According to newly released documents gathered by the House select committee investigating the Capitol Hill insurrection, a text exchange between Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff Julie Radford and White House aide Hope Hicks reveals their anger over then-President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, causing them professional harm.
On January 6, 2021, Hicks wrote to Radford, “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter.” And we all that didn’t have occupations arranged will be ceaselessly jobless. I’m so angry and hurt. Now, we all appear to be domestic terrorists.
Hicks continued, As a result, we were all unemployed. Like impenetrable. God, I’m so irrational.
Radford texted back, saying, “I know, like there isn’t a chance of finding a job.” She also said that Visa had sent her a “blow off email” and that she had already lost a job opportunity.
In addition to the committee’s comprehensive 845-page report, the new release is one of a steady stream of documents. The most recent instance occurs as the panel is wrapping up its work, and the House majority is scheduled to shift from Democrats to Republicans on Tuesday, the first day of the new Congress.
Hicks then says, “Alyssa looks like a genius” in the text messages, which seems to be a reference to Alyssa Farah Griffin quitting her job as a White House aide a month before the attack on the US Capitol.
Ad Feedback Hicks and Radford then talk about Jared Kushner and Karlie Kloss, the supermodel who tweeted that Ivanka Trump’s election response was anti-American.
Radford texted, “Unreal.”
The individuals with whom Trump spoke in the days leading up to January 6 are better depicted in the White House call logs.
The committee also made call logs from the days leading up to January 6, 2021, which provided a more complete picture of who the former president was speaking to as he and his allies planned for him to stay in office. This is the first time the committee has made call logs from the White House in their entirety.
The panel’s investigation relied heavily on the logs to construct a timeline of events. While the log for January 6 has a seven-hour hole, the board of trustees has taken extraordinary measures to fill in that piece of the course of events through witness interviews and different records.
Trump spoke with Vice President Mike Pence at the time, the day before the attack on the US Capitol. The switchboard operator left a note stating “that Senator Douglas Mastriano will be calling in for the Vice President” after Trump spoke with Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who contributed to Trump’s election lies in the state.
On January 5, Trump also spoke with a number of Congressmen, including Sens. Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House Minority, and Lindsey Graham. Trump and Missouri senator Josh Hawley tried calling each other a lot, but they couldn’t get through. Additionally, Trump had a conversation with John Eastman, the individual who assisted Trump in developing the phony elector scheme that day.
What transpired immediately following the infamous hour-long call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump requested Raffensperger to “find” votes for him to win the state, can be seen in the call log from January 2. After the call with Raffensperger was over, Trump had a zoom with Rudy Giuliani, his lawyer at the time, and then talked on the phone with Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, and Steve Bannon.
On January 3, Trump had numerous calls with previous Division of Equity official Jeffrey Clark and GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, as the previous President attempted and eventually neglected to introduce Clark as the acting head of DOJ. A flurry of calls with DOJ officials, including the acting Attorney General at the time, Jeffrey Rosen, and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, can be seen in the call logs.
Clark is listed as acting attorney general at 4:22 p.m. ET that day, whereas earlier in the day he was not.
In response to Trump’s claim that he would march on January 6, the Secret Service sent security to the Capitol.
According to newly released documents, the Secret Service also sent a security team to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, just a few minutes after Trump unexpectedly said he would join marchers heading there during his Ellipse speech.
Trump urged supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” with him to the Capitol around 1:10 p.m. Eastern Time. The House select committee obtained internal documents that show that the Secret Service Joint Operations Center Counter Surveillance Unit sent an email around 1:15 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) advising that Trump had stated “on LIVE TV that he plans head to the Capitol with the crowd,” though his name was withheld.
In the email, agents wrote, “Per the announcement of (redacted) to the Capitol, a response team is being dedicated to the Capitol.” The code name agents use to refer to the president is frequently redacted in internal communications that are made public.
The Secret Service’s scrambled response to that day’s chaos is revealed in fresh detail thanks to newly released documents. The email from the joint tasks place shows the organization raced to give greater security to the Legislative center as an immediate consequence of the previous president’s remarks.
According to documents released by the committee, Secret Service leadership was concerned about Trump’s sudden plan to visit the Capitol, and the head of his detail was informed that the idea was “not advisable.” They also describe how the agency had been warned about the Proud Boys’ violent intentions as early as December 27 and had encountered technical difficulties before confiscating dozens of weapons on January 6.
According to an email, agents were advised “not to rely” on the technology of multiple Secret Service units reporting technical issues. The Secret Service provided the committee with a timeline that shows that some Secret Service radios died during the midst of the chaos; however, it is unclear which protective teams were most affected.
The Secret Service seized hundreds of pepper spray cans, body armor, and weapons like knives and blunt weapons from the roughly 28,000 people who passed through the magnetometers on their way to the Ellipse, according to another document.
