The House Jan. 6 committee will show outtakes on Thursday from a video message then-President Donald Trump posted on Twitter the day after the riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to panel members.
The outtakes were recorded as part of the production for the Jan. 7, 2021, speech in which Trump conceded that a new administration would take power on Inauguration Day. The outtakes reportedly show Trump having difficulty with the taping of his concession speech, refusing to say the election results had been settled and attempting to refer to the rioters as “patriots.” The committee is expected to play the recording during its prime-time hearing on Thursday.
“The president displayed extreme difficulty in completing his remarks,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said of the outtakes on CNN on Wednesday.
“It’s extremely revealing how exactly he went about making those statements, and we’re going to let everybody see parts of that,” Raskin added.
INSPECTOR GENERAL HID VANISHING SECRET SERVICE TEXTS FROM CONGRESS: REPORT
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said on Wednesday that the outtakes “will be significant in terms of what the president was willing to say and what he wasn’t willing to say.”
According to reports, Trump went to great lengths to not accuse the rioters of any wrongdoing. However, in the speech that aired on Jan. 7, he called Jan. 6 a “heinous attack” and said that he was “outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Schiff told CNN on Wednesday that the outtakes will show “all of those who are urging him to say something, to do something to stop the violence. You’ll hear the terrible lack of a response from the president, and you’ll hear more about how he was ultimately prevailed upon to say something and what he was willing to say and what he wasn’t.”
The House Jan. 6 committee will conduct its public hearing on Thursday in prime time. It is expected to focus on the 187 minutes between when rioters stormed the Capitol Building and when he issued his first public response.
