got closer and he grew even more
desperate, he gave them specific instructions on how, where, and when
to fight to stop the steal. He told them to show up on January 6 and
march to the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of the election
results, and he told them to come here and fight like hell.
You will see, clearly, that this violent mob that showed up here on
January 6 didn't come out of thin air. President Donald John Trump
incited this violence, and that is the truth.
Mr. Manager SWALWELL. Mr. President, distinguished Senators, my name
is Eric Swalwell, and I represent California's 15th Congressional
District.
Manager Castro just told you about Donald Trump's lies and acts
before the election, but to paraphrase Winston Churchill, that wasn't
the end of his efforts. That wasn't the beginning of the end, but
perhaps it was the end of the beginning. Here is what I mean.
You saw President Trump prime for months his supporters to believe
that, if the election were lost, it only could

[[Page S622]]

have been so because it was rigged, but that took time just like, to
build a fire, it doesn't just start with the flames. Donald Trump, for
months and months, assembled the tinder, the kindling--threw on logs
for fuel--to have his supporters believe that the only way their
victory would be lost was if it were stolen. So, that way, President
Trump was ready, if he lost the election, to light the match.
And on November 7, after all the votes were counted, President Trump
did lose by 7 million votes.
But for Donald Trump, all was not lost. He had a backup plan. Instead
of accepting the results or pursuing legitimate claims, he told his
base more lies. He doused the flames with kerosene.
And this wasn't just some random guy at the neighborhood bar blowing
off steam. This was our Commander in Chief.
Day after day, he told his supporters false, outlandish lies that the
victory--that the election outcome was taken and it was rigged. And he
had absolutely no support for his claims, but that wasn't the point. He
wanted to make his base angrier and angrier.
And to make them angry, he was willing to say anything. On November
15, he stated:

I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a
RIGGED ELECTION!

He doesn't say why the election is rigged.
November 17, in a Twitter statement:

DEAD PEOPLE VOTED.

That is it. No evidence, just ``DEAD PEOPLE VOTED.''
November 28, Twitter statement:

We have found many illegal votes. Stay tuned!

This just wasn't true. He never found illegal votes. He didn't even
try to pretend that he had evidence for that. And ``stay tuned''? Well,
that was all about inciting his base, not about bringing legitimate
claims. It was about dramatizing the election to anger his supporters.
December 5, you see here he goes after the Governors of Arizona and
Georgia, Governors from his own party, claiming that they weren't with
him.
You see, Senators, he is casting this in combat terms; that either
you are with him, making sure that he won the election, or you are
fighting against him.
These are just a few of the hundreds of Twitter statements that
President Trump sent. And it wasn't just Twitter statements.
As you will see, he was dialing into meetings, holding rallies,
appearing on television, continuing to spread the big lie that his
election victory was stolen.
(Text of video presentation of 12-2-2020.)

President TRUMP. People that were dead were signing up for
ballots. Not only were they jumping in and putting in a
ballot, but dead people were requesting ballots, and they
were dead for years, and they were requesting ballots.
President TRUMP. Dead people voting all over the place.
President TRUMP. The alleged Biden margin of victory in
several states is entirely accounted for by extraordinarily
large midnight vote dumps. You saw them going up to the sky.

Massive ``midnight vote dumps.'' Dead people voting all over the
place. He said there were votes ``going up to the sky.''
This was never about pursuing legitimate claims. He was saying
anything he could to trigger and anger his base so that they would
fight like hell to overturn a legitimate election.
And it worked. Just as Manager Castro showed you, President Trump's
supporters were taking up arms to stop the count. His message to
``fight like hell'' was having real consequences.
In Michigan, you will recall that President Trump was attacking that
State and its officials. He continued these attacks even after Michigan
certified its votes.
(Text of video presentation of 11-26-2020.)

President TRUMP. Take a look at Michigan. Take a look at
what they did with respect to counties, and then you get to
Detroit and it's like more votes than people. Dead people
voting all over the place.

(Text of video presentation of 12-5-2020.)

President TRUMP. You know I won almost every county in
Michigan, almost every district.
President TRUMP. We should have won that state very easily.
We have a similar type of governor, I think, but I'll let you
know that in about a week.

He is literally telling them that there were more votes in Detroit
than people.
About 260,000 people voted in Detroit. There are roughly 500,000
registered voters in Detroit. There are approximately 670,000 people
living in the city. So, again, not true. But he needed to make these
outlandish claims to truly make his supporters believe that their
victory was stolen from them.
And it was working. A few days after these clips, on December 5, his
supporters surrounded the Michigan Secretary of State's home.
(Text of video presentation of 12-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. I'm just sharing our Secretary of
State's House and . . .
(People chanting: ``Stop the steal.'')
Unidentified Speaker. You are a threat to democracy. You
are a threat to free and honest elections.

Nine o'clock at night, Secretary's family is inside; protestors have
surrounded her home; and they are chanting that she is a felon.
And, as we saw, when armed protestors showed up to follow President
Trump's direction to stop the steal, this was not the first time that
President Trump's supporters used threats and intimidation.
President Trump cannot say: I didn't know what I was inciting. From
what Manager Castro showed and what I just showed, there was plenty of
evidence that his words had consequences, and if he wanted to stop it,
he could stop it.
You saw Mr. Castro read statement after statement from our Commander
in Chief saying, ``Stop the count.'' ``Stop the steal.''
President Trump was never shy about using his platforms to try and
stop something. He could have very easily told his supporters: Stop
threatening officials. Stop going to their homes. Stop it with the
threats.

But each time, he didn't. Instead, in the face of escalating
violence, he incited them further.
The next phase in the certification of results was the certification
on December 14 of the electoral college votes.
The night before, President Trump personally issued 14 Twitter
statements, with more false claims about the election being stolen and
directing his supporters to make sure that ``they cannot be
certified.''
He states here:

The RINOS--

that run the state voting apparatus have caused us the
problem of allowing the Democrats to so blatantly cheat in
their attempt to steal the election, which we won
overwhelmingly.
We will never give up!

In the face of threats to elected officials, this is his message.
And he calls them RINOS--Republicans in name only--and tells them to
never give up.
President Trump, to him, it was his supporters against anyone who
would not overturn the election results so that President Trump could
win.
But on December 14, despite all of President Trump's efforts to stop,
the electors cast their votes according to the will of the American
people, and Joe Biden was certified as having won 306 electoral college
votes.
The day after this occurred, Leader McConnell recognized this,
stating:

Many of us hoped that the presidential election would yield
a different result, but our system of government has
processes to determine who will be sworn in on January 20.
The Electoral College has spoken.

As Manager Castro said, no one here, no one among us wants to lose an
election. Sometimes there is a reason to dispute an election. Sometimes
the count is close. Sometimes we ask for a recount or we go to court.
That is entirely appropriate.
But what President Trump did was different. What President Trump did
was the polar opposite of what any of us would do if we lost an
election because once the outcome is clear and a judge rules, we
concede. We recognize the will of the American people because we let
the people decide.
And that is what all of the courts, the Justice Department, and the
50 States that had counted the votes--they said it was time for a
peaceful transition of power because that is what our Constitution and
rule of law demands.

[[Page S623]]

Except President Trump. He directed all of the rage that he had
incited to January 6. That was his last chance to stop the peaceful
transition of power.
And that brings us to the attack. Manager Castro told you the power
of the lie--especially when the lie comes from the most powerful person
in the world, the Commander in Chief.
It also helps if you spend millions of dollars to amplify that lie.
You will see here, in mid-December, President Trump announced the
release of ads, including ones entitled ``The Evidence is
Overwhelming--FRAUD!'' ``STOP THE STEAL.''
He spent $50 million from his legal defense fund on these ads to stop
the steal and amplify his message. They were released nationally,
played in video ads, online advertising, and targeted text messages.
They used the same words and phrases that President Trump had been
spreading for months; that the election was full of ``fraud,'' to
``stop the steal.''
But now they had a specific purpose. How do we know that purpose?
These ads were designed to run all the way up to January 5, and then
they stopped. This was purposeful and deliberate planning to target his
base to rally around that day.
And it wasn't just his ads. He continued to use his own platform. He
told his supporters, who truly believed their victory had been stolen
and were ready to fight, when, where, and how to stop what he believed
was a steal.
Donald Trump would issue a deliberate call to action, and just like
in his ads, that action was centered around January 6.
On December 19, at 1:42 in the morning, our Commander in Chief
tweeted:

Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!

``Will be wild!'' We know why he picked this day. It wasn't random.
It was his last chance to stop a peaceful transition of power, and he
gave his supporters plenty of time to plan.
This was the save-the-date sent out 18 days before the event on
January 6, and it wasn't a casual one-off reference or a single
invitation.
For the next 18 days, Donald Trump would make sure to remind them
over and over and over to show up on January 6.
And he would tell them exactly what he wanted them to do.
On December 26, he tweets:

If a Democrat Presidential Candidate had an Election Rigged
& Stolen, with proof of such acts at a level never seen
before, the Democrat Senators would consider it an act of
war, and fight to the death. Mitch & the Republicans do
NOTHING, just want to let it pass. NO FIGHT!

He is saying that the Republicans are doing nothing and have no fight
because you are doing your job, taking on the constitutional process of
certifying the electoral college results.
And he also suggests, President Trump, that if this was the reverse
and the Democrats had lost, it would be an act of war--an act of war.
That is how Donald Trump prepared his supporters for January 6.
He even stated again, 14 minutes later, to make sure his supporters
understood:

The ``Justice'' Department and the FBI have done nothing
about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest
SCAM--

All caps.

--in our nation's history, despite overwhelming evidence.
They should be ashamed.

And then he adds:

History will remember. Never give up. See everyone in D.C.
on January 6th.

That phrase, ``History will remember,'' was the only time--the first
time--Donald Trump had used it in his Presidency, and he sent this to
70-plus million Twitter followers the day they needed to show up and be
ready to fight.
On December 27, he reminds them again:

Don't miss it. Information to follow!

A few days later, December 30, all caps, ``SEE YOU IN DC!'' This
continues all the way up to January 6.
On January 1, he states:

The BIG Protest Rally in Washington . . . will take place
at 11:00 A.M. . . . Locational details to follow.
StopTheSteal!

You will see that an hour later President Trump retweeted one of his
Twitter followers. That follower was Kylie Kremer, executive director
of Women for America First, the group organizing the January 6 rally
and the creator of the Facebook group, Stop the Steal. Kremer tweeted:
``The [cavalry] is coming, Mr. President!'' referring to the cavalry
showing up on January 6. She also added a website for supporters to
RSVP and made clear what the message was: hashtag ``Stop The Steal.''
And what did President Trump say in response to hearing that the
cavalry was coming? ``A great honor!'' he wrote back.
This wasn't just a single tweet. He and his organizers would do this
over and over repeatedly. On January 3, another supporter tweets:

We have been marching all around the country for you Mr.
President. Now we will bring it to DC on Jan 6 and PROUDLY
stand beside you! Thank you for fighting for us.

When President Trump reposted her tweet, she wrote back:

BEST DAY EVER!!! Thank you . . . for the retweet! It has
been an honor to stand up and fight for you and our nation.
We will be standing strong on Jan 6th in DC with you! We are
bringing the [cavalry] Mr. President.

``We are bringing the cavalry.'' That was the consistent message.
This was not just any old protest. President Trump was inciting
something historic. The cavalry was coming, and he was organized.
In her post, Ms. Lawrence tagged Kylie Kremer, the organizer of the
event, whose post we just saw President Trump retweet. Again, you see
this is all connected.
I won't show you all the Twitter statements--and there are a lot--but
here's one more.
President Trump retweeted another of Ms. Kremer's posts, which had
all the details of January 6 with the same hashtags: ``March For
Trump,'' ``Do Not Certify,'' ``Stop The Steal.'' And in response,
President Trump, he writes back:

I will be there. Historic day!

Before Congress, I prosecuted violent crimes in California as an
Alameda County deputy district attorney. And when you investigate and
prosecute violent crimes, you have to distinguish: Was this a heat-of-
passion crime? Or was it something more deliberate, planned,
premeditated?
The evidence here on this count is overwhelming. President Trump's
conduct leading up to January 6 was deliberate, planned, and
premeditated. This was not one speech, not one tweet. It was dozens in
rapid succession with the specific details. He was acting as part of
the host committee. In fact, when he had assembled his inflamed mob in
DC, he warned us that he knew what was coming.
This was President Trump's statement the night before the attack--I
should say this was one of his dozens of statements on Twitter in the
hours leading up to the attack:

I hope the Democrats, and even more importantly, the weak
and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party, are
looking at the thousands of people pouring into D.C. They
won't stand for a landslide . . . victory to be stolen.
@senatemajldr @JohnCornyn @SenJohnThune.

``Thousands of people pouring into D.C. [who] won't stand for the
landslide election to be stolen''--it is all right there. And he tags
Senators to pressure you to stop this, and he warns all of us that his
thousands of supporters, whom you will see that the FBI had warned were
armed and targeting the Capitol, won't stand for us certifying the
results of the election.
This was never about one speech. He built this mob over many months
with repeated messaging until they believed that they had been robbed
of their votes and they would do anything to stop the certification. He
made them believe that their victory was stolen and incited them so he
could use them to steal the election for himself.
(Text of videotape presentation.)

President TRUMP. This election was rigged.
Unidentified Speaker. This is tyranny against the people of
the United States, and we are not standing for it any more.
President TRUMP. If we don't root out the fraud--the
tremendous and horrible fraud that has taken place in our
2020 election, we don't have a country anymore
The Left lies. They cheat, and they steal. They are
ruthless, and they are hell-bent on getting power and control
by any means necessary.
(People chanting and screaming.)
(Police: ``Move back. Move back.'')
(People chanting: ``Stop the steal.'')
President TRUMP. Can't let it happen.
(People chanting: ``Stop the steal.'')
President TRUMP. The Democrats are trying to steal the
White House. You cannot let them.

[[Page S624]]

(People chanting: ``Fight for Trump.'')

``You can't let it happen.'' ``Never concede.'' ``Fight,'' he told
them in speech after speech. These crowds were ready to fight. This is
what President Trump was inciting. He foresaw what was coming, and this
is what he deliberately led to our doorstep on January 6.
I want to be clear. During this trial, when we talk about the violent
mob during the attack, we do not mean every American who showed up at
President Trump's rally. Certain Americans came to protest peacefully,
as is their right. That is what makes our country so great--to debate
freely, openly, and peacefully our differences, just like all of you
were attempting to do in this very room on January 6.
But what President Trump did was different. He didn't tell his
supporters to fight or be strong in a casual reference. He repeatedly,
over months, told them to fight for a specific purpose. He told them
their victory was stolen, the election was rigged, and their patriotic
duty was to fight to stop the steal. And he repeated this messaging
even after he saw the violence it was inciting. And when they were
primed and angry and ready to fight, he escalated and channeled their
rage with a call to arms: Show up on January 6 at the exact time the
votes of the American people were being counted and certified, and then
march to the Capitol, and ``fight like hell.'' He told this to
thousands of people who were armed to the teeth, targeting us and
determined to stop the electoral college count.
What our Commander in Chief did was wildly different from what anyone
here in this room did to raise election concerns. This was a
deliberate, premeditated incitement to his base to attack our Capitol
while the counting was going on. And it was foreseeable, especially to
President Trump, who warned us he knew what was coming. This is what
the evidence has overwhelmingly shown and will show in this trial, and
it is also the truth.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.

Recess

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
recess for a 15-minute break.
There being no objection, at 1:39 p.m., the Senate, sitting as a
Court of Impeachment, recessed until 2:04 p.m., whereupon the Senate
reassembled when called to order by the President pro tempore.

Managers' Presentation--Continued

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Mr. Raskin.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.
My colleagues Madeleine Dean and Ted Lieu will now detail former
President Trump's increasingly desperate attempts to stop the steal.
Ms. Manager DEAN. Mr. President, esteemed Members of the Senate, it
is my solemn honor to be before you today.
I am Madeleine Dean, Congresswoman from the Fourth Congressional
District of Pennsylvania. I am a lawyer. I am a former professor of
writing. I am a sister. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a grandmother
to three, with fourth on her way. I am a person of faith. And I am an
American.
Along with Manager Lieu, I will present the actions of a desperate
President, and we will present evidence today of a class of public
servants who, standing up to enormous pressure from the President of
the United States, did the right thing and upheld their oaths.
My colleagues just presented evidence of President Trump's months-
long effort to incite his base, leading them to believe the election
was stolen, that they needed to fight like hell to stop the steal on
January 6.
These weren't President Trump's only efforts to overturn the results.
Manager Lieu and I will present evidence of President Trump's
relentless, escalating campaign to fabricate an election victory by
ignoring adverse court rulings, pressuring and threatening election
officials, attacking Senators and Members of Congress, pressuring the
Justice Department, and finally bullying his own Vice President.
President Trump and his allies filed 62 separate lawsuits in Federal
courts across more than half a dozen States and the District of
Columbia, including Pennsylvania, my home State, as well as Arizona,
Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Of the 62
postelection legal challenges, he lost 61. Only one was successful, and
that case involved ballot curing in Pennsylvania and had no impact on
President Biden's 80,555-vote victory in our Commonwealth.
To be clear, not a single court, not a single judge agreed that the
election results were invalid or should be invalidated. Instead, court
after court reviewing these challenges said these cases were ``not
credible,'' ``without merit,'' ``based on nothing but speculation,''
and ``flat out wrong.''
The judiciary resoundingly rejected Trump's fraud allegations and
upheld the election results, but it was more than that. The court said
these cases were different; they were dangerous to our democracy. For
an example, in an opinion by United States District Court Judge Matthew
Brann from Pennsylvania, he said:

[T]his Court has been presented with strained legal
arguments without merit and speculative accusations. . . . In
the United States of America, this cannot justify the
disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the
voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, [and]
laws, and institutions demand more.
Because this Court has no authority to take away the right
to vote of even a single person, let alone millions of
citizens, it cannot grant Plaintiff's requested relief.

That decision by Judge Brann was affirmed on appeal by Judge
Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee who agreed and wrote:

The Campaign's claims have no merit. The number of ballots
it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly
81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or
that any of the votes were cast by illegal voters. Plus,
tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and
unprecedented, disfranchising a huge swath of the electorate
and upsetting all down-ballot races.

Similarly, as Judge Linda Parker of the Eastern District of Michigan
framed it--she said:

[S]tunning in its scope and breathtaking in its reach. If
granted, th relief would disenfranchise the votes of . . .
more than 5.5 million Michigan citizens who, with dignity,
[and] hope, and a promise of a [vote], participated in the
2020 General Election.

Donald Trump told his supporters: They are stealing the election.
They took away your vote. It is rigged.
That was not true. According to judge after judge, the truth was
exactly the opposite.
Trump was not suing to ensure election integrity; he was pursuing
lawsuits that would, in effect, strip away American votes so that he
could win. In other words, Donald Trump was asking the judiciary to
take away votes from Americans so that he could steal the election for
himself.
Then, after losing in all the courts, Trump turned to another tactic:
pressuring and threatening election officials. You saw what happened in
Michigan after Trump attacked the State and its election officials. His
supporters surrounded the secretary of state's home, as you saw in the
earlier slide, chanting, calling her a felon.
On November 17, the Board of Canvassers for Wayne County, MI, home to
Detroit, unanimously certified the election results for Biden. That
same night, after their vote to certify the results, Trump called the
two Republican members of that board, pressuring them to change their
minds. The call worked. The next day, both Monica Palmer and William
Heartmann, the Republican board members, attempted to rescind their
vote to certify Michigan's election results, but they simply couldn't.
President Trump didn't stop there. He then contacted majority leader
of the Michigan Senate, Mike Shirkey, and the speaker of the Michigan
House, Lee Chatfield, to lobby them to overturn Michigan's results.
Trump invited Mr. Chatfield and Mr. Shirkey to Washington to meet with
him at the White House, where the President lobbied them further.
Let's be clear. Donald Trump was calling officials, hosting them at
the White House, urging them to defy the voters in their State and
instead award votes to Trump. The officials held strong, and so Trump
moved on to a different State, my home State of Pennsylvania. I am
certain my Senators, Casey and Toomey, remember what happened there.
In early December, as he did in Michigan, he began calling election
officials, including my former colleagues in the Pennsylvania
Legislature, Republicans, Majority Leader Kim Ward

[[Page S625]]

and Speaker of the House Bryan Cutler. Majority Leader Ward said the
President called her to ``declare there was a fraud in the voting.''
Then, on November 25, President Trump phoned in to a Republican State
senate policy hearing, trying to convince the Republican legislators,
senators, and house members that there had been a fraud in the vote. He
even had his lawyer hold a phone up to the microphone in that hearing
room so the committee could hear him. Here is what he said:
(Text of audio presentation.)

President TRUMP. We can't let that happen. We can't let it
happen for our country. And this election has to be turned
around because we won Pennsylvania by a lot, and we won all
of these swing States by a lot.

This was a gathering--I have attended many, I have to tell you, as a
former State legislator, a lot of policy hearings. I have to say with
some confidence, that was likely the first time a President of the
United States of America called in to a State legislative policy
hearing.
And, remember, here is the President saying he won Pennsylvania, and
Pennsylvania had been certified, that Biden had won by more than 80,000
votes.
Less than a week after calling in to that meeting, he invited
multiple Republican members of the Pennsylvania Legislature to the
White House--the same scheme he had used on the Michigan legislators.
It didn't work with those public servants either.
Think about it. The President of the United States was calling public
officials, calling from the White House, inviting them into the Oval
Office, telling them to disenfranchise voters of their State, telling
them to overturn the will of the American people. All so he could take
the election for himself.

And then in Georgia, a State Trump had counted on for victory, his
conduct was perhaps the most egregious. On November 11, Republican
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed that he believed
ballots were accurately counted for Biden.
Trump went on a relentless attack. Here are just a few examples. In
all, Trump tweeted at Raffensperger 17 times in the coming weeks--there
are just a few--calling him a ``disaster,'' ``obstinate,'' not having a
clue, being played for a fool, and being a ``so-called Republican,''
all because Raffensperger was doing his job, ensuring the integrity of
our elections.
And these attacks had consequences. Mr. Raffensperger and his family
received death threats:

Your husband deserves to face a firing squad.
You better not botch this recount. Your life depends [upon]
it.
The Raffenspergers should be put on trial for treason and
face execution.

Just some of the threats they received. After these death threats, on
November 25, Mr. Raffensperger wrote an op-ed, where he said:

My family voted for [Trump], donated to him and are now
being thrown under the bus by him.

But he also noted:

Elections are the bedrock of our democracy. They need to be
run fairly and, perhaps more [importantly], impartially.
That's not partisan. That's just American.

It is important to remember that this wasn't just a random attack.
Trump wasn't just criticizing a politician over policy or saying he
didn't agree. Donald Trump was savagely attacking a secretary of state
because the official did his job and certified the State according to
how the people in that State voted.
Donald Trump was trying to undermine our elections by taking votes
away from the American people so that he could remain President, and he
was willing to blame and betray anyone--anyone--even his own
supporters, if they got in the way. Remember, Senators, those threats
were to Mr. Raffensperger's family.
So some may say Trump didn't know his attacks against Mr.
Raffensperger would result in death threats--except that all of this
was very public. The secretary published his op-ed in USA TODAY, and
major networks, including FOX, covered the threats against the
Raffenspergers.
What did Trump do? Did he stop? Did he say: No, no, supporters; that
isn't what I meant? No. He doubled down.
Let's see the evidence.
(Text of audio presentation of 11-26-2020.)

President TRUMP. This was a massive fraud. This should
never take place in this country. We're like a third world
country. Look at--look at Georgia. But I understand the
secretary of state who is really, uh, uh, he's an enemy of
the people. The secretary of state--and whether he's
Republican or not, this man, what he's done.
. . . this character in Georgia, who is a disaster.

Let that sink in. A Republican public servant doing his job, whose
family had just received death threats, and the President of the United
States labeled him ``an enemy of the people.''
And that is why this is different, because this was not just one
attack or one comment. This was attack after attack in the face of
clear threats of violence.
And on December 1, another official, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican
who voted for Trump, made this point and appealed directly to our
President to stop his dangerous conduct:
(Text of audio presentation 12-1-20.)

Mr. STERLING. Mr. President, it looks like you likely lost
the State of Georgia. We're investigating. There's always a
possibility--I get it--and you have the right to go through
the courts. What you don't have the ability to do--and you
need to step up and say this--is stop inspiring people to
commit potential acts of violence. Someone's going to get
hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get
killed.

Mr. Sterling put this perfectly. In this country, we can
appropriately challenge a close count or go to the courts or disagree
with others or make bold statements, but what Trump was doing was
different.

Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot,
someone's going to get killed.

Mr. Sterling saw what Trump's conduct was fomenting. He warned him on
live TV that violence was already happening and that more violence was
foreseeable and inevitable. Sterling's pleas were played over and over
on every network.
Rather than heed that warning, Trump escalated again. In early
December, Trump called Brian Kemp, the Governor of Georgia, and
pressured him to hold a special session of the State legislature to
overturn the election results and to appoint electors who would vote
for Trump.
A few weeks later, on December 23, Trump called the chief
investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, who was
conducting an audit, an audit of the signature-matching procedures for
absentee ballots. Trump urged him, ``[F]ind the fraud,'' and claimed
the official would be a ``national hero'' if he did.
Let's call this what it is. He was asking the official to say there
was evidence of fraud when there wasn't any. The official refused, and
the investigation was completed. And on December 29, Raffensperger
announced that the audit found ``no fraudulent absentee ballots'' with
a ``99 percent confidence'' level.
On January 3, Trump tweeted about a call he had with Georgia election
officials the day before. He said:

I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday
about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was
unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the
``ballots under the table'' scam, ballot destruction, out of
state ``voters'', dead voters, and more. He has no clue!

On January 5, the Washington Post released a recording of that call
which had occurred on January 2--remember, just 4 days before the
attack on the Capitol. Here is what President Trump said:
(Text of audio presentation of 1-2-2021.)

President TRUMP. It's more illegal for you than it is for
them because you know what they did and you're not reporting
it. That's the--you know, that's a criminal--that's a
criminal offense. And you know, you can't let that happen.
That's--that's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.
That's a big risk.

Let's be clear. This is the President of the United States telling a
secretary of state that if he does not find votes, he will face
criminal penalties--and not just any number of votes. Donald Trump was
asking the secretary of state to somehow find the exact number of votes
Donald Trump lost the State by.
Remember, President Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes. In his own
words, Trump said:

All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes.

He wanted the secretary of state to somehow find the precise number,
plus one, so that he could win.

[[Page S626]]

Here is what he said.
(Text of audio presentation of 1-2-21.)

President TRUMP. So, look, all I want to do is this. I just
want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.

He says it right there, the President of the United States, telling a
public official to manufacture the exact votes needed so he can win.
Senators, we must not become numb to this. Trump did this across
State after State, so often, so loudly, so publicly. Public officials
like you and me received death threats and calls threatening criminal
penalties, all because Trump wanted to remain in power. These public
officials exercised great political and personal courage in the face of
unprecedented pressure from a President of the United States.
Senators, ours is a dialogue with history, a conversation with the
past, with a hope for the future.
Senators, I thank you today for your kind attention
Mr. Manager LIEU. Good afternoon. I am Congressman Ted Lieu. My
colleague Congresswoman Dean went through President Trump's efforts to
overturn the election through the courts and, when that started
failing, his deeply disturbing attacks on State and local officials.
I am going to walk through President Trump's extraordinary efforts
remaining until January 6, when he tried again to overturn the
election.
I first want to highlight Representative Raskin's question to all of
you today: Is this America?
Like all of you, I love this country. I am an immigrant. My parents
came to Ohio, and we started off living in the basement of a person's
home. We were poor, and they went to flea markets to sell gifts to make
ends meet. Over many years, they built a small business, opened six
gift stores, and achieved the American dream.
That is one reason I joined the United States Air Force on Active
Duty. I believe America is an exceptional country. I was trained as a
prosecutor at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and I remain in the
Reserves because we are the greatest country in the world.
But how did our exceptional country get to the point where a violent
mob attacked our Capitol, murdering a police officer, assaulting over
140 other officers? How did we get to the point where rioters
desecrated, defiled, and dishonored your Senate Chamber, where the very
place in which you sit became a crime scene, and where National Guard
troops still patrol outside wearing body armor?
I will show you how we got here. President Donald J. Trump ran out of
nonviolent options to maintain power. After his efforts in courts and
threatening officials failed, he turned to privately and publicly
attacking Members of his own party in the House and in the Senate. He
would publicly bait Senators, naming them in social media.
For example, on December 18, President Trump named ``@senatemajldr
and Republican Senators,'' telling them they ``have to get tougher'' or
they ``won't have a Republican Party anymore. We won the Presidential
Election, by a lot. FIGHT FOR IT. Don't let them take it away!''
President Trump was suggesting to Members of this Senate that if they
didn't help him try to overturn the election, there would be
consequences. On December 24, President Trump wrote:

I saved at least 8 Republican Senators, including Mitch,
from losing in the last Rigged (for President) Election. Now
they (almost all) sit back and watch me fight against a
crooked and vicious foe, the Radical Left Democrats. I will--

And in all capital letters he wrote--

NEVER FORGET!

President Trump was telling you that you owe him; that if you don't
help him fight to overturn the results, he will never forget and that
there will be consequences. These are threats, just like the threats he
made to State and local officials.
And it continued. On December 29, President Trump tweeted:

Can you imagine if the Republicans stole a Presidential
Election from the Democrats--All hell would break out.
Republican leadership only wants the path of least
resistance. Our leaders (not me, of course!) are pathetic.
They only know how to lose! P.S. I got MANY Senators and
Congressmen/Congresswomen Elected. I do believe they forgot!

President Trump targeted Senators and Members of Congress on social
media, calling them pathetic for letting the election get ``stolen''
from them.
On January 4, 2 days before the attack, President Trump tweeted:

The ``Surrender Caucus'' within the Republican Party will
go down in infamy as weak and ineffective ``guardians'' of
our Nation, who were willing to accept the certification of
fraudulent presidential numbers!

Now he is mocking some Republican Members as the ``Surrender
Caucus,'' calling them ``weak and ineffective guardians of our Nation''
because they would not pretend that he had won when, in fact, he had
not.
And then, the very day before the attack, President Trump's threats
were even more heated and specific toward Republicans that he
considered to be part of that ``Surrender Caucus.''
Now, we have shown you this tweet before, but I want to draw your
attention to how the President was not just inciting his base but how
he was also calling out specific Senate Republicans at the end of this
tweet. This is a specific warning to anyone who won't help him overturn
the results. Anyone who was against the President became an enemy.
And let me be very clear. The President wasn't just coming for one or
two people or Democrats like me; he was coming for you, for Democratic
and Republican Senators. He was coming for all of us, just as the mob
did at his direction.
In addition to going after Senators and Members of Congress,
President Trump also pressured our Justice Department to investigate
the false claims that the election was stolen. At the President's
direction, Attorney General William Barr, a loyal member of the
President's Cabinet, authorized Federal prosecutors to pursue
``substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation
irregularities.''
Bill Barr pursuing these allegations sparked an outcry. Sixteen
assistant U.S. attorneys in the Trump administration urged the Attorney
General to cease investigations because they had not seen evidence of
any substantial anomalies. That means they did not find any evidence of
real fraud.
Attorney General Barr pursued the investigation anyway, and after his
investigation, this is what he found:

[W]e have not seen fraud on a scale that could have
effected a different outcome in the election.

Two weeks later, on December 14, the electors voted to give Joe Biden
306 electoral votes and ensured his victory. The following day, Bill
Barr resigned.
Attorney General Barr had loyally served President Trump. He had
never publicly come out against the President. But for Bill Barr,
making up election fraud claims and saying the election was stolen was
a bridge too far.
Bill Barr made clear that attempting to overturn election results
crossed a line. According to a news report, Bill Barr, the highest law
enforcement official in the land, told President Donald Trump to his
face that his theories of election fraud were ``bullshit.''
When Bill Barr resigned, his former Deputy, Jeff Rosen, took his
place. President Trump initially tweeted about Mr. Rosen that he was
``an outstanding person'' when he announced that he would become Acting
Attorney General, but when Rosen took over, President Trump put the
same pressure on him that he had done with State officials and Members
of Congress, U.S. Senators, and his former Attorney General.
President Trump reportedly summoned Acting Attorney General Rosen to
the Oval Office the next day and pressured Rosen to appoint special
counsels to keep investigating the election, including unfounded
accusations of widespread voter fraud, and also to investigate
Dominion, the voting machines firm.
According to reports, Mr. Rosen refused. He maintained that he would
make decisions based on the facts and the law and reminded President
Trump what he had already been told by Attorney General Bill Barr--that
the Department had already investigated and ``found no evidence of
widespread fraud.'' But President Trump refused to follow the facts and
the law, so the President turned to someone he knew would do his
bidding. He turned to Jeffrey Clark, another Justice Department lawyer,
who had allegedly expressed support for using the Department of Justice
to investigate the election results. Shortly after Acting Attorney
General Rosen followed his

[[Page S627]]

duty--and the law--to refuse to reopen investigations, President Trump
intended to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark, who could then try to
stop Congress from certifying the electoral college results.
According to reports, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone advised
President Trump not to fire Acting Attorney General Rosen. Department
officials had also threatened to resign en masse if he had fired Rosen.
President Trump's actions time and time again made clear that he
would do anything and pressure anyone if it meant overturning the
election results. We watched President Trump use any means necessary to
pursue this aim, feverishly grasping for straws at retaining his hold
on the Presidency, but all his efforts prior to January 6 kept failing.
Finally, in his desperation, he turned on his own Vice President. He
pressured Mike Pence to violate his constitutional oath and to refuse
to certify the vote. President Trump had decided that Vice President
Pence, who presided over the certification, could somehow stop it.
As Pence later confirmed, the Vice President does not have that power
in the Constitution. And President Trump never tried to explain why he
thought the Vice President could block the certification of the
election results; he just began relentlessly attacking the Vice
President.
Publicly, President Trump attacked Pence on social media and at
rallies, getting his supporters to believe that Mike Pence could stop
the certification on January 6. Here is what President Trump said in
Georgia on January 4.
(Text of video presentation of 1-4-2021.)

President TRUMP. And I hope Mike Pence comes through for
us, I have to tell you. I hope that our great Vice-President,
our great Vice-President comes through for us. He's a great
guy. Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him
quite as much.

Behind closed doors, President Trump applied significant pressure to
his second-in-command. Multiple reports confirmed that President Trump
used his personal attorneys and other officials to pressure the Vice
President. Trump reportedly told almost anyone who called him to also
call the Vice President. According to reports, when Mike Pence was in
the Oval Office, President Trump would call people to try to get them
to convince the Vice President to help him.
And President Trump kept repeating the myth that Pence could stop the
certification to his base to anger them, hoping to intimidate Mike
Pence.
On the morning of the rally on January 6, President Trump tweeted:

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!

President Trump later went on to attack Pence nearly a dozen times in
his speech at the Save America March.
Privately, in person, before Pence headed to oversee the joint
session on January 6, President Trump again threatened Pence. ``You can
either go down in history as a patriot,'' Mr. Trump told him, according
to two people briefed on the conversation, ``or you can go down in
history as a pussy.''
As a veteran, I find it deeply dishonorable that our former President
and Commander in Chief equated patriotism with violating the
Constitution and overturning the election.
You will see and hear the consequences of President Trump's repeated
attacks on the Vice President, the chants of ``Traitor'' and the chants
of ``Hang Mike Pence.''
Thankfully, Vice President Mike Pence stood his ground, like our
other brave officials stood their ground. He refused the President and
fulfilled his duty on January 6. Even after the Capitol was attacked,
even after he was personally targeted, even after his family was
targeted, Vice President Pence stood strong and certified the election.
Vice President Pence showed us what it means to be an American, what it
means to show courage. He put his country, his oath, his values, and
his morals above the will of one man.
The President had tried everything in his power to seize the--
everything in his attempt to seize power from the rightful victor of
the election. President Trump's extraordinary actions grew increasingly
more desperate. You saw him go from pursuing claims in the courts to
threatening State and local election officials, to then attacking
Members of Congress in the Senate, to compromising our Justice
Department, and then to attacking the Republican Vice President.
These great public servants were being pressured by our Commander in
Chief to overturn the results. Some of them and their families got
death threats. Thankfully, at every turn, our democratic processes
prevailed, and the rule of law prevailed. It is only because all of
these people stayed strong and refused President Trump that our
Republic held fast and the will of the electorate was seen through. And
at this point, President Donald J. Trump ran out of nonviolent options
to maintain power.
I began today by raising the question of how we got here. What you
saw was a man so desperate to cling to power that he tried everything
he could to keep it, and when he ran out of nonviolent measures, he
turned to the violent mob that attacked your Senate Chamber on January
6.
As you cast your vote after this trial, I hope each of you will think
of the bravery of all of these people who said no to President Trump
because they knew that this was not right, that this was not America.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Next, Representative Stacey Plaskett of the
Virgin Islands will show in quite chilling detail, I should say, how
President Trump was well aware of the threat of violence on January 6
and how he welcomed and amplified his supporters' plans for
insurrection against the Union.
I should say as lead manager, this is a moment of special pride for
me because Representative Plaskett is not only the first delegate ever
to be on a team of impeachment managers in American history, but she
was also my law student at American University Washington College of
Law. I hope I am not violating any Federal educational records laws
when I say she was an A-student then, and she is an A-plus student now.
Stacey.
Ms. Manager PLASKETT. Thank you so much.
Hi. Mr. President, distinguished Senators, I am Stacey Plaskett, and
I represent the people of the Virgin Islands of the United States.
Over this past weekend, my 11-year-old daughter--I overheard her
telling one of my sons: Mommy doesn't seem really nervous about the
impeachment trial, to which that son, sounding like an older brother,
said: Taliah, you will learn that most of the time, Mommy really seems
to have it under control.
We know as parents that is not always the case, but I have learned
throughout my life that preparation and truth can carry far, can allow
you to speak truth to power. I have learned that as a young Black girl
growing up in the projects in Brooklyn, a housing community on St.
Croix, sent to the most unlikeliest of settings, and now, as an adult
woman representing an island territory, speaking to the U.S. Senate.
And because of truth, I am confident today speaking before you because
truth and fact are overwhelming that our President, the President of
the United States, incited a mob to storm the Capitol to attempt to
stop the certification of a Presidential election.
My fellow managers have shown and will continue to show clear
evidence that President Trump incited a violent mob to storm our
Capitol when he ran out of nonviolent means to stop the election. Once
assembled, that mob, at the President's direction, erupted into the
bloodiest attack on this Capitol since 1814.
Some of you have said there is no way the President could have known
how violent the mob would be. That is false because the violence--it
was foreseeable. I want to show you why this violence was foreseeable
and why Donald Trump was different than any other politician just
telling their fighters, their supporters to fight for something.
The violence that occurred on January 6, like the attack itself, did
not just appear. You will see that Donald Trump knew the people he was
inciting, he saw the violence that they were capable of, and he had a
pattern and practice of praising and encouraging that violence, never
ever condemning it.

[[Page S628]]

And you will see that this violent attack was not planned in secret.
The insurgents believed that they were doing the duty of their
President. They were following his orders. And so they publicized
openly, loudly, proudly exact blueprints of how the attack would be
made.
Law enforcement saw these postings and reported that these insurgents
would violently attack the Capitol itself. This was months of
cultivating a base of people who were violent, praising that violence,
then leading that violence--that rage--straight at our door.

The point is this: By the time he called the cavalry of his thousands
of supporters on January 6, at an event he had invited them to, he had
every reason to know that they were armed, that they were violent, and
that they would actually fight. He knew who he was calling and the
violence they were capable of, and he still gave the marching orders to
go to the Capitol and ``Fight like hell'' to ``Stop the Steal.''
Make no mistake, the violence was not just foreseeable to President
Trump; the violence was what he deliberately encouraged. As early as
September, Trump set the precedent that, when asked to denounce
violence, he would do the opposite and encourage it.
Now, if the President had only said something once about fighting to
stop the steal, and violence erupted, there would be no way to know he
intended to incite it or saw it coming. But just as the President spent
months spreading his big lie of the election, he also spent months
cultivating groups of people who, following his command, repeatedly
engaged in real, dangerous violence. And when they did, when the
violence erupted as a response to his calls to fight against the stolen
election, he did not walk it back. He did not tell them no. He did the
opposite--the opposite. He praised and encouraged the violence so that
it would continue. He fanned the flame of violence and it worked.
You will see this over time. These very groups and individuals whose
violence the President praised helped lead the attack on January 6. And
that is how we know clearly that President Trump deliberately incited
this and how we know he saw it coming.
There are many examples where the President engaged in this pattern.
I am just going to walk you through a few of them.
Let's start with President Trump's incitement of the Proud Boys. Many
of you have heard of this group, which since 2018 has been classified
by the FBI as an extremist organization. Since that classification, the
group has repeatedly engaged in serious acts of violence, including at
pro-Trump rallies. In one such act on September 7, the Proud Boys
attacked a man with a baseball bat and then punched him while he was
down on the ground.
On September 29, during a Presidential debate, President Trump was
asked specifically if he was willing to condemn White supremacy and
militia groups, if he was willing to tell them to stand down and stop
the violence. Let's watch.
(Text of video presentation.)

Mr. WALLACE. Are you willing tonight to condemn White
supremacists and militia groups--
President TRUMP. Sure.
Mr. WALLACE. And to say that they need to stand down and
not add to the violence at a number of these cities as we saw
in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland?
President TRUMP. Sure. I'm willing to do that.
Mr. WALLACE. Will you say that specifically?
President TRUMP. I would say--
Mr. WALLACE. Then go ahead, sir. Do it. Say it.
President TRUMP. I would say--

Let's hear now the President's response.
(Text of video presentation.)

Mr. Chris WALLACE. Do it, sir. Say it. Do it.
President TRUMP. Say it. Do it. Say it. You want to call
them--what do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me
a name. Go ahead.
Mr. Chris WALLACE. White supremacists and White proud--
President TRUMP. Who do you want me to condemn? Proud Boys,
stand back and stand by.

When asked to condemn the Proud Boys and White supremacists, what did
our President say? He said:

Stand back and stand by.

His message was heard loud and clear. The group adopted that phrase,
``Stand back and stand by'' as their official slogan. They created
merchandise with their new slogan, which they wore proudly across their
backs at Trump's rallies and they followed the President's orders.
You will see more about this later in the trial, but you will see in
these photos to the left, Dominic Pezzola, and to the right, William
Pepe, two of the leaders of the group heading to the Capitol on January
6. They were later charged with working together to obstruct law
enforcement.
As we go through this evidence, I want you to keep in mind these
words by President Trump when asked to condemn violence:

Stand back and stand by.

And see example after example of the kinds of people, like the Proud
Boys, who he had standing by on January 6.
By October, as my colleagues Mr. Castro and Mr. Swalwell showed you,
Donald Trump was escalating his big lie that the only way he could lose
the election was if it was rigged. So as election day neared, his
supporters were frustrated and they were angry. They were prepared to
ensure his victory by any means necessary.
One of these violent acts was on October 30. Sometime after 12:30
p.m., a caravan of more than 50 trucks covered in pro-Trump campaign
gear confronted and surrounded cars carrying Biden-Harris campaign
workers and a Biden-Harris campaign bus as they were traveling down
Interstate 35 from San Antonio to Austin.
(Video presentation.)
According to witnesses, this caravan repeatedly tried to force the
bus you saw and you see in that video to slow down in the middle of the
highway and then to run it off the road. What that video you just saw
does not show is that the bus that they tried to run off the road was
filled with young campaign staff, volunteers, supporters, surrogates--
people.
As the Trump supporters closed in on th bus, a large black pickup
truck adorned with Trump flags suddenly and intentionally swerved and
crashed into a car driven by a Biden-Harris volunteer. News of the
event went viral on social media. The President of the United States,
in a campaign, saw his own supporters trying to run a bus carrying his
opponents' campaign workers off the highway, to physically intimidate
people in this country campaigning.

Here was his response the next day.
(Text of video presentation.)

Three, two, one, go!
Welcome to the Red Kingdom.
Yeah.
Red Kingdom.
Welcome to the Red Kingdom.
Yeah.
Red Kingdom.
Welcome to the place where we run it.

The President of the United States tweeted a video of his supporters
trying to drive a bus off of the road. You will recall in that first
video that I showed you there was no sound. Well, the one that he
tweeted had a fight theme song placed to it that the President--the
President--put that music to that video and he added at the top: ``I
LOVE TEXAS!''
By the next evening, that tweet that he did had been viewed 12.6
million times. And it wasn't just the tweet.
On November 1, at a Michigan rally with a sea of supporters, the
President talked about that incident again. Here it is.

President TRUMP. You see the way our people, you know, they
were protecting his bus yesterday because they're nice. So
his bus--they had hundreds of cars, ``Trump,'' ``Trump,''
``Trump,'' ``Trump'' and the American flag. You see ``Trump''
and the American flag.

The President made a public joke of violence against campaigners in
an American election. He made light of it. This was not a joke. In
fact, it was so violent, it put so many people in harm's way that the
FBI investigated the incident and the criminal responsibility of those
who attacked these campaign workers.
Now, our President, Donald Trump, could have said: OK, I didn't
realize how bad that was. This was very violent. Please stop.
But he didn't. He saw the investigation and made a statement in
defense of his supporters' attack on the bus writing:

In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong.

[[Page S629]]

Engaging in violence for him made them patriots to Donald Trump. For
anyone who says Donald Trump didn't know the violence he was inciting,
I ask you to consider his supporters tried to drive a bus off a highway
in the middle of the day to intimidate his opponents' campaign workers,
and his response was to tweet the video of the incident that had fight
music, joke about it, and call those individuals in that incident
patriots.
And once again, Donald Trump's praise worked to incite them further.
Emboldened by that praise, they remained ready to fight, ready to
``Stand back and stand by.'' This link is not hypothetical.
Just like we saw the Proud Boys showing up in full force on January
6, Donald Trump's encouragement of this attack made sure his supporters
were ready for the next one. The caravan bus attack had been organized
by a Trump supporter named Keith Lee. Leading up to the attack on our
Capitol of January 6, Mr. Lee teamed up with other supporters to
fundraise to help to bring people to Washington, DC, for that date.
The morning of the attack, he filmed footage of the Capitol, pointed
out the flimsiness of the fencing, and then addressed his supporters
before the attack, saying:

As soon as you all get done hearing the President, y'all
get to the Capitol, we need to surround this place.

During the attack, he used the bullhorn to call out for the mob to
rush in. He later went to the Rotunda, himself, and then back outside
to urge the crowd to come inside. These are the people that President
Trump cultivated, who were standing by.
I would like to look at another example. After the election on
December 12, Trump supporters gathered in mass to protest the
``stolen'' election in DC. It was billed by his loyalists as the second
Million MAGA March. The rally was organized by Women for America First,
the same group that you will see later secured the permit for the
January 6 rally. And who else was there? The Proud Boys, standing by.
Donald Trump did not attend that rally, but he made sure to make
clear to his supporters, throughout the day, how he felt about the
event. At 8:47 a.m., he sent out a tweet:

WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!

And then the rally began. And Donald Trump's allies who spoke at the
rally carried on his message of the stolen election and the importance
of fighting to stop the steal.
Here is Nicholas Fuentes, a commentator who had organized a ``stop
the steal rally'' in Michigan with Trump supporters.
(Text of video presentation.)

Mr. FUENTES. In the first Million MAGA March, we promised
that if the GOP would not do everything in their power to
keep Trump in office that we would destroy the GOP.
(People chanting: Yeah. GOP.)
Mr. FUENTES. And as we gather here in Washington, DC, for a
second Million MAGA March, we're done making promises. It has
to happen now. We are going to destroy the GOP!
(People chanting: Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Destroy
the GOP. Destroy the GOP. Destroy the GOP.)
Those words--that was Trump's message: Destroy anyone who won't
listen, who won't help them take the election for Trump.
And, as you will see, this was just the preview for Fuentes, who,
like the Proud Boys and the Trump caravan organizers, would later heed
the President's call and come to Washington and be there on January 6.
Later in the rally, a former Trump campaign spokeswoman, Katrina
Pierson, also spoke.
During her speech, she stated: ``This isn't over. This is just
beginning,'' referring to the fight to stop the steal.
Then she added:

We knew that both Republican and Democrats were against we
the people. We are the cavalry. No one's coming for us.

It is clear that Trump and some of his supporters saw this as war--a
fight against anyone who was unwilling to do whatever it took to keep
Donald Trump in power. ``We are the cavalry.''
President Trump continued to reinforce the support of these messages
throughout the day. At 1:48 p.m., after both speeches, he retweeted his
Deputy Chief of Staff's tweet, showing his crowd that he had flown over
on Marine One, and he tweeted:

Thank you, Patriots.

These people were, as you can see, gathered en masse and being told
by the President's allies that their election had been stolen, and they
were told they were the cavalry; that no one else could do it.
After hearing these speeches and seeing the President's support, this
is what Donald Trump's cavalry was capable of.
(Video footage of 12-12-2020.)
What you just saw was the violence that ensued after that rally.
The Proud Boys, after that rally, engaged in serious acts of violence
in downtown DC. Some Trump supporters and self-identified Proud Boys
vandalized churches after that rally.
If we look at these events, it is clear how we got here because what
did the President do after that? He turned right around, and a little
over a week later, he began coordinating the January 6 Save America
rally with the same people who had planned the second Million MAGA
March.
You will recall that the Women for America First had organized that
second Million MAGA March. They had originally planned rallies for
January 22 and January 23, after the inauguration, but Donald Trump had
other plans. On December 19, President Trump tweeted his save the date
for January 6. He told his supporters to come to DC for a ``big
protest'' that day, billing it as ``wild.'' Just days later, Women for
America First amended their permit to hold their rally on January 6,
pursuant to the President's save the date, instead of after the
inauguration. This was deliberate.
Reports confirm that the President himself, President Trump, became
directly involved with the planning of the event, including the
speaking lineup and even the music to be played, just as he chose the
music of his retweet of the caravan, driving the Biden-Harris bus off
the road, with a fight song.
He brought in the same people who spoke at the second Million MAGA
rally to help as well. Trump's campaign adviser, Katrina Pierson, who
you will recall said on December 12 that this is only the beginning--
``we are the cavalry''--also became directly involved in planning the
event. They even sent out invitations together.
This is Amy Kremer, one of the Founders of Women for America First,
tweeting the invitation, tagging Donald Trump and other organizers,
inviting the same supporters who had just engaged in serious violence
at the second Million MAGA rally to show up to the largest rally to
stop the steal. President Trump seemed to have other plans for what was
going to happen at that rally too.
Women for America First had initially planned for the rally goers to
remain at the Ellipse until the counting of the State electoral slates
was completed, just like they had remained at the Freedom Plaza after
the second Million MAGA March. In fact, the permit stated, in no
uncertain terms, that the march from the Ellipse was not permitted. It
was not until after President Trump and his team became involved in the
planning that the march from the Ellipse to the Capitol came about in
direct contravention of the original permit. This was not a
coincidence. None of this was.
Donald Trump, over many months, cultivated violence, praised it, and
then, when he saw the violence his supporters were capable of, he
channeled it to his big, wild, historic event. He organized January 6
with the same people who had just organized the rally resulting in
substantial violence, and he made absolutely sure, this time, these
violent rally-goers wouldn't just remain in place. He made sure that
those violent people would literally march right here, to our steps,
from the Ellipse to the Capitol, to stop the steal--his cavalry. This
was deliberate.
Because the President of the United States incited this, because he
was orchestrating this, because he was inviting them, the insurgents
were not shy about their planning. They believed they were following
the orders of the Commander in Chief. They were, as with the tweet we
just saw, quite literally, his cavalry. So they posted exact blueprints
of the attack openly, loudly, proudly, and they did this all over
public forums. They were not just hidden posts on dark websites that

[[Page S630]]

Trump would not have seen. Quite the opposite. We know that President
Trump's team monitored these websites. We know this because his
advisers confirmed it.
An ``ex-White House and campaign insider,'' as you will read, ``who
has known both Scavino and the president for years, said there was no
way that Scavino and the Trump social media operation would not have
been aware of the plans circulating online to storm the Capitol''
because the Trump ``operation closely monitored the web's darkest
corners, ranging from mainstream sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and
Reddit, to fringe message boards like 4chan and 8cha (now called 8kun)
to TheDonald.win, an offshoot from a banned Reddit community dedicated
to rabidly supporting all things Trump.'' They actively monitored the
exact sites, like TheDonald.win, on which these insurrectionists wrote
their posts.

So what would Trump and his team have seen when they were monitoring
these sites? What would his supporters have said? They would have seen
a clear roadmap of exactly what happened.
This is an example of a post that was captured from one of the sites
dedicated to Donald Trump, that we just talked about, shortly before
the site was taken down.
The meme reads:

The Capitol is our goal. Everything else is a distraction.
Every corrupt Member of Congress locked in one room and
surrounded by real Americans is an opportunity that will
never present itself again.

Let that sink in. Think about that. The exact thing that happened on
January 6--that was their goal, and they said it out loud on sites that
the Trump administration was actively monitoring.
A third-party site captured a post on TheDonald.win, where one user
posted:

This cannot simply be a protest. It has to be the
establishment of the MAGA militia with command offices set
up, with all further militia tactical missions spreading from
there.

Another user said in response:

We will have to achieve an actual tactical victory like
storming and occupying [the Capitol] to have the intended
effect.

That is what they understood Donald Trump to want--there it is in
black and white--and they explained why they felt justified in this.
Another poster on the forum TheDonald.win wrote on January 4:

If Congress illegally certifies Biden . . . Trump would
have absolutely no choice but to demand us to storm Congress
and kill/beat them up for it.

Donald Trump will have no choice. That was what he made them believe
to the point his supporters felt justified even in carrying weapons and
storming our Capitol. This was in post after post.
Here is another. When discussing how to carry guns into DC, one
noted:

Yes, it's illegal, but this is war, and we're clearly in a
post-legal phase of our society.

What? They treated it as a war, and they meant it.
On the morning of the attack, under a thread titled ``Today, I told
my kids goodbye,'' one poster wrote:

Today I had the very difficult conversation with my
children, that daddy might not come home from DC.

Within a matter of hours, that post amassed 4,000 ``likes.''
President Trump had truly made them believe that their election had
been stolen and that it was their patriotic duty to fight to steal it
back--``patriotic,'' a term he gave those who use violence for him--and
they were willing to say goodbye to their children for this fight.
These supporters didn't just rely on entering the Capitol with guns
haphazardly. They had maps of this building. They talked through which
tunnels to use and how to get to the Senate Chamber. Some posted
specific floor plan layouts of the Capitol alongside hopes of
overwhelming law enforcement to ``find the tunnels; arrest the worst
traitors.''
Posters also fixated on what they saw as their ability to easily
overwhelm the Capitol Police as ``there are only around 2k of them,''
and, again, they urged ``the capitol is our goal. Everything else is a
distraction.''
There were hundreds of these posts--hundreds--monitored by the Trump
administration, and these posts were chillingly accurate right down to
communication devices.
A new affidavit, filed by the FBI, described preparations by the
rightwing group, the Proud Boys, to storm the Capitol, including using
earpieces and walkie-talkies to direct movements throughout the
building. This happened. That is the level of planning in advance that
occurred. They had earpieces. On the slide, you will see Proud Boy
member Dominic Pezzola has an earpiece in his right ear, consistent
with the affidavit. In addition to these detailed posts, they made
clear why they thought they could do this. It wasn't just that they
were doing it following the President's orders; they thought he would
help them.
A third-party site captured a post on TheDonald.win--again, the site
monitored by Trump's team.

He [meaning Donald Trump in this instance] can order the
NAT guard to stand down if needed. Unfortunately he has no
control over the Capitol Police . . . but there are only
around 2k of them and a lot are useless fat asses or girls.

It is all right there--the overall goal, maps of the Capitol, the
weapons, communications devices. They even said publicly, openly,
proudly that President Trump will help them to commandeer the National
Guard so all they have to do is overwhelm the 2,000 Capitol Police
officers.
This was reported in the NBC News and the Washington Post, with
headlines like: ``Violent threats ripple through far-right internet
forums ahead of protest.'' ``Pro-Trump forums erupt with violent
threats ahead of Wednesday's rally against the 2020 election.''
FOX News also reported that the Proud Boys would come to the January
6 rally prepared for violent action, even quoting a Proud Boy member
who said they would be ``incognito'' and ``spread across downtown DC in
smaller numbers.''
City officials, seeing these same warnings, also publicly warned
about the violence and unlawful weapons at the event. DC Mayor Muriel
Bowser cautioned residents of the District of Columbia to avoid the
downtown area while the rally attendees were in town.
Federal law enforcement warned of these threats also. On January 3, a
Capitol Police intelligence report warned of a violent scenario in
which ``Congress itself'' could be the target of the angry supporters
of President Trump on January 6. According to that report, obtained by
the Washington Post:

Supporters of the current president see January 6, 2021, as
the last opportunity to overturn the results of presidential
election. . . . This sense of desperation and disappointment
may lead to more . . . incentive to become violent. Unlike
previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump
supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters as they
were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target
[for January 6].

The day before the rioters stormed the Congress, an FBI office in
Virginia also issued an explicit warning that extremists were preparing
to travel to Washington to commit violence and ``war,'' according to
internal reports.
The FBI report cited to an online post where the user declared that
Trump supporters should go to Washington and get violent. The supporter
said:

Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there
ready for war. We get our President or we die.

These threat warnings were not just hypothetical. Actual arrests
occurred in the days leading to the attack.
On January 4, 2 days before the rally, one extremely well-publicized
arrest was of a Proud Boy leader who destroyed a church's Black Lives
Matter banner a month earlier during the December 12, second Million
MAGA March. The report emphasized that when he was arrested, he was
carrying high-capacity firearms magazines, which he claimed were meant
to be supplied to another rally attendee for January 6.
By the night before the January 6 attack, DC police had already made
six arrests in connection with the planned protests on charges of
carrying weapons, ammunitions, assault, assaulting police.
This is all in public view--all of it. The truth is usually seen and
rarely heard. Truth is truth, whether denied or not, and the truth is,
President Trump had spent months calling his supporters to a march on a
specific day, at a specific time, in specific places to stop the
certification.

[[Page S631]]

And leading up to the event, there were hundreds--hundreds--of posts
online showing that his supporters took this as a call to arms to
attack the Capitol. There were detailed posts of the plan to attack
online. Law enforcement warned that these posts were real threats and
even made arrests days leading up to the attack.
And yet, in the face of all this--these credible warnings of serious,
dangerous threats to our Capitol--when those thousands of people were
standing in front of President Trump, ready to take orders and attack,
this is what he said:

We're going to the Capitol.
And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight
like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

And that is why this is different. That is why he must be convicted
and disqualified.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Representative Dean will now return to the events
of January 6 itself. She will demonstrate President Trump's repeated
incitement of the crowd that morning, as he directed them to the
Capitol in his last-ditch effort to retain his hold on power.
Ms. Manager DEAN. For me and for many Americans, January 6 is forever
etched in our memories.
I went to work with a sense of excitement--the start of my second
term in Congress and the first time I would participate in the
certification of a Presidential election.
And then we all know what happened. I know many of us have similar
experiences from that day, but I will briefly share mine. I stood with
colleagues in the Gallery above the House floor to observe the Arizona
challenge. Moments later, police radios reported a breach of the
Capitol grounds. Someone shouted up to us, ``Duck''; then, ``Lie
down''; then, ``Ready your gas masks.''
Shortly after, there was a terrifying banging on the Chamber doors. I
will never forget that sound. Shouts and panicked calls to my husband
and to my sons, instructions to flee, and then the constant worrying of
the gas masks filtering the air--the Chamber of the United States House
of Representatives turned to chaos.
For Donald Trump, it was a very different day. Earlier, I showed you
Donald Trump's desperate attempts to maintain power: ignoring adverse
court rulings, attacking elected officials, pressuring his Justice
Department, even attacking his own Vice President. You saw a man who
refused to lose, who was desperate to retain power by any means
necessary. You saw a man willing to attack anyone and everyone who got
in his way, and you saw a man who thought he could play by different
rules.
He told his supporters, as my colleague Ms. Plaskett just showed you,
exactly what he thought those different rules were--combat, fight,
violence.
This was not just one speech. This was weeks and weeks of deliberate
effort by Donald Trump to overturn the election results so that he
didn't have to give up the Presidency.
The speech on January 6 builds on, refers to, and amplifies that same
pattern--the pattern Trump had used and broadcasted for months: He
refused to lose, his attacks on others, and his different rules.
The only thing different about hi speech on January 6 from all these
other times that we went through was that he was no longer telling his
base just that they had to fight to stop the steal. He was finally
telling them: Now is the time to do it. Here is the place, and here is
how.

For weeks, he had urged his supporters to show up at a specific time
and place, and when they got there, he told them exactly what he
wanted.
Let's start with his desperation. You saw how much planning went into
January 6, and when the day arrived, Donald Trump's desperation was in
full force.
Between the time he woke up on January 5 and the start of the Save
America March that next day, he had tweeted 34 times. When Donald Trump
wants to get his message across, he is not shy, as you all know. These
tweets were relentless. And these tweets all centered on his singular
focus--his drumbeat to motivate, anger, and incite his supporters--his
big lie: The Presidential election had been rigged. It had been stolen
from him, and they had to fight to stop it.
And the timing was no coincidence. He sent 34 tweets because this was
his last chance to rile up his supporters before the big, historic,
wild event he had planned.
Now, I won't go through all of these tweets, but let me just
highlight a few. At 1 in the morning, he tweeted:

If Vice President [Mike Pence] comes through for us, we
will win the Presidency. . . . Mike can send it back.

This will look familiar to you because Mr. Lieu just showed you how
Trump had privately been pressuring and publicly attacking his Vice
President to stop the certification.
And when Vice President Pence refused, when he explained that the
Constitution simply does not allow him to stop certification, Donald
Trump provoked his base to attack him. The late-in-the-evening tweet
was no different. It just got more forceful.
Let's be clear. What Donald Trump was saying--that Vice President
Pence could send back the certification--was not true.
For one thing, all 50 States had ratified this election. And for
another, Vice President Pence explained to him that he does not have
the power to unilaterally overturn States' votes and just send
certification back.
And Donald Trump knew this, but this was his last chance to get his
Vice President to stop the certification, and so he was willing to say
or do just about anything.
These tweets--attacking the election as fraudulent, attacking his
Vice President, and urging his supporters to fight--continued
throughout the morning.
Here is another example. At 8:17 a.m. he tweeted:

All Mike Pence has to do is send it back to the States, AND
WE WIN.

``And we win.'' That is what he said, even though by then he had
clearly lost.
As Trump continued tweeting, the Save America March at the White
House was now in full swing. The speakers who warmed up the crowd for
Trump were members of his inner circle--family members, his personal
attorney, people President Trump had deputized to speak on his behalf.
Some of the speakers also spoke at the second Million MAGA March,
which resulted in serious violence.
The warmup acts on January 6 focused on promoting Donald Trump's big
lie. They stoked the same fears--a stolen election, of fraud, of
ripping victory away from them. And the speakers told them what to do
about it. As the crowd erupted in ``fight for Trump'' chants throughout
that morning, Donald Trump Jr. urged:

That's the message! These guys better fight for Trump!

The speakers lasted 3 hours, repeating President Trump's message.
And, finally, at about noon, Donald Trump took the stage with the seal
of the Presidency on his podium and the White House as his backdrop.
President Trump spoke for more than 70 minutes. His narrative was
familiar. It was the same message he had spent months spreading to his
supporters: the big lie, the election was stolen; that they should
never concede; and that his supporters should be patriots and fight
much harder to stop the steal, to ``take back our country''--the same
phrases he had spread for weeks.
But now the message was immediate. Now it was just no longer just
fight; it was ``fight right now.''
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. All of us here today do not want to see
our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left
Democrats, which is what they're doing. And stolen by the
fake news media. That is what they've done and what they're
doing. We will never give up. We will never concede. It
doesn't happen. You don't concede where there's theft
involved.
Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore,
and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term
that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the
steal.

That set the tone. ``Our country has had enough.'' And ``[w]e will
not take it anymore.''
He told them and us, right at the beginning, that the only way to
take back the country was to fight. Let's look at what he said next.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. And, Rudy, you did a great job. He's got
guts. You know what?

[[Page S632]]

He's got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican
Party. He's got guts. He fights
Ms. Plaskett showed you example after example of Donald Trump, when
confronted with violence, praising it. We saw him instruct the Proud
Boys, a violent extremist group, to stand back and stand by. That group
was there on January 6. We saw him praise a caravan of his supporters
after they tried to drive a bus belonging to the Biden campaign off the
road. The organizer of that attack was there on January 6. And we saw
him team up with the organizers of the violent second MAGA Million
March to plan his rally on January 6.
What does he do at that rally? He tells Giuliani he is doing a great
job addressing the crowd, saying he has ``guts'' to call for fighting.
And to be clear, this is what he was praising.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Mr. GUILIANI. So let's have trial by combat.

``Trial by combat.'' Donald Trump praised Rudy, said he did a good
job, had guts for telling the crowd that we need trial by combat.
Next, more attacks.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. All Vice President Pence has to do is send
it back to the States to recertify, and we become President
and you are the happiest people.

This attack, like the tweets he sent that morning, had a purpose:
convincing his supporters that the future of our country, of our
democracy, hinged on whether Vice President Pence would overturn the
election--something he knew Pence could not and would not do.
He called out Vice President Pence nine times that day, and each
time, he got more forceful. Here is what he said at 12:15.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. And we're going to have to fight much
harder. And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for
us. And if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our
country, because you are sworn to uphold our Constitution.
Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault
on our democracy. And after this, we are going to walk down--
and I'll be there with you. We are going to walk down. We are
going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here,
we are going to walk down to the Capitol.
(Cheers and applause.)
And we are going to cheer on our brave Senators and
Congressmen and women, and we are probably not going to be
cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take
back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and
you have to be strong.

``We're going to have to fight much harder. And Mike Pence will have
to come through for us.'' That is what he said, and he told the crowd
what he meant and exactly what to do, literally commanding them to
confront us at the Capitol. He even told them he would walk there with
them, which, of course, was not true, and then he told them exactly
what to do when they got to the Capitol.

You'll never take [your] country back with weakness. You
have to show strength.

And don't forget who is standing there, the same people Ms. Plaskett
described to you, many people violent--violent people law enforcement
had warned would be armed and would be targeting us.
One of President Trump's key defenses focused on what he said for a
few seconds, 15 minutes into the speech.
(Text of videotape presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. I know that everyone here will soon be
marching over to the Capitol building, to peacefully and
patriotically make your voices heard.

In a speech spanning almost 11,000 words--yes, we did check--that was
the one time, the only time President Trump used the word ``peaceful''
or any suggestion of nonviolence. The implication of the President's
tweets, the rally, and the speeches were clear. President Trump used
the word ``fight'' or ``fighting'' 20 times, including telling the
crowd they needed to ``fight like hell'' to save our democracy.
We know how the crowd responded to Donald Trump's words, and he knew
how they responded to his speech. Here is the evidence of how the crowd
reacted.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

(People cheering.)
President TRUMP. We are going down to the Capitol--
(People cheering.)
President TRUMP. . . . weakness, you have to show
strength--
Unidentified Speaker. Yes. Right.
(People chanting: ``Take the Capitol.'')
(People chanting: ``Taking the Capitol right now.'')
(People chanting: ``Invade the Capitol.'')
(People chanting: ``Storm the Capitol.'')
President TRUMP. Make your voices heard.

``Storm the Capitol.'' ``Invade the Capitol.'' ``Fight, fight,
fight.'' ``Take the Capitol right now.'' These were the words of the
crowd. Trump was telling them to fight, and he would keep telling them
to fight throughout the rest of his speech. These are not only words of
aggression, they are words of insurrection, and if you have any doubt,
listen to what he says next.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. Today we see a very important event
though, because right over there, right there, we see the
events that will take place. And I am going to be watching,
because history is going to be made. We are going to see
whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or
whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of
themselves throughout history. Throughout eternity they will be
ashamed. And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never
ever forget that they did. Never forget. We should never ever forget.

The Commander in Chief points to Congress and tells those assembled:
``I am going to be watching . . . history is going to be made.'' This
was clearly not just some rally or march or protest; this was about
Donald Trump trying to steal the election for himself, claiming that
the election was fraudulent, illegitimate, so that his supporters would
fight to take it back. In fact, after stoking the crowd's anger for
nearly 40 minutes, after repeating false election conspiracy after
false election conspiracy, he said this in no uncertain terms.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. You will have an illegitimate President,
that is what you'll have.

Any outcome besides him keeping the Presidency would be illegitimate.
This was building on the big lie of a rigged and stolen election.
And here is what he said a little later in his speech.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. When you catch somebody in a fraud, you
are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has
the courage to do what he has to do.

``When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very
different rules.''
We told you that context matters. Here is the context: This was not
just one reference or a message to supporters by a politician to fight
for a cause. He had assembled thousands of violent people, people he
knew were capable of violence, people he had seen be violent. They were
standing now in front of him. And then he pointed to us, lit the fuse,
and sent an angry mob to fight the perceived enemy--his own Vice
President and the Members of Congress as we certified an election.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. But I said something's wrong here.
Something's really wrong. Can't have happened. And we fight.
We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're
not going to have a country anymore. Our exciting adventures
and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow
Americans, for our world, for our children, and for our
beloved country--and I say this despite all that's happened--
the best is yet to come.
(Cheers and Applause.)
So we're going to--we're going to walk down Pennsylvania
Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the
Capitol, and we are going to try and give--the Democrats are
hopeless. They never voted for anything--not even one vote.
But we are going to try and give our Republicans--the weak
ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We
are going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness
that they need to take back our country. So let's walk down
Pennsylvania Avenue.
(Cheers and Applause.)
President TRUMP. I want to thank you all. God bless you and
God bless America.
Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank you
very much.
(Cheers and Applause.)
(People chanting: ``Fight for Trump.'')

``If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country
anymore.'' And there was only one fight left, and it was a mile up the
road. Donald

[[Page S633]]

Trump, the President of the United States, ordered the crowd to march
on Congress, and so the crowd marched. ``This is incredible,'' we heard
him say. That is how President Trump ended his speech.
I would like to close with a very brief timeline of what was
happening in parallel alongside the President as he spoke on the 6th of
January. A little after noon, President Trump began his speech with a
fiery refusal to concede. He commanded the crowd to fight and march
down Pennsylvania Avenue, and around 12:20, some rally goers, some
attendees, began marching.
By 12:30, as President Trump continued to incite his supporters,
large segments of the rally crowd had amassed at the Capitol.
At 12:53, as the President's speech was playing on cell phone
broadcasts, the outermost barricades of the northwest side of the
Capitol were breached, and Capitol Police were forced back to the steps
of the Capitol.
At 1:10, the President ended his speech with a final call to fight
and a final order to march to the Capitol.
At 1:45, the President's followers surged past Capitol Police,
shouting: ``This is a revolution.''
Just after 2:10, an hour after President Trump ended his speech, the
insurrectionist mob overwhelmed Capitol security and made it inside the
Halls of Congress, because the truth is, this attack never would have
happened but for Donald Trump. And so they came, draped in Trump's flag
and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon.
And at 2:30, I heard that terrifying banging on the House Chamber
doors. For the first time in more than 200 years, the seat of our
government was ransacked on our watch.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Mr. President, I think this would be a good time
for a break.

Recess

Mr. SCHUMER. Yes. I ask unanimous consent that we recess until 4 p.m.
There being no objection, at 3:43 p.m., the Senate, sitting as a
Court of Impeachment, recessed until 4:08 p.m., whereupon the Senate
reassembled when called to order by the President pro tempore.

Managers' Presentation--Continued

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Could we have order in the Senate, please.
Mr. Raskin.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.
Members of the Senate, at this point, Representatives Plaskett and
Swalwell will take you through the actual day of the attack. They will
recreate the attack as it unfolded, focusing on the threats to Vice
President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, the joint session, and law
enforcement.
I do want to alert everyone that there is some very graphic, violent
footage coming, so people are aware.
I am going to call, again, on Ms. Plaskett, who I should also tell
you went to work at the Department of Justice and was the senior
counsel for Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson under Attorney
General Ashcroft. So she is a very well trained and experienced
prosecutor, as you can tell.
Ms. Manager PLASKETT. Mr. President, Senators, almost all of us were
here on January 6, and we all have our individual experiences: what we
felt, what we saw, what we heard. We have seen clips and reports in the
media, but I have to tell you, it was not until preparing for this
trial that I understood the full scope and learned the information that
you are going to see that I understood the effort to attack our seat of
government in order to carry out President Trump's mission to prevent
the certification of a Presidential election. It was an attack to our
Republic, to our democratic process.
My colleagues, Manager Swalwell, and I are going to walk you through
the attack on the Capitol that day and the danger that it posed to the
Vice President, to the Speaker of the House, to you all as Senators, my
colleagues in the House, Capitol Police, and everyone who works in and
around this Capitol.
As you have heard, President Trump had been telling his supporters
and his millions of Twitter followers that Pence had the ability to
secure the Presidency for Trump; that Mike Pence alone had the power to
overturn the election results if he would just do it.
But at 12:55 p.m., on January 6, Vice President Pence formally
refused the President's demand.
He wrote, and I quote:

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.

Pence ended his letter with a passage including the words:

I will do my duty.

Even though the count resulted in the defeat of his party and his own
candidacy, Vice President Pence had the courage to stand against the
President, tell the American public the truth, and uphold our
Constitution. That is patriotism.
That patriotism is also what put the Vice President in so much danger
on January 6 by the mob sent by our President. To the President and the
mob he incited, that duty to our Constitution was an all-out betrayal,
and the Vice President was the direct target of that rage.
At 12:53 p.m., Senators, Members of Congress, Vice President Pence
were in their respective Chambers. Outside, rioters, including some
linked to the Proud Boys, broke through the outer barricade surrounding
the lawn of the Capitol.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

(People chanting: ``USA.'')
Unidentified Speaker. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, hey, hey.
Unidentified Speaker. Way to go.
Unidentified Speaker. Break it down.

Twelve minutes later, Vice President Pence began presiding over the
joint session of Congress to certify the results of the Presidential
election. You can see Vice President Pence gaveling in the joint
session here.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

The VICE PRESIDENT. Madam President, Members of Congress,
pursuant to the Constitution and the laws of the United
States, the Senate and House of Representatives are meeting
in joint session to verify the certificates and count the
votes of the electors of the several States for President and
Vice President of the United States.

While Vice President Pence presided over the joint session, Trump
supporters began their assault on our Capitol. Radio communications
from the Metropolitan Police Department highlight how, during and
following President Trump's speech, Trump supporters descended on the
Capitol and became increasingly violent.
What you are about to hear has not been made public before.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

The Officer. Multiple Capitol injuries. Multiple Capitol
injuries.
The Dispatcher. 1318.
The Officer. Twelve to 50, we're coming around from the
south side.
The Dispatcher. Be advised, the speech has ended.
The Dispatcher. Intel 1, be advised you've got a group of
about 50 up the hill on the west front just north of the
stairs. They are approaching the wall now.
The Officer. They're starting to dismantle the reviewing
stand. They're throwing metal poles at us.
The Officer. Cruiser 50, give me DSO up here now. DSO.
Multiple law enforcement injuries. DSO, get up here.
The Officer. All right. We're 30 seconds out.
The Officer. We need some reinforcements up here now.
They're starting to pull the gates down. They're throwing
metal poles at us.
The Officer. Cruiser 50, DSO, get up here.
The Officer. OK. We're here.
The Officer. Twelve to 50, we're here.
The Officer. We just had an explosion go on up here. I
don't know if they're fireworks or what, but they're starting
to throw explosives, fireworks material.

After attempting to dismantle the outermost perimeter, the rioters
did everything in their power to storm past the police and into the
Capitol. They coordinated, moving metal barricades the police were
using to maintain distance. Listen to the yelling of ``pull them this
way'' as they grabbed the barriers and attacked officers trying to hold
the line.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. Pull. Pull this way. Pull forward.
Unidentified Speaker. No, no, no, no, no. No. No. No. No.

At about 1:10 and 1:23 p.m., respectively, Capitol Police sent out
the first evacuation alerts of the day, telling people to evacuate the
Madison Building and the Cannon Building, respectively. Shortly after,
at 1:45 p.m.,

[[Page S634]]

Trump supporters surged past Capitol Police protecting the Capitol's
west steps, the side that is facing the White House.
In another radio communication between Metropolitan Police officers,
you can hear an officer declare that there is a riot at the Capitol at
1:49 p.m.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

The Officer. Cruiser 50, we're going to give riot warnings
as soon as the LRAD is here. We're going to give riot
warnings. We're going to try to get compliance, but this now
is effectively a riot.
The Dispatcher. 1349 hours. Declaring it a riot.

The next video, as well as several videos that follow, have a model
of the Capitol Complex. The video is from the west front of the Capitol
on the Senate side, the side facing the White House.
Watch the red dot, which moves up the lower steps of the Capitol,
indicating the approximate location of the rioters as they surge past
the police.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. This is our fucking house.
Unidentified Speaker. This is a revolution.
Unidentified Speaker. Let's go. Push.
Unidentified Speaker. Go. Fuck you. Fuck you.

While the mob that Donald Trump sent to stop the certification came
closer and closer to breaching the Capitol, just one floor below where
we are now, Vice President Pence continued to preside over the session
in the Senate Chamber above.
At about 2:12 p.m., Secret Service quickly and suddenly evacuated
Vice President Pence from the Senate floor. Here is the immediate
reaction to that evacuation.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. No audio. They just cut out. It looks
like they--and sometimes the Senate--
Unidentified Speaker. It seemed like they just ushered Mike
Pence out really quickly.
Unidentified Speaker. Yes, they did. That's exactly what
just happened there. They ushered Mike Pence out. They moved
him fast. They were--yeah, I saw the motions too.

While Vice President Pence was being evacuated from the Senate
Chamber, rioters were at that time breaking into the Capitol. This next
video shows their approach and the initial breach of the Capitol
Complex.
Remember to watch the red dot, which broke--has been tracking
throughout this incident.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. Let us in.
Unidentified Speaker. Let's go.
Unidentified Speaker. Break the window, bro.

Now we are going to show you, through security footage that has not
been made public before, what that same breach looked like from the
inside. Now, because this is security footage, there is no sound.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Note, as the video begins, we are seeing the inside view as the mob
approaches from outside and beats the windows and doors. You can see
that the rioters first break the window with the wooden beam that you
saw previously, and a lone police officer inside responds and begins to
spray the first man who enters but is quickly overwhelmed.
I want you to pay attention to the first group of assailants as they
break into the building. The second man through the window is wearing
full tactical body armor and is carrying a baseball bat. Others are
carrying riot shields.
Among this group are members of the Proud Boys--some of whom, like
Dominic Pezzola, who was recently indicted on Federal conspiracy
charges--we will discuss later.
You can watch where they are coming on our model as well.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
When I first saw this model that was created for this, I thought back
to September 11. I know a lot of you Senators were here. Some of you
might have been Members on the House side. I was also here on September
11. I was a staffer at that time. My office was on the west front of
the Capitol. I worked in the Capitol, and I was on the House side.
This year is 20 years since the attacks of September 11, and almost
every day I remember that 44 Americans gave their lives to stop the
plane that was headed to this Capitol Building. I thank them every day
for saving my life and the life of so many others.
Those Americans sacrificed their lives for love of country, honor,
duty--all the things that America means. The Capitol stands because of
people like that--this Capitol that was conceived by our Founding
Fathers, that was built by slaves, that remains through the sacrifice
of service men and women around the world.
And when I think of that, I think of these insurgents, these images,
incited by our own President of the United States, attacking this
Capitol to stop the certification of a Presidential election, our
democracy, our Republic.
At the same time that that breach on this Capitol Building occurred,
at approximately 2:13 p.m., just one floor up, while Senator Lankford
was speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Grassley, who had taken over
for Vice President Pence, called an unscheduled immediate recess of the
Senate.
A Senate aide approached Senator Lankford and informed him that the
Capitol had been breached. Senator Grassley is immediately escorted out
of the Senate Chamber.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. Protesters are in the building.

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you.
Now, while this was going on, Officer Eugene Goodman responded to the
initial breach. You all may have seen footage of Officer Goodman
previously, but there is more to his heroic story. In this security
footage, you can see Officer Goodman running to respond to the initial
breach.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Officer Goodman passes Senator Mitt Romney and directs him to turn
around in order to get to safety. On the first floor, just beneath
them, the mob had already started to search for the Senate Chamber.
Officer Goodman made his way down to the first floor, where he
encountered the same insurrectionists we just saw--watched--breach the
Capitol. In this video, we can see the rioters surge toward Officer
Goodman. Recall that the rioters are in red, and Officer Goodman, in
this model, is in blue. Watch Officer Goodman, who backs up the stairs.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

(People chanting: ``USA.'')
Unidentified Speaker. That's my muffin. I paid for that.
Unidentified Speaker. You work for us.
Unidentified Speaker. Where is the meeting at?
Unidentified Speaker. Hey, where do they count the fucking
votes?
Unidentified Speaker. Hey! Hey!
Unidentified Speaker. Do it! Do it!
Unidentified Speaker. Where are they counting the votes?
Where are they counting the votes?
Unidentified Speaker. Right there. Hey.
Unidentified Speaker. These people. These people. These
people. We have no weapons. We have no fucking weapons.
Unidentified Speaker. No, no.
Unidentified Speaker. Motherfucker.

Although they were shouting that they did not have any weapons, we
know from the earlier video that that is not true. The second assailant
through that breach was the one carrying a metal baseball bat. We know
there were other weapons there that day.
Did you hear the other shouts?

We're here for you. He's one person, we're thousands.

And--

Where do they count the votes?

They were coming at the urging of Donald Trump to keep Congress--a
separate branch of government--from certifying the results of a
Presidential election.
As the rioters reached the top of the stairs, they were within 100
feet of where the Vice President was sheltering with his family. And
they were just feet away from one of the doors to this Chamber, where
many of you remained at that time.
I also want to show you a different angle from the security footage
of Officer Goodman's acts. This video is on the second floor of the
Senate wing of the Capitol. The red dot, as you recall, represents the
insurrectionists. The blue dot is Officer Goodman, who led the mob away
from the Chamber, just minutes earlier.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
On the left-hand side of the video, just inside the hallway is the
door to

[[Page S635]]

the Senate Chamber. And watch how Officer Goodman provoked the rioters
and purposefully draws them away from the door to the Senate Chamber
and toward the other officers waiting down the hall.
The rioter seen carrying a baseball bat in this video is the same one
we saw moments ago breaching the window on the first floor.
While all of this was going on, Vice President Pence was still in the
room near the Senate Chamber. It was not until 2:26 that he was
evacuated to a secure location. This next security video shows that
evacuation.
His movements are depicted by the orange dot in our model. The red
and blue dots represent the location where the mob and Officer Goodman
were and where Officer Goodman led the mob away from the Chamber just
moments ago.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
You can see Vice President Pence and his family quickly moved down
the stairs. The Vice President turns around briefly as he is headed
down.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
As Pence was being evacuated, rioters started to spread throughout
the Capitol. Those inside helped other rioters break in through doors
in several locations around this entire building. And the mob was
looking for Vice President Pence because of his patriotism, because the
Vice President had refused to do what the President demanded and
overturn the election results.
During the assault on the Capitol, extremists reportedly coordinated
online and discussed how they could hunt down the Vice President.
Journalists in the Capitol reported they heard rioters say they were
looking for Pence in order to execute him.
Trump's supporters had erected a gallows on the lawn in front of the
Capitol Building. Another group of rioters chanted: ``Hang Mike
Pence,'' as they stood in the open door of the Capitol Building.
You can hear the security alarm through the door in the background.
And you can hear the mob calling for the death of the Vice President of
the United States.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

(People chanting: ``Hang Mike Pence.'')

This wasn't an isolated area or incident where that was being told,
where that was being said. It was going on everywhere.
Here is another example of the crowd outside yelling: ``Bring out
Pence, bring him out.''

(People chanting: ``Bring him out.'')
(People chanting: ``Bring out Pence.'')

After President Trump had primed his followers for months and
inflamed the rally-goers that morning, it is no wonder that the Vice
President of the United States was the target of their wrath after
Pence refused to overturn the election results.
Listen to this man explain.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. While Congress, cowards, hid in
their--inside, and were escorted away because of fear of the
people. Of course they are cowards. They can't face the
people. They can't do the right thing. Pence lied to us. He
is a total treasonous pig. And his name will be mud forever.
Now the real battle begins. And it looks like the American
people are very pissed. So good luck with that. Peace out.

``Peace out.''
Several insurrectionists described wha they had planned to do if they
encountered the Vice President or other lawmakers. One of them, Dominic
Pezzola, also known as Spaz, is a member of the Proud Boys, as we
discussed. Pezzola came to the Capitol on January 6 with deadly
intentions. He commandeered a Capitol Police shield, used it to smash a
glass window, entered the Capitol, and paved the way for dozens of
insurrectionists.

As you recall from an earlier video, Pezzola was one of the first
wave of rioters to breach the building. On the left, you can see a
screen shot from the video of the break-in we showed earlier. And on
the right, you can see Pezzola in the mob chase Capitol Police Officer
Eugene Goodman through the building. Pezzola is the man in the center
of the photo with the gray beard.
Pezzola has since been charged with eight Federal crimes for his
conduct related to January 6. According to an FBI Agent's affidavit
submitted to the court, the group that was with him during the sack of
the Capitol confirmed that they were out to murder ``anyone they got
their hands on.''
Here is what the FBI said:

Other members of the group talked about things they had
done that day, and they said that anyone they got their hands
on they would have killed, including Nancy Pelosi.

And, I quote:

[T]hey would have killed [Vice President] Mike Pence if
given the chance.

They were talking about assassinating the Vice President of the
United States. During the course of the attack, the Vice President
never left the Capitol, remained locked down with his family--with his
family--inside the building. Remember that as you think about these
images and the sounds of the attack.
The Vice President, our second in command, was always at the center
of it. Vice President Pence was threatened with death by the
President's supporters because he rejected President Trump's demand
that he overturn the election.
The mob also went after the Speaker of the House, who alongside the
Vice President, was presiding over the joint session of the
certification in the House Chamber.
The chilling evidence shows that on January 6, armed and organized
insurrectionists trained their sights on Speaker Pelosi. They sought
out the Speaker on the floor and in her office, publicly declared their
intent to harm or kill her, ransacked her office, and terrorized her
staff. And they did it because Donald Trump sent them on this mission.
As the insurrectionists got closer, Capitol Police rushed the Speaker
from the House floor at 2:15 p.m., mere minutes after the Capitol was
first breached. They recognized immediately that she was in danger. The
Speaker was not just rushed from the floor; the Capitol Police deemed
the threat so dangerous that they evacuated her entirely from the
Capitol Complex, rushing her to a secure offsite location.
The insurrectionists' intent to murder the Speaker of the House is
well documented in charging documents that are now available. We know
from the rioters themselves that if they had found Speaker Pelosi, they
would have killed her.
I have already discussed Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who has
since been charged with eight Federal crimes for his conduct on January
6. As you will recall, according to the FBI agent's affidavit submitted
to the court, the group he attacked the Capitol with confirmed that
``anyone they got their hands on they would have killed, including
Nancy Pelosi.''
William Calhoun, a lawyer, from Georgia, also participated in the
insurrection that day. And he, too, has been charged for his actions.
This insurrectionist detailed his criminal activity at the Capitol
online. Calhoun wrote about his involvement on his own Facebook page.
Here is the post. Calhoun stated:

And get this--the first of us who got upstairs kicked in
Nancy Pelosi's door and pushed down the hall towards her
inner sanctum, the mob howling with rage--Crazy Nancy
probably would have been torn into little pieces, but she was
nowhere to be seen.
``Crazy Nancy''--that is Trump's nickname for the Speaker
of the House. Then he explains that he and his group only
abandoned their claim to the Speaker's office when ``a SWAT
team showed up.''

He writes:

Then a SWAT team showed and we retreated back to the
rotunda and continued our hostile takeover of the Capitol
Building.

``Retreated,'' ``hostile takeover.'' He is using military terms for
this attack.
The mob continued to look for Nancy Pelosi throughout the time they
occupied the Capitol, including invading her offices.
Watch now how the mob searches for Speaker Pelosi's office, which is
marked in red, and the House Chamber itself.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. Where are you, Nancy? We are looking
for you?
Unidentified Speaker. Nancy! Oh, Nancy! Nancy! Where are
you, Nancy?

During the siege, the Speaker's staff took cover in her office,
hiding in fear for their lives for hours, as rioters broke in and
ransacked her office.

[[Page S636]]

As the rioters were breaking into the Capitol, her staff retreated
into an interior room. Eight of them gathered in a conference room.
About the same time, Capitol Police announced the Capitol had been
breached, Speaker Pelosi's staff heeded the call to shelter in place.
On our model, you can see the rioters in the Rotunda in red and the
Speaker's office, again, in orange
This is a security video, so there is no sound.
(Video presentation.)
As you can see, the staff moves from their offices through the halls
and then enters a door on the right-hand side. That is the outer door
of a conference room, which also has an inner door that they barricaded
with furniture.
The staff then hid under a conference room table in that inner room.
This is the last staffer going in and then barricading themselves
inside the inner office.
After just 7 minutes of them barricading themselves and the last
staffer entering the door on the right, a group of rioters entered the
hallway outside and, once inside, the rioters have free rein in the
Speaker of the House's offices.
In this security video, pay attention to the door that we saw those
staffers leaning into and going into.
(Video presentation.)
One of the rioters, you can see, is throwing his body against the
door three times until he breaks open that outer door. Luckily, when
faced with the inner door, he moves on. Another rioter later tried
unsuccessfully to break through that inner door. At this point, the mob
had already broken into the Speaker's formal conference room that is in
the back of the hall at the top of the video.
I want to play some audio we have of the Speaker's staff with the
rioters at the door that day. You can hear the terror in their voices
as they describe what is happening to them as they are barricaded in
that conference room. Please listen carefully because the staffer is
whispering into a phone as he hides from the rioters that are outside
the door.
(Text of video presentation.)

Unidentified Speaker. They're in the hall. We need the
Capitol Police to come into the hallway. They're pounding on
doors trying to find her now.

You can hear the pounding in the background as that staffer is
speaking. One of those staffers explained later that they could hear
the mob going through her offices, breaking down the door and yelling:
Where are you, Nancy?
The mob also pillaged and vandalized the Speaker's office and
documented their crimes on social media. They stole objects, desecrated
the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United
States.
As you can see in these photos, rioters broke down a door. They also
shattered a mirror. At 2:50 p.m., several rioters, including Richard
``Bigo'' Barnett, entered Speaker Pelosi's office. The world is all now
too familiar with the images from these slides. If you look closely,
however, at the now-infamous pictures of Barnett with his feet on the
desk, you might see something that you didn't notice previously. Here
is a better look. As this photo highlights, he is carrying a stun gun
tucked into his waistband. The FBI identified the device as a 950,000-
volt stun gun walking stick. The weapon could have caused serious pain
and incapacitated anyone Barnett had used it against.
Richard Barnett bragged about his actions. He was proud of the way he
desecrated the Speaker of the House's office. He left a note:

WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN.

Here is Barnett in his own words.
(Text of video presentation.)

Unidentified Man. Where'd you get it?
Mr. BARNETT. I didn't steal it. I bled on it. And they were
fucking macing me, and I couldn't fucking see. And so I
figure: Well, I'm in her office. I got blood in her office. I
put a quarter on her desk even though she ain't fucking worth
it. And I left her a note on her desk that says: Nancy, Bigo
was here, you bitch.

Trump's mob ransacked the Speaker of the House's office. They
terrorized her staff. Again, that is a mob that was sent by the
President of the United States to stop the certification of an
election.
The Vice President, the Speaker of the House--the first and second in
line to the Presidency--were performing their constitutional duties,
presiding over the election certification. And they were put in danger
because President Trump put his own desires--his own need for power--
over his duty to the Constitution and our democratic process. President
Trump put a target on their backs, and his mob broke into the Capitol
to hunt them down.
(Text of video presentation.)

The Officer. We're talking projectiles. Let's go. We need
units outside on the terrace ASAP. We need units. We're
surrounded.
The Officer. Cruiser 50, they've breached the scaffolds.
Let Capitol know they have breached the scaffolds. They are
behind our lines.

Mr. Manager SWALWELL. Shortly after 2 p.m., the Capitol Police and
Metropolitan Police were overwhelmed by President Trump's mob.
Perimeters were broken. The Capitol had been breached. Those officers
kept fighting back for hours and hours to hold th line. They fought to
defend the Capitol Building and all of us within it.

But they weren't there just to protect us--and they did--and our
staff and the custodial staff and all the people who work so hard in
this building. They were there to protect the votes of the American
people that were being counted that day. I will show you more later
about what that day was like for those brave officers.
But first, let's go back to what was happening where Manager Plaskett
left off in the House Chamber. Rioters who had entered the building
through the Senate quickly spread out through the Capitol. Many headed
toward the House and Senate Chambers. After Speaker Pelosi was ushered
out, Chairman McGovern was presiding in the House, attempting to keep
the counting process going.
On our phones, Members were receiving security updates and watching
social media to see the horror that was going on outside. We never
thought it would make its way in.
By 2:25 p.m., rioters who were already in the building opened the
east side doors of the Capitol Rotunda to let more of the mob in. They
quickly flooded through the doors, overwhelming the officers.
This is new security footage of those doors, and, as before, the mob
is identified with the red dot on the model of the Capitol. If you look
closely, you will see the first person through the door is holding the
Trump flag.
(Video presentation.)
At the same time, just one floor below, the mob finally pushed
through a line of Capitol Police officers and overtook the area. We all
know that area in the Capitol as the Crypt. This is directly beneath
the Rotunda at the very center of the Capitol.
(Text of video presentation.)

(People chanting: ``Open up.'')
The Officer. No harm. No harm.

Inside the House Chamber, a security officer suspended the floor
debate to update Members.
(Text of video presentation.)

The Officer. We have a person with tear gas in the Rotunda.
Please stand by. There are masks under your seats. Please
grab a mask. Place it in your lap, and be prepared to don
your mask in the event the room is breached.

We were told there were tear gas masks underneath our seats and to be
prepared to grab them.
Determined to keep the count going, Chairman McGovern called the
House back into session, but only 4 minutes later, at 2:30 p.m., the
House abruptly recessed. A new security announcement was made.
(Text of video presentation.)

The Officer. Be prepared to get down under your chairs, if
necessary. So we have folks entering the Rotunda and coming
down this way. So we will update you as soon as we can, but
just be prepared. Stay calm.

As I heard that announcement on the floor, I saw the new House
Chaplain, on just her fourth day on the job, walk to the front podium
unannounced, and, amidst the chaos, she started to recite a prayer for
peace.
Uncertain what would happen next, I sent a text message to my wife:

I love you and the babies, please hug them for me.

I imagine many of you sent a similar message.
What we could not see from inside the Chamber was that outside, the
mob was growing larger and larger and approaching our doors. But we
could hear them.

[[Page S637]]

This security footage, which does not have sound, shows a closeup of
Trump's mob as they move toward the second floor of the House Chamber
to stop the counting of votes.
(Video presentation.)
In the back of the group, you see one individual carrying a ``Stop
the Steal'' sign. They get within footsteps of the House door.
The next video is the viewpoint of the insurrectionists. It begins
with the mob amassing and cuts ahead to show you their search to the
House door.
(Text of video presentation.)

(People chanting: ``We want Trump.'')
Unidentified Man. It's a mob. They're going. Just stop.
Whoa, whoa. Dude, dude, dude, dude--you're not helping.
You're not helping. You are going to get me hurt and other
people.
(People chanting: ``Stop the steal.'')
Unidentified Man. All right, no violence.
Unidentified Man. It's too late for that. They don't listen
without that stuff.
(People chanting: ``Stop the steal.'')

Those doors, to orient you at home, are the doors that the President
of the United States walks through when he or she gives the State of
the Union Address.
You may have heard one man yell ``no violence'' and another respond:

It's too late for that. They don't listen without that.

They were there to stop the certification of the election.
At this point, inside the House Chamber, we can now hear the pounding
on the doors. At 2:35 p.m., Members on the House floor were told that
an evacuation route was secure, and it was time to leave. This video
shows Members of Congress exiting to the side of the podium where we
would go through the House Lobby and downstairs.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Because of coronavirus restrictions, congressional Members had been
waiting in the Gallery for their time to speak, just one level above
the House floor. Representatives, staff, journalists all took cover
under their chairs, helped each other put on their gas masks, and held
hands as rioters gathered outside.
Here, on this slide, you see Representative Jason Crow comforting our
colleague Representative Susan Wild.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
The rioters continued to surround the House Chamber, flooding the
halls and kicking on the doors as they passed them.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
This security video shows Ashli Babbitt, followed by others in the
mob, turning the corner to the House Lobby doors where the Members were
leaving.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Chairman McGovern was one of the last Members to leave the floor. As
he left through the House Lobby, just after 2:40 p.m., he was spotted
by the mob.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Minutes later, at 2:44 p.m., Ashli Babbitt attempted to climb through
a shattered window into the House Lobby. To protect the Members in the
Lobby, an officer discharged his weapon, and she was killed. I want to
warn everyone that the next video, which shows her death, is graphic.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

He has a gun! He has a gun! He's got a gun!

Inside the Chamber, Representatives, staff, and journalists remained
trapped in the Gallery, one floor above the House floor, and heard the
gunshot. My colleague Representative Dan Kildee produced this
recording.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

What the fuck? Take your pins off. Pins off!

Out of fear that they would be seen or taken by the mob, my
colleagues were telling each other to take off their congressional
pins. That buzzing sound that you hear in the background of these
videos was the sound of the gas masks.
It was not until approximately 2:50 p.m., about 6 minutes after the
shooting downstairs, that the remaining Members, staff, and journalists
in the Gallery were finally able to flee.
In this security footage video, you can see them exiting. Many
Members are still wearing their gas masks. They walk just feet away
from where the Capitol Police are holding an insurrectionist at
gunpoint. Just minutes earlier, that insurrectionist had tried to open
the Gallery door and, thankfully, was stopped by a tactical team.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Although Members were now being moved to another location, the mob
continued to fight--to stop the count, to find the Members, to engage
with the police. The building was not yet secure.
This security video from 2:56 p.m. shows the mob in the House of
Representatives' wing on the second floor of the Capitol.
Insurrectionists who are still inside the building are fighting with
the police, who are overwhelmed in trying to get them out.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Throughout this presentation, we have been very careful to not share
where Members of Congress were taken or the paths they followed to get
out and off the floor, but that very issue was under discussion by the
insurrectionists themselves. One example comes from an FBI affidavit,
which stated that a leader of a militia group known as the Oath Keepers
received messages while he was at the Capitol. The leader was given
directions to where Representatives were thought to be sheltering and
instructions to ``turn on gas; seal them in.''
As you know, the threat to the Senate was no less than that of the
Members of the House. The mob approached the Senate with the same
purpose: fulfilling President Trump's goal of stopping the count;
delaying the certification of the electoral college votes of the
American people.
As you heard from Manager Plaskett, Vice President Pence was moved
away from the area near the Senate Chamber at around 2:25 p.m. By that
time, rioters had breached several areas close to this Chamber, and
they were flooding the hallways just outside an nearby. The Senate
Chamber was not evacuated until 2:30 p.m. The mob had been in the
building for more than 15 minutes.

This new security footage of the Senators and staff leaving the
Chamber will be displayed on the screens. It is silent.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
You cannot see it in this footage, but quick-thinking Senate floor
staff grabbed and protected the electoral ballots that the mob was
after.
Those of you who were here that day will recall that, once you left
the Senate floor, you moved through a hallway to get to safety. That
hallway was near where Officer Goodman had encountered a mob and led
them upstairs and away from the Senate Chamber. You know how close you
came to the mob. Some of you, I understand, could hear them, but most
of the public does not know how close these rioters came to you. As you
were moving through that hallway--I paced it off--you were just 58
steps away from where the mob was amassing and where police were
rushing to stop them. They were yelling.
In this security video, you can see how the Capitol Police created a
line and blocked the hallway with their bodies to prevent rioters at
the end of the hall from reaching you and your staff.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Because this is security footage that you have not seen before, I
want to play it again. The top of the screen is the other end of that
hallway where the mob has amassed and the officers are rushing to
protect you.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Additional security footage shows how Leader Schumer and the members
of his protective detail had a near miss with the mob. They came within
just yards of rioters and had to turn around. Here, in this new video,
you see Leader Schumer walking up a ramp. In going up the ramp with his
detail, he will soon go out of view.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Seconds later, they return and run back down the hallway, and
officers immediately shut the door and use their bodies to keep them
safe.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
At 2:45 p.m., shortly after Senators were ushered to safety from the
Senate floor, insurrectionists reached the Senate Galleries. The
following video was filmed by a New Yorker reporter.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Where the fuck are they? We're here.

Minutes later, the insurrectionists invaded and desecrated the Senate
floor. These vandals shouted and rifled through the desks of this room.
They took pictures of documents and of

[[Page S638]]

themselves, celebrating that they had taken over the floor and stopped
the counting of the electoral college votes.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. Look at this. Take a picture.
Unidentified Speaker. Here. Look. Ted Cruz's objections. He
was going to sell us out all along.
Unidentified Speaker. Really?
Unidentified Speaker. Objection to counting the electoral
votes of the State of Arizona.
Unidentified Speaker. All right. All right. There's got to
be something in here we can use against these scum bags.
Unidentified Speaker. What happened to the phone, man?

Larry Brock, who was arrested for his role in the insurrection, was
photographed on the Senate floor, wearing a helmet, tactical gear, and
carrying flex cuffs.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
This man, also in the Senate Galleries, is Eric Munchel. Like Brock,
he was dressed in what appears to be tactical gear, also holding up
flex cuffs.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
If the doors to this Chamber had been breached just minutes earlier,
imagine what they could have done with those cuffs.
After insurrectionists occupied the Capitol and stopped the joint
session from counting the votes, the Capitol was in lockdown for 5
hours.
As long as it took to get back to the Capitol, to get back to the
certification of the election, it could have been so much longer, or we
might not have been able to resume at all. As horrific as it was--140
officers injured, 3 officers who ultimately lost their lives--we all
know that awful day could have been so much worse. The only reason it
was not was because of the extraordinary bravery of the men and women
of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Departments. For
hours and hours, these insurrectionists were in hand-to-hand combat
with these brave men and women.
Like some of you, I come from a law enforcement family. My dad was a
cop. My two brothers--my little brothers are cops who walk the beat
today. I am proud of them. And like in every law enforcement family,
when we hang up the phone, we don't only say ``I love you,'' we say
``Be safe.''
So let's focus now on the attack and what it was like for the
officers defending the Capitol that day. And, again, I want to warn you
that the following audio and videos are graphic and are unsettling, but
it is important that we understand the extent of what occurred.
Here is an audio recording from the radio traffic of the DC
Metropolitan Police Department describing the violence.
(Text of audio presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Cruiser 50, I copy. We're still talking rocks, bottles, and
pieces of flag and metal pole.
Cruiser 50, the crowd is using munitions against us. They
have bear spray in the crowd. Bear spray in the crowd.
1328.
Multiple deployments U.S. Capitol with pepper spray.
DSO, DSO, I need a re-up. I need a re-up up here.

You hear the officer describe they are ``using munitions''--they, the
rioters, are ``using munitions against us.''
This video shows how the sprays that were described were used against
the officers.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
In a separate Metropolitan Police Department radio traffic recording,
you can hear an officer when he realizes that the insurrectionists had
overtaken the police line.
(Text of audio presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Cruiser 50. We lost the line. We've lost the line. All MPD,
pull back. All MPD, pull back up to the upper deck. All MPD,
pull back to the upper deck ASAP. All MPD, come back to the
upper deck. Upper deck. Cruiser 50, we're flanked. 10-33. I
repeat 10-33 west front of the Capitol. We have been flanked
and we've lost the line.

The MPD officer calls out ``10-33.'' That is the code for emergency,
officer in need of assistance; his words, ``We've lost the line.''
Hours after Members of the House and Senate had left this area on the
west front of the building, the mob continued to grow, continued to
beat the officers, as they tried to get in.
In this new security video, you can see the mob attacking officers
with a crutch, a hockey stick, a bull horn, and a Trump flag.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
I want to show you that same attack from the officer's perspective,
from his body camera footage.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
This body camera footage is from 4:27 p.m., over 2 hours from when
the Capitol was first breached. The attack on police that afternoon was
constant.
Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, a 20-year police veteran
with four daughters, was part of a line of officers protecting the
Capitol. He was one of three officers whom the mob dragged down the
stairs. When they dragged him, they stole his badge, his radio, his
ammunition magazine, and they tased him, triggered a heart attack.
Here he describes his experience.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Officer Fanone. It looked like a medieval battle scene. It
was some of the most brutal combat, you know, I have ever--
ever encountered. At one point I got tased. People were
yelling at me, `We got one. We got one.'

Officer Christina Laury, who regularly serves in MPD's Narcotics and
Specialized Investigation Division, also protected the front Capitol
entrance. Here is her experience.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Officer Laury. I mean, I can't say enough about the
officers that were there, the officers that were on the
frontline. And when I say `the frontline,' I mean, literally,
officers that were in a line, stopping these people that were
beating them with metal poles. They were spraying them with
bear mace. I mean, they did everything in their power to not
let those people in. And this was going on for hours.

Around 4:30 p.m., hours into the Capitol riots, Officer Daniel Hodges
was protecting a west side Capitol entrance, when rioters who were
trying to stop the certification trapped him between two doors.
When Officer Hodges was interviewed later, this is how he described
what was happening.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Officer Hodges. They threw down a huge metal object that
hit me on the head. I was also knocked down. The medical mask
I was wearing at the time got pulled up over my eyes, so I
was on the ground and blinded, and they started attacking me
from all sides.

Rioters crushed Officer Hodges. He was wedged in the doorway, blood
dripping from his mouth. He was struggling to breathe, all while the
insurrectionists hit him.
Officer Hodges' experience reminds you of what he and many other
officers experienced that day, what they went through.
We are also reminded of three officers who lost their lives: Capitol
Hill Police Officers Sicknick, Liebengood, and Metropolitan Police
Officer Smith.
In many law enforcement families, we pray for our loved ones, and we
know the scripture of Matthew 5:9, ``Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they shall be called the children of God.''
I am sorry I have to show you the next video, but in it you will see
how blessed we were that on that hellish day, we had a peacemaker like
Officer Hodges protecting our lives, our staffs' lives, this Capitol,
and the certification process.
May we do all we can in this Chamber to make sure that never happens
again.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Recess

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, we will now have a recess for dinner, and
we will resume at 6:15.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate
stands in recess until 6:15 p.m.
Thereupon, the Senate, at 5:25 p.m., recessed until 6:15 p.m. and
reassembled at 6:28 p.m., when called to order by the President pro
tempore.

Managers' Presentation--Continued

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Mr. Raskin.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Mr. President, distinguished Members of the
Senate, Managers Cicilline and Castro will now remind us of what
President Trump was doing during the attack. They will show how he
continued to stoke the insurrection and refused to speak out against
the violence or do anything to stop it.

[[Page S639]]

Mr. Cicilline.
Mr. Manager CICILLINE. Mr. President, distinguished Senators, you
just heard from my colleagues about the harrowing events that happened
here at the Capitol on January 6 and saw that very disturbing video,
and now I would like to turn your attention to what was happening on
the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House.
The truth is, the facts are that on January 6, Donald Trump did not
once condemn this attack. He did not once condemn the attackers. In
fact, on January 6, the only person he condemned was his own Vice
President, Mike Pence, who was hiding in this building with his family
in fear for his life.
In the first crucial hours of this violent attack, he did nothing to
stop it, nothing to help us.
By all accounts, from the people that were around him, he was
delighted. And here is the last thing Donald Trump said that day, and
you might remember this from my motions presentation earlier in the
week.
At 6 p.m. on January 6, after all the destruction that you just saw,
Capitol Police and the National Guard fighting to secure this building,
here is what Donald Trump tweeted:

He got what he incited, and according to Donald Trump, we got what we
deserve. Donald Trump's incitement of this insurrection, including his
dereliction of his duty as Commander in Chief to defend the Capitol and
the people in it, his complete refusal to condemn the attack while it
was going on, and his continuing to incite the violence during the
attack require impeachment.
Now, let's turn to then-President Trump's conduct that day. I want to
start at the beginning, when he addressed his thousands of great
patriots, as he called them that morning. Around noon, Donald Trump
began speaking at his rally just down Pennsylvania Avenue. Even before
Donald Trump finished speaking, his supporters began to walk down
toward the Capitol, and they were already starting to chant ``stop the
steal'' and ``storm the Capitol'' and ``invade the Capitol'' and
``fight for Trump.''
And by 12:53 p.m., they had violently forced their way through the
barricades here at the Capitol. Now, about 1 o'clock that day, with
this chaos just starting, Speaker Pelosi, as the Constitution requires,
formally commenced the process by which this Chamber certifies election
results.
Within 10 minutes, at 1:11 p.m., as if almost on cue, Donald Trump
concluded his speech with his final reminder to the thousands gathered
there: It was time to go to the Capitol.
Let's watch.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. We're going to the Capitol, and we're
going to try and give--and 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.
So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
I want to thank you all. God bless you, and God bless
America.
Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank you
very much.
(People chanting: ``Fight for Trump.'')

Now, you have seen what happened when these supporters, following his
orders, arrived here at the Capitol. But we want to look at what
happened next. Now, you will recall, during the speech, President Trump
said, ``We're going to the Capitol,'' sort of suggesting he was going
to go with this crowd. Of course, that was not true. But let's hear
what he said.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. Now it is up to Congress to confront this
egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're
going to walk down, and I'll be there with you. We're going
to walk down. We're going to walk down.
Any one you want, but I think right here. We're going to
walk down to the Capitol.

This, of course, was not true. He did not go with them to the
Capitol. He left and went back to the White House, and while he was en
route to the White House, violence began to grow here at the Capitol.
And within minutes of Donald Trump's speech ending, there were
significant reports of escalating violence that began to surface.
Buildings around the Capitol were starting to be evacuated, and by
1:15, an explosive device had been found at the DNC, and a pipe bomb
had been found at the RNC about 15 minutes earlier. The House Sergeant
at Arms had called for immediate assistance. At 1:34 p.m., the mayor of
Washington, DC, called for additional National Guard troops.
I won't go through all of the details of violence that unfolded here.
You just saw that. But as we walk through what our Commander in Chief
did that day, I want to be very clear about exactly what was happening
here at the same time.
For 40 minutes, while buildings were being cleared, pipe bombs were
being found, and his supporters were literally breaching the perimeter
of the Capitol and overwhelming law enforcement. You saw the violence
that was occurring. We heard nothing from the President of the United
States. We didn't hear anything from Donald Trump until 1:49 p.m.,
when, while all of this is unfolding, President Trump sent out a tweet.
This was the first thing he did when he learned the U.S. Capitol,
with all the Members of Congress and his own Vice President, was under
violent attack. What was that tweet? Nearly an hour after the rioters
breached the Capitol perimeter at 1:49, Donald Trump released a
propaganda reel of his ``Save America'' speech that he had given an
hour before.
I want to be clear. The events I just described--the rioters
breaching the Capitol, attacking law enforcement, the violence that is
being broadcast all over the television for the whole world to see,
including the President of the United States--I want to show you: This
is what is happening right before Donald Trump sends that video out
again and as he does it.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

President TRUMP. Our country has had enough. We will not
take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use
a favorite term that all of you people really came up with:
We will stop the steal. Because you'll never take back our
countr with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have
to be strong.

Even if President Trump claims he didn't know the extent of the
violence that would follow his speech, it was now happening in plain
view, broadcast on television. His supporters were attacking law
enforcement. The mayor and the police chief were calling for help.
Members of Congress and the Vice President were inside scared for their
lives.
He doesn't send help, and he doesn't try to stop it. He doesn't even
acknowledge the attack. Instead, our Commander in Chief tweeted the
video of the speech that he had given before, that included language
like ``our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and
that's what this is all about. . . . You have to be strong.''
Those around Donald Trump--this was later reported--were disgusted.
His close aides, his advisers, those working for him, former officials,
and even his family were begging him to do something. Kellyanne Conway,
the President's close adviser, called to ``add her name'' to the chorus
of aides urging Donald Trump to take action. Ivanka Trump, the
President's own daughter, went to the Oval Office ``as soon as'' the
rioting escalated, and as was confirmed by Senator Graham, ``trying to
get [Trump] to speak out, to tell everyone to leave.''
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called Jared Kushner, ``pleading with
him to persuade Trump to issue a statement'' or to do something. And
Kushner, too, went down to the White House after that call.
And it wasn't just the people at the White House. Members of Congress
from both parties, who were trapped here, were calling the White House
to ask for help. Some Members even appealed directly to Donald Trump.
These Members who had ``been loyal Trump supporters and were even
willing to vote against the electoral college results, were now scared
for their lives.''
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy repeatedly even got into a screaming
match as the attack was under way,

[[Page S640]]

demanding that Mr. Trump do something, issue a statement denouncing the
mob.
I imagine many of you sitting here today picked up your phone and
tried to reach somebody at the White House to ask for help. This wasn't
partisan politics. These were Americans from all sides trying to force
our Commander in Chief to protect and defend our country. He was
required to do that.
Now, the extent of how many people tried to reach the President to
get him to act is not known. But what is clear, what we know without
any doubt, is that from the very beginning, the people around Donald
Trump lobbied him to take command. What is also clear is what Donald
Trump, our Commander in Chief, did in those initial hours to protect
us. Nothing. Not a thing. He knew it was happening. The attack was on
TV. We all know that President Trump had the power to stop these
attacks. He was our Commander in Chief. He had the power to assess the
security situation, send backup, and send help.
He also had incited these violent attacks. They were listening to
him. He could have commanded them to leave, but he didn't.
The first critical hour and a half of this bloody attack, Donald
Trump tweeted his rally speech and did nothing else. And we know why.
We know his state of mind that prompted his utter, complete refusal to
defend us. It was reported by those around him.
The President, as reported by sources at the time, was delighted. As
he watched the violence unfold on television, President Trump was
reportedly ``borderline enthusiastic because it meant the certification
was being derailed.''
Senator Ben Sasse relayed a conversation with senior White House
officials that President Trump was ``walking around the White House
confused about why other people on his team weren't as excited as he
was.''
Mr. Trump's reaction to this attack, reportedly, genuinely freaked
people out. I understand why. We just suffered a very serious attack,
an attack on our country. And we saw them--the people around him--do
it. But when Donald Trump saw it, he was delighted.
Now, what President Trump did next confirms why he was so delighted,
why he wanted this, because it shows that his singular focus that day--
the day we were attacked--was not protecting us, was not protecting
you, was not protecting the Capitol, but it was stopping the
certification of the election results.
The evidence is clear. Shortly after 2 p.m., as the siege was fully
under way, then-President Trump made a call. This is the first call
that we are aware he made to anyone inside the Capitol during the
attack. He didn't call the Vice President to ask how he could help
defend the Capitol. He didn't call the next two in line to succession
of the Presidency to check on their safety or well-being.
Instead, he attempted to call Senator Tuberville. He dialed Senator
Lee by accident.
(Text deleted.)
Let's be clear. At roughly 2 p.m., when Donald Trump was walking
around the White House watching the TV delighted and spent 5 to 10
minutes talking to Senator Tuberville, urging him to delay the election
results, this is what was happening in the Capitol.
(Video presentation.)
You saw Senator Lankford stop speaking and leave the floor quickly in
that clip because the insurgents had broken through the barricades and
entered the building. And as these armed insurrectionists banged on the
doors, Members of Congress were told to put on their gas masks, to put
bags over their heads for safety, and prepare to evacuate. And Donald
Trump was calling to ask the Senator to delay the certification
process. Let that sink in.

Donald Trump didn't get to finish that call. It was cut off because
the Senators had to move to another location, for your security. And
thank God they did because as the call was occurring, the rioters got
closer to the Senate Chamber, and as we all know now, but for the
heroism of Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman and other law
enforcement officers who took them in a different direction to the
police line, they very likely would have gotten here.
Think about that. Armed insurrectionists with guns, weapons, zip
ties, brass knuckles, they were coming for us. They were inside the
United States Capitol, trying to stop the certification process. The
police were outnumbered. And but for the grace of God, they would have
gotten us, all of us.
And our Commander in Chief makes a call about an hour after the siege
began, not to preserve, protect, and defend you and our country and the
Capitol but to join forces with the mob and pressure a Senator to stop
certification. We just can't get numb to this kind of behavior.
There can be no doubt as to the purpose of Donald Trump's call, that
he was not calling to assess the security threats or to check on the
well-being of you or anyone else. Indeed, later on that evening, while
all of the destruction and damage still continued, dozens of officers
were being treated for serious injuries. Deaths were confirmed. About 7
p.m., the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, made a call, and
just in case you don't think there was some coordination, he also
called Senator Lee's phone trying to reach Senator Tuberville. We don't
have to guess as to what Rudy Giuliani said in that voicemail because
we have it recorded. So let's listen to what the President's personal
lawyer said on the night of this attack.
(Text of audio presentation.)

Mr. GIULIANI. Senator Tuberville--or I should say Coach
Tuberville, this is Rudy Giuliani, the President's lawyer.
I'm calling you because I want to discuss with you how
they're trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our
Republican friends, to try to just slow it down.

This was the singular focus of Donald Trump during this bloody,
violent attack on the Capitol: stopping the certification.
Look, as I mentioned, I was a trial lawyer for 16 years. Sometimes,
you have to ask a jury to use reasonable inferences to piece together a
defendant's state of mind. We don't have to do this here. While our
country was violently attacked by an armed mob, President Trump not
only refused to stop the attack or even address the attack at all, he
made clear his focus was on the same goal of the attackers he incited:
to stop the certification process and prevent the peaceful transition
of power. The only action we know that he took an hour into this attack
was to call Senator Tuberville to ask him to delay the certification.
This is as clear evidence as I have ever seen of what Donald Trump
really cared about that day.
Now, look, the certification process, as we all know, includes debate
and objections. Some of us disagreed, but we came here on January 6 to
formally administer the certification process pursuant to our
constitutional duties. At the end of it, Congress certified the results
to ensure that we continue to be a country with leaders who are elected
by the people for the people.
Donald Trump's objections to the certification are not on trial, but
what is on trial is, while we were under armed attack and being
evacuated, while our law enforcement officers were fighting for their
lives, our Commander in Chief was calling not to determine how to best
secure the building and the people in it but to continue to pressure
Senators to stop the certification process and a peaceful transfer of
power, just as he incited the mob to do earlier in the day. This was a
breathtaking dereliction of his duty and a violation of his oath as our
Commander in Chief.
Senators, before I hand this over to Manager Castro to walk through
the rest of the day, please let me make one final point. These
attackers stood right where you are. They went through that rostrum.
They rifled through your desks, and they desecrated this place. And
literally, the President sat delighted, doing nothing to help us,
calling one of you to pressure you to stop the certification.
It can't be that the Commander in Chief can incite a lawless, bloody
insurrection and then utterly fail in his duty as Commander in Chief to
defend us from the attack, to defend our law enforcement officers from
that attack, and just get away with it. Donald Trump abdicated his duty
to us all. We have to make this right, and you can make it right.
Mr. Manager CASTRO of Texas. My fellow manager David Cicilline
showed you what President Trump did and did not do in thos first
critical hours of the attack.

[[Page S641]]

He sent a tweet at 1:49 p.m., where he reposted a video of the speech
that incited the attack, and he called a Senator to ask him to delay
the certification as the Senator was being evacuated for his own
safety.
We left off around 2:15 p.m. At this point, insurgents were inside
the Senate and the House, and the Senate had been evacuated for
everyone's safety. As you saw, Vice President Mike Pence and his family
even had to be evacuated for their safety.
Now, you will recall Donald Trump had made Vice President Pence a
target. He attacked the Vice President at the rallies, in speeches, and
on Twitter. And during President Trump's speech that morning of the
attack, he ramped it up again. After privately pressuring Mike Pence in
front of thousands in the crowd, he called Mike Pence out 11 times,
including saying:
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of
our Constitution and for the good of your country. And if
you're not, I'm [going] to be . . . disappointed in you. I
will tell you right now.

And this was the crowd's response to Donald Trump's days of
relentless attacks on his own Vice President:
(Text of video presentation.)

(People chanting: ``Hang Mike Pence.'')

By 2:15 p.m., the crowd was chanting in unison ``Hang Mike Pence''
outside the very building he had been evacuated from with his family.
Now, even if President Trump didn't know that his inflammatory
remarks about his Vice President would result in chants of ``Hang Mike
Pence,'' by 2:15 p.m., he surely knew. The attack was all over
television. They were doing this out in the open. This was a Vice
President whose life, whose family's life, was being threatened by
people whom the President had summoned to the Capitol. And what did
President Trump do in response? Did he stop? Did he tell his base: No,
don't attack my Vice President. Even when President Trump knew what his
words were causing, he didn't do any of those things to stop the crowd.
In fact, he did the opposite. He fueled the fire.
At 2:24 p.m., he tweeted:

Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have
been done to protect our country and our Constitution. . . .
USA demands the truth.

Over an hour and a half into the attack, and this is what he tweeted.
And he still, even at this point, did not acknowledge the attack on the
Capitol, let alone condemn it. Instead, he further incites the mob
against his own Vice President, whose life was being threatened.
Well, some of you may say: Well, who was paying attention anyway?
Well, that mob was paying attention.
(Text of video presentation.)

Unidentified Speaker. Mike Pence didn't have the courage to
do what should have been done to protect our country and our
Constitution, giving States a chance to certify or correct a
set of facts, not (inaudible) defraud ones or inaccurate
ones, which they were asked to previously certify. U.S.
demands the truth.
Unidentified Speaker. Mike Pence, anarchist. Mike Pence,
anarchist.
Unidentified Speaker. (Inaudible.) Can I speak to Pelosi?
Yeah, we're coming, bitch. Oh, Mike Pence, we're coming for
you, too, fucking traitor.
Unidentified Speaker. Donald J. Trump better (inaudible).
Unidentified Speaker. Full house.
Unidentified Speaker. (Inaudible) Mike Pence let us down.
Mike Pence let us down, people. If you want to get something
done, you are going to have to do it yourself.

The insurgents amplified President Trump's tweet attacking the Vice
President with a bullhorn. They were paying attention, and they also
followed instructions. In fact, the insurgents were at one point, as
you saw, 60 feet away from the Vice President and the Vice President's
family. Some of these insurgents were heard saying ``that they hoped to
find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a
Capitol Hill tree as a traitor,'' and then they erected a gallows with
a noose.
This is what Donald Trump incited. Please take a close look at that
picture. It hearkens back to our Nation's worst history of lynching.
A President's words have the power to move people to action, and
these were the results.
And why did the President incite such rage against the Vice
President? He was fulfilling his constitutional duty, as we all were
that day. Vice Presidents in this country have been carrying out this
constitutional duty--overseeing the certification of election results--
without incident, without contest, without a word, for the entirety of
our Nation. It is part of our peaceful transition of power in the
United States.
The Vice President said he reviewed the Constitution and he could not
block certification, as President Trump wanted him and was pressuring
him to do. He told the President in a letter that morning, a few hours
before President Trump's tweet:

[I will] approach this moment with [a] sense of duty and an
open mind, setting politics and personal interests aside, and
do [my] part to faithfully discharge our duties under the
Constitution. I also pray that we will do so with humility
and faith.

And the President's response to that statement was to attack Mike
Pence while he was with his family under the threat of a violent mob.
The Vice President was following his faith, his duty, and his oath to
our Nation.
The Vice President and I don't agree on too much in politics, but he
is a man who upholds his oath, his faith, his duty, and most of all
upholds the Constitution. And Mike Pence is not a traitor to this
country. He is a patriot. And he and his family, who was with him that
day, didn't deserve this, didn't deserve a President unleashing a mob
on them, especially because he was just doing his job.
As this was unfolding and the crowd grew more violent, the President,
of course, was not alone at the White House, and the people closest to
him--his family and advisers--who saw this unfolding in realtime,
begged him, implored him to stop the attack.
An aide to Mark Meadows, the President's Chief of Staff, urged his
boss to go see the President, saying: ``They are going to kill
people.''
``They are going to kill people.'' That is what those around
President Trump feared, and still nothing. It wasn't until 2:38 p.m.,
nearly 2 hours after the start of the siege, that Donald Trump even
acknowledged the attack. And when he finally did acknowledge the
attack, here is what he said.
On the right you will see what had been happening prior to that tweet
and as he sent the tweet, and on the left you will see exactly what he
tweeted.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. I'm going to stop you there for just
one moment because we do have some breaking news. We want to
bring in congressional correspondent Chad Pergram as this is
all developing right now. Chad, I understand the Capitol is
now on lockdown?
Mr. Pergram. They're definitely fired up. The chant, by the
way, I heard the most today was ``fight for Trump,'' and
that's clearly what many of them feel they're doing.
Unidentified Speaker. Hold the line.
(People singing: ``O, the land of the free.'')

That is what our President saw unfolding in realtime, broadcast all
over television, and this is what he tweeted at 2:38 p.m.:

Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They
are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!

Much has been made of the fact that in this tweet he says, ``Stay
peaceful.'' Senators, ``Stay peaceful''? Think about that for a second.
These folks were not peaceful. They were breaking windows, pushing
through law enforcement officers, waving the flag as they invaded this
Capitol Building. This was a violent, armed attack.
``Stay peaceful''? How about: Stop the attack. Stop the violence.
``Stay peaceful''? How about you say: Immediately leave. Stop.
And he said: ``Please support our Law Enforcement.'' How about he
actually support our law enforcement by telling these insurgents to
leave the Capitol immediately, which he never did. He didn't because,
the truth is, he didn't want it to stop. He wanted them to stay and to
stop the certification. And his failure had grave and deadly
consequences.
By 2:45 p.m., the warnings were tragically proven correct. Ashli
Babbitt was shot by an officer as she tried to break through a glass
door to reach the Speaker's Lobby.
At this point, the pleas to Donald Trump, publicly and privately,
grew even more desperate. At 2:54 p.m., Alyssa Farah, a former
strategic communications director, begged the President:

[[Page S642]]

Condemn this now. You are the only one they will listen to.
For our country!

Mick Mulvaney, the President's former Chief of Staff, his right-hand
man at one point, tweeted at 3:01:

The President's tweet is not enough. He can stop this now
and needs to do exactly that. Tell these folks to go home.
He can stop this now. Tell these folks to go home.

At 3:06 p.m., Representative McCarthy appeared on FOX News. Here is
what he said.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Mr. McCARTHY. I could not be sadder or more disappointed
with the way our country looks at this very moment. People
are getting hurt. Anyone involved in this, if you're hearing
me, hear me very loud and clear: This is not the American
way.

He is saying on FOX News, which the President watches: This is not
the American way. Stop the attack.
Representative Gallagher, at 3:11 p.m., while secured in his own
office, posted a video to Twitter.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Mr. GALLAGHER. Mr. President, you have got to stop this.
You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off.

And then, when the President didn't answer his pleas on Twitter,
Representative Gallagher went on live television.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Mr. GALLAGHER. I mean, this is insane. I mean--I--I have
not seen anything like this since I deployed to Iraq in 2007
and 2008. I mean, this is America, and this is what is
happening right now. We need--the President needs to call it
off. Like, call it off. Call it off.

Representative Gallagher, you see there, said he had not seen
anything like this since he was deployed in Iraq.
The message around the President was clear, from everyone: You need
to call this off. Stop it.
But does he? No. His next tweet was not until about 3:13 p.m. Once
again, it is important to consider what was happening between Donald
Trump's 2:38 p.m. tweet and his next tweet at 3:13 p.m.
You will see footage from the attack during that time on the right
and Donald Trump's tweet on the left.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Unidentified Speaker. We've been informed that protesters
have penetrated the Capitol.
Unidentified Speaker. This is my fucking building.
Unidentified Speaker. I tell ya, the sentiment in the
streets is really getting to a different level. This is
spinning out of control. This is turning violent. This is
getting dangerous.
Unidentified Speaker. Stand up for America.
Unidentified Speaker. Don't touch me
Unidentified Speaker. Don't get in his way.
Unidentified Speaker. Get the fuck out of here.

This isn't 10 minutes into the insurrection. This isn't just after
his speech earlier that day. That is what our Commander in Chief saw
happening, and that was his response.
You will notice one of the things he says to his mob, to these
insurrectionists, rather than to stop or to leave, was to say thank
you. Thank you. Thank you for what? Thank you for shattering the
windows and destroying property? Thank you for injuring more than 140
police officers? Thank you for putting in danger all of our lives and
the lives of our families?
How about, instead of ``thank you,'' Donald Trump, on that day, acted
like our Commander in Chief and stopped this, as only he could, and
told those people to leave.
Here is what former Governor Chris Christie, his very good friend,
said after that tweet.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Mr. Christie. It's pretty simple. The President caused this
protest to occur. He is the only one who can make it stop.
What the President said is not good enough. The President has
to come out and tell his supporters to leave the Capitol
grounds and to allow the Congress to do their business
peacefully, and anything short of that is an abrogation of
his responsibility.

He is right. Chris Christie is right. We know how Donald Trump acts
on Twitter and otherwise when he has a message to convey. In fact, I
asked you to remember those tweets earlier this morning when he yelled
on Twitter: ``STOP THE COUNT.''
When he wanted to incite his supporters to show up on January 6,
President Trump tweeted 16 times between midnight on January 5 and his
noon rally/speech the next day--16 times to get them to do something he
wanted. And his message in those 16 times was clear: ``Fight.'' ``Stay
strong.'' ``Be strong.''
But when the violence started, he never once said the one thing
everyone around him was begging him to say: Stop the attack. He refused
to stop it. And as Governor Christie and Representative Kinzinger and
others made clear, only Donald Trump could have stopped that attack.
(Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

Mr. KINZINGER. You know, a guy who knows how to tweet very
aggressively on Twitter, you know, puts out one of the
weakest statements on one of the saddest days in American
history because his ego won't let him admit defeat.

He was not just our Commander in Chief. He had incited the attack.
The insurgents were following his commands, as we saw when they read
aloud the tweet attacking the Vice President. They confirmed this
during the attack too.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
Senators, ask yourselves this: How easy would it have been for the
President to give a simple command, a simple instruction, just telling
them: Stop. Leave.
This was a dereliction of duty, plain and simple, and it would have
been for any President who had done that. And that brings me to my next
point. You heard from my colleagues that when planning this attack, the
insurgents predicted that Donald Trump would command the National Guard
to help them.
There is a lot that we don't know yet about what happened that day,
but here is what we do know: Donald Trump did not send help to these
officers who were badly outnumbered, overwhelmed, and being beaten
down. Two hours into the insurrection, by 3 p.m., President Trump had
not deployed the National Guard or any other law enforcement to help,
despite multiple pleas to do so.
President Donald Trump was at the time our Commander in Chief of the
United States of America. He took a solemn oath to preserve, protect,
and defend this country, and he failed to uphold that oath. In fact,
there is no indication that President Trump ever made a call to have
the Guard deployed or had anything to do with the Guard being deployed
when it ultimately was.
Shortly after 3:04 p.m., the Acting Defense Secretary announced that
the Guard had been activated and listed the people he spoke with prior
to this activation, including Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker
Pelosi, Leader McConnell, Senator Schumer, and Representative
Hoyer. But that list did not include the President. This omission of
his name was reportedly not accidental. According to reports, ``Trump
initially rebuffed requests to mobilize the National Guard and required
interference by other officials,'' including his own White House
Counsel. And later, ``as a mob of Trump supporters breached police
barricades and seized the Capitol,'' Trump reportedly was ``disengaged
in discussions with Pentagon leaders about deploying the National Guard
to aid the overwhelmed U.S. Capitol Police.'' President Trump was
reportedly ``completely, totally out of it. He made no attempt to reach
[the National Guard.]'' And it was Vice President Pence, still under
threat for his life, who reportedly spoke to the Guard.

President Trump's conduct confirms this too. At no point on January 6
did Donald Trump even reference the National Guard. The only thing that
we heard connecting the President to the Guard was from his Press
Secretary, who tweeted about the Guard being deployed at the
President's direction over half an hour later, at 3:36 p.m.
We have seen what Donald Trump does when he tries to take credit for
something, and yet, even when the National Guard was finally deployed,
he didn't even acknowledge it. In fact, he didn't say a word about the
National Guard the entire day. Think about that: the bloodiest attack
we have seen on our Capitol since 1812 and our President couldn't be
bothered to even mention that help was on its way.
These insurgents had been attacking our government for over 4 hours
by that point. And we may have been the

[[Page S643]]

target, but it was the brave men and women who protect our Capitol who
were out there combating thousands of armed insurgents in a fight for
their lives, and that is who Donald Trump left entirely unprotected.
(Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
This is hard to watch, but I think it is important to understand what
the Capitol Police were facing, how severely they were outnumbered
while our Commander in Chief, whose job it was to protect and defend
them, was just watching, doing nothing for hours, refusing to send
help. If he wanted to protect these officers, if he cared about their
safety, as he tweeted about, he would have told his supporters to
leave. He would have sent help right away.
One brave officer was killed. Others took their lives after the
attack. More than 140 police officers were injured, including cracked
ribs, smashed spinal discs. One officer will lose an eye. Another was
stabbed with a metal fence stake. They were completely and violently
overwhelmed by a mob and needed help, and our Commander in Chief,
President Trump, refused to send it.
Senators, you have seen all the evidence so far, and this is clear:
On January 6, President Trump left everyone in this Capitol for dead.
For the next hour after President Trump's 3 p.m. tweet, he still did
nothing. Not until 4:17 p.m., over 3\1/2\ hours after the violence
started, did our President send a message finally asking the insurgents
to go home.
On the right, you will see what happened that day in the hours
leading up to his prerecorded video. On the left, you will see his
message. Let's watch.
(Text of video presentation.)

President TRUMP. 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. We'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.

This is the first time our Commander in Chief spoke publicly at all
since the attack began, over 3\1/2\ hours after it started, and these
are the entirety of the words the President spoke out loud to the
American people or to the attackers that entire day.
Nowhere in that video, not once did he say: I condemn this
insurrection. I condemn what you did today.
Nowhere did he say: I am sending help immediately. Stop this.
Here is what he said instead:

I know your pain, I know you're hurt. We had an election
that was stolen.

Even after all the things we witnessed, even after all of that
carnage, he goes out and tells the same big lie, the same big lie that
enraged and incited the attack. He repeated this while the attack was
ongoing and while we were still under threat.
And here is what else he said:

Go home in peace.
We love you, you're very special.

Senators, you were here. You saw this with your own eyes. You faced
that danger. And when President Trump had an opportunity to confront
them as the leader of us all, as our Commander in Chief, what did he
tell them?

We love you, you're very special.

This was not a condemnation; this was a message of consolation, of
support, of praise. And if there is any doubt that his supporters,
these insurgents, took this as a message of support and praise, watch
for yourselves.
(Text of video presentation.)

Mr. Angeli. Donald Trump asked everybody to go home. He
just said--he just put out a tweet. It is a minute long. He
asked everybody to go home.
Unidentified Speaker. Why do you think so?
Mr. Angeli. Because we won the fucking day. We fucking won.
Unidentified Speaker. How did we win?
Mr. Angeli. Well, we won by sending a message to the
Senators and th Congressmen, we won by sending a message to
Pence, OK, that if they don't do as--as it is their oath
do, if they don't uphold the Constitution, then we will
remove them from office, one way or another.

I suspect you recognize that man. You will hear him say that ``we won
the day.'' Who won the day? We know that at least five people lost
their lives that day. The House and the Senate were in life-threatening
danger, and so was the Vice President, and think of everyone else here
as well. Who won on January 6? That is not a win for America, but it is
a win for Donald Trump unless we hold him accountable.
Now, a little over an hour after that video, the brave members of law
enforcement secured the Capitol, and we as a Congress got ready to
continue certifying the results of our free and fair election.
A half hour after that, President Trump issued another tweet. In case
there was any doubt as to whether he was happy with the people who did
this, as to whether he had incited this, he commemorated what happened
on January 6.
At 6:01 p.m. on January 6, he tweeted:

Ending with:

Remember this day forever!

My colleague Manager Cicilline started with this tweet because this
tweet shows exactly how Donald Trump felt about what happened on
January 6. ``These are the things . . . that happen.'' He is saying
this was foreseeable. He is saying: I told you this was going to happen
if you certified the election for anyone else, and you got what you
deserved for trying to take my power away.

[G]reat patriots. . . . Go home with love & in peace.
Remember this day forever!

He is saying to them: You did good. He is not regretful. He is not
grieving. He is not sad. He is not angry about the attack. He is
celebrating it. He is commemorating it.
This is the entirety of what President Trump said to the public once
the attack began--five tweets and a prerecorded video. On the day of
the most bloody insurrection we faced in generations, our Commander in
Chief, who is known for sending 108 tweets in a normal day, sent 5
tweets and a prerecorded video. That is the entirety of President
Trump's public statements from when the attack began until he went to
bed on January 6. That is all he did despite all the people we know who
begged him to preserve, protect, and defend. That was our Commander in
Chief's response.
He began the day with ``Our country has had enough, we will not take
it anymore, and that's what this is all about,'' and he ended the
attack with letting us know that we got what he forewarned that
morning.
We will, of course, each of us, remember that day forever, but not in
the way that President Trump intended, not because of the actions of
these violent, unpatriotic insurrectionists. I will remember that day
forever because despite President Trump's vicious attempts throughout
the day to encourage the siege and block the certification, he failed.
At 8:06 p.m., the Senate gaveled into session, and the counting of the
electoral votes continued. About an hour later, the House followed
suit. And close to 4 a.m., after spending a significant part of the day
evacuated or on the floor or hiding, this great body fulfilled the will
of the people and certified the electoral college vote.
And I am proud to be part of Congress. I am proud that we ensured
that the will of the American people finally prevailed on that day. And
I am proud that I and everyone in this room abided by our oath of
office even if the President didn't abide by his.
President Trump, too, took an oath as President. He swore on a Bible
to preserve, protect, and defend. And who among us can honestly say
they believe that he upheld that oath? Who among us will let his utter
dereliction of duty stand?
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Mr. President, the managers are prepared to
recess for the evening and to finish our opening statement tomorrow.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is----
Mr. LEE. Pursuant to impeachment rule XVI, I make a motion.
Statements were attributed to me moments ago by

[[Page S644]]

the House impeachment managers, statements relating to the content of
conversations between--a phone call involving President Trump and
Senator Tuberville--were not made by me, they are not accurate, and
they are contrary to fact. I move, pursuant to rule XVI, that they be
stricken from the record.
UNIDENTIFIED SENATOR. Second.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to S. Res. 47, section 4,
parties' presentations are not limited to the record provided for in
section 1 of that resolution.
Mr. LEE. I appeal the ruling of the Chair.
Mr. PAUL. I second.
I ask for the yeas and nays.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, we might as well hear clearly what the
ruling of the Chair was, so if you would repeat that, sir.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Of course, I will. And pursuant to S. Res.
47, section 4, the party's presentations are not limited to the record
provided for in section 1 of that resolution.
The Senator from Utah has appealed that ruling; is that correct?
Mr. LEE. Yes, I have.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The yeas and nays have been requested.
Is there a sufficient second?
Mr. WICKER. What is the question? Is it, Shall the ruling of the
Chair be sustained? Is that the question?
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Yes.
Mr. LEE. What may I ask is the ruling of the Chair? My point is not
whether it is appropriate to make characterizations; my point was to
strike them because they were false.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is, whether the
interpretation that S. Res. 47, section 4 applies is correct; that the
party's presentations are not limited to the record provided in section
1 of that resolution.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, that is not my motion. You have ruled on a
motion--you ruled on something that was not what I moved. What I asked
was, statements were attributed to me, repeatedly, as to which I have
personal knowledge because I am the source. They are not true. I never
made those statements. I ask that they be stricken. This has nothing to
do with whether or not they are based on depositions, which they are
not. It is simply based on the fact that I am the witness. I am the
only witness. Those statements are not true, and I ask that you strike
them.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The yeas and nays were asked for. The yeas
and nays are requested.
Mr. MANCHIN. Please let him explain, Mr. President. Why was it false?
What was false about it?
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. It is not in order--under S. Res. 47,
section 4, the party's presentation is not limited to the record
provided for in section 1 of the resolution, and that has been
appealed.
The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Point of clarification.
What is the question?
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum while we work this
out.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LEE. I ask that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, we need order.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate will be in order.
Mr. LEE. I ask unanimous consent to vitiate the appeal--the request
that I made.
I withdraw the request for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection.
Mr. SCHUMER. I withdraw the quorum call and call on the manager, Mr.
Raskin, for a brief statement.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. Schumer.
The impeachment manager, Mr. Cicilline, correctly and accurately
quoted a newspaper account, which the distinguished Senator has taken
objection to, so we are happy to withdraw it.
Mr. LEE. Because it is not true.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. On the grounds it is not true, and we are----
Mr. LEE. Castro repeated it too.
Mr. Manager RASKIN. We are going to withdraw it this evening without
any prejudice for the ability to resubmit it, if possible. This is much
ado about nothing because it is not critical in our case.
Mr. LEE. You are not the one being cited as a witness, sir.
Mr. SCHUMER. So the managers' issue stands. Mr. Lee has withdrawn his
request, and we may relitigate it tomorrow if we have to.

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