Agents protecting then-Vice President Mike Pence on the day of the attack on Capitol Hill, January 6, 2021, feared for their lives and called families to say goodbye.
“Members of the vice president’s security team were beginning to fear for their own lives,” a White House security official, whose identity was not released, said at the eighth hearing of the congressional committee investigating the robbery. “There was a lot of yelling and a lot of personal phone calls, to say goodbye to families“.
Describing a chaotic situation, heard over radio communications, the National Security Council official said officers had come “very close” to using “lethal or worse options.”
The commission shared video and radio communications of agents trying to get Mike Pence out of harm’s way, showing the Difficulty finding clear paths. after protesters stormed the Capitol looking for the vice president.
At one point, Pence was only feet away from the intruders, who were facing police downstairs as officers communicated to try to identify an escape route.
It was Pence who eventually order the deployment of the army and the National Guard to regain control of the situation, as Gen. Mark Milley testified, in the face of then-President Donald Trump’s inaction.
Images were also shown of Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who this afternoon raised his fist in solidarity with the invaders but then had to flee when lawmakers were cornered in Congress.
“There is no safe place for these bastards to hide,” said one of the invaders through walkie talkie, in communications obtained by the commission. “This is what we trained for,” said another, at the news that lawmakers were on the run.
The eighth public hearing, which focused on Trump’s inaction for more than three hours during the heist, included corroborating testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Violence on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump ‘chose not to act’
Hutchinson, a former adviser to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified at the sixth public hearing that Donald Trump had a physical altercation with Secret Service agent when the latter refused to take him to the Capitol on January 6.
The veracity of the testimony was confirmed by Sergeant Mark Robinson, who was part of the motorized escort of the presidential car on the day of the attack.
Congresswoman Elaine Luria said the commission received confirmation from a second witness, a former White House official, who told a story similar to Hutchinson’s.
Trump’s anger at agent Robert Engel had been called into question by the former president’s allies when Cassidy Hutchinson testified in public.
After six weeks of high-profile hearings, the parliamentary commission investigating the Capitol attack will take a break and will return in September.
The vice president of the commission, Liz Cheney, said that the work is intensifying, receiving complaints, documentation and collaboration from witnesses.
“The dam has begun to give way,” said the Republican congresswoman, who because of her work on the Democratic-led commission is expected to lose the primary in August and see the end of her congressional career.
Source: Observadora
