Former President Donald Trump did not want to say the 2020 election was over, instead preferring to focus on Congress’s certification of the results, according to prepared remarks rehearsed a day after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump, who made claims of widespread election fraud despite assurances that the votes were secure, did not explain his reason for requesting the line being omitted from the speech, according to footage.
“This election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” the original statement read, according to a blooper reel played during the Jan. 6 committee’s hearing on Thursday.
187 MINUTES: SIX KEY MOMENTS FROM HOUSE JAN. 6 HEARING ON TRUMP’S TIMELINE
“I don’t want to say the election’s over,” Trump told aides in response. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election is over, OK?”
His daughter Ivanka Trump was heard coaching the then-president in the video’s background, offering alternatives for him to say. In the finalized version, Trump acknowledged Congress certified the results but did not say the election was over.
In other outtakes shown during the hearing, the president struggled with sections of his speech that sought to denounce some of his supporters, particularly those who breached the Capitol.
“’And to those who broke the law, you will pay. You do not represent our movement, you do not represent our country, and if you broke the law’ — can’t say that,” he interrupted himself. “I’m not going to. I already said, ‘You will pay.’”
The footage offers a rare glimpse into what Trump was doing in the hours and days after the Jan. 6 attack. The recorded statement was his first public address after he released video the day before telling supporters to “go home.”
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The Jan. 6 committee played the footage during its Thursday hearing focusing on the 187 minutes, a period of more than three hours, between the beginning of the attack at 1:10 p.m. and when the president finally released a video telling rioters to leave the Capitol at 4:17 p.m.
The committee presented evidence that Trump spent much of that time watching the scene unfold on television while declining to intervene, despite pleas from lawmakers and some of his own aides.
