Pence’s Secret Service Agents Feared for Their Lives on Jan. 6

REP. ELAINE LURIA:Although President Trump was aware there was an ongoing riot, he didn’t immediately take any action to end the lawlessness. Instead, he called Rudy Giuliani once more at 2:03. This call lasted for eight minutes. The Capitol was broken into by rioters at 2:13. One of the Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy, Dominic Pezzola, used an officer’s shield to smash a window, and rioters flooded into the building.

RIOTER 1: He’s breaking the window!

RIOTER 2: Get in! Get in!

RIOTER 3: Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!

RIOTER 4: Let’s go! Come on! Come to the Capitol

REP. ELAINE LURIA:The Secret Service kept Vice President Pence in his room right next to the Senate chamber for 13 mins while they cleared a path to a safe location. Listen to some radio traffic and you will see what the protesters were seeing as they moved closer to the vice president’s home.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 1: Halt! Hold! They’ve entered the building! Hold.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 2:Get the door locked.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3: If we’re moving, we need to move now.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 1: Copy.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3: If we lose any more time, we may have — we may lose the ability to — to leave. So, if we’re going to leave we need to do it now.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 1: They’ve gained access to the second floor. And I’ve got public about five feet from me down here below.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3: OK, copy. They are now moving in on the second floor. We might want to think about moving out and leaving immediately. Copy?

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 2:Were we able to meet the people as we made our way?

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3: Repeat?

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 2: … encounter any individuals if we made our way to the — to the — [bleep]

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 1:There are six officers between me and the people that are five to ten yards away.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3:Keep your eyes open. I’m going down to evaluate.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 2: Go ahead.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3:If we move quickly, we have a good shot. We’ve got smoke downstairs. Stand by. Do the protesters set unidentified smoke downstairs?

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 2:Is this a compromised route?

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3: We have the — [bleep] — is secure. We will ignore some protesters being contained. It is unknown what kind of smoke there is. Copy?

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 2: Clear, we’re coming out now. All right? All right?

REP. ELAINE LURIA: The president’s National Security Council staff was listening to these developments and tracking them in real time. On the screen, you can see excerpts from the chat logs among the national — among the president’s national council — National Security Council staff.

The staff discovered that the rioters were breaking into the Capitol’s windows at 2:13. Three minutes later, the staff said the vice president was “being pulled,” which meant agents evacuated him from the Senate floor. At 2:24, the staff noted that the Secret Service agents at the Capitol did not, quote, “sound good right now.”

You heard earlier from a security officer who had been working at the White House complex since January 6th. He had access to relevant information and was responsible for reporting to national security officials. We asked this person: What was meant by the comment that the Secret Service agents did not, quote, “sound good right now”? In the following clip of that testimony, which has been modified to protect the individual’s identity, the professional discusses what they heard from listening to the incoming radio traffic that day.

INVESTIGATOR: OK. That last entry entry on this page is: “Service at the capitol does not sound good right now.”

SECURITY OFFICIAL: Correct.

INVESTIGATOR:What does that actually mean?

SECURITY OFFICIAL:Members of the VP Detail began to fear for their lives at this point. There were a lot of — there was a lot of yelling, a lot of — a lot of very personal calls over the radio. It was very disturbing. I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth. It was getting — for whatever the reason was on the ground, the VP detail thought that this was about to get very ugly.

INVESTIGATOR:Did you hear it on the radio?

SECURITY OFFICIAL: Correct.

INVESTIGATOR: OK. What was the response by the agents who — Secret Service agents who were there?

SECURITY OFFICIAL: Everybody kept saying — you know, at that point it was just reassurances, or I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming. But it was chaos in there again. They were just shouting.

INVESTIGATOR: Obviously, you’ve conveyed that’s disturbing, but what — what prompted you to put it into an entry as it states there, “Service at the capitol” —

SECURITY OFFICIAL:They were running out and getting nervous. It seems like we were very close to having to resort to lethal options or worse. Like, at that point, I don’t know. Is the VP compromised Is the detail compromised? Like, I don’t know. Like, we didn’t have visibility. But it doesn’t — if they’re screaming and saying things like say goodbye to the family, like, the floor needs to know this is going to a whole ’nother level soon.

REP. ELAINE LURIA: As this next video shows, the rioters’ anger was focused primarily on Vice President Mike Pence.

JANET BUHLER: This woman comes up to the side of us, and she says, “Pence folded.” So, it was kind of like, OK, well, in my mind, I was thinking, “Well, that’s it.” You know? Well, my son-in-law looks at me, and he says, “I want to go in.”

INTERVIEWER:What percentage of the crowd goes to the Capitol?

JESSICA WATKINS:One hundred percent. It has — it has spread like wildfire that Pence has betrayed us, and everybody is marching on the Capitol, all million of us. It’s insane.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 1:Mike Pence will not stand up for Donald Trump Mike Pence, traitor!

TRUMP SUPPORTER 2: Traitor!

TRUMP SUPPORTER 3: Everybody knows that Mike Pence has screwed us, in case you haven’t heard yet.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 4:What happened? What happened?

TRUMP SUPPORTER 3:I keep hearing Mike Pence has screwed me. That’s the word. I keep hearing that Mike Pence has screwed me.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 5: We’ll hang him! Hang him!

INVESTIGATOR:Did you see people getting angry as you walked to the Capitol

STEPHEN AYRES: Yeah, a lot of people — a lot of people seemed like they were very upset.

INVESTIGATOR:If you have any memories, please tell us what they were saying.

STEPHEN AYRES: Oh, they were saying all types — you know, people were screaming all types of stuff. They were mad at Vice President Pence for accepting the electorals. I mean, it was — I mean, it was a lot of — if you could think it up, that’s — you were hearing it.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 6: I believed that Vice President Pence was going to certify the electoral votes and — or not certify them, but I guess that’s just changed. Correct? And it’s a very big disappointment. I believe there are hundreds of thousands of people here who are very disappointed.

REP. ELAINE LURIA:Trump didn’t try to console his thousands of dissatisfied supporters. Donald Trump sent his 2 :24 tweet at the exact same time violence was getting out of control. The president said, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” Despite knowing the Capitol had been breached and the mob was in the building, President Trump called Mike Pence a coward and placed all the blame on him for not stopping the certification. He put a target on his own vice president’s back.

Ms. Matthews and Mr. Pottinger, when we asked about your reactions to the 2:24 tweet in live time, you both used the exact same imagery to describe it. President Trump was adding fuel the fire. After seeing this tweet, Mr. Pottinger, it was clear that you decided to resign. Please tell us why.

MATTHEW POTTINGER: Yes. So, that was pretty soon after I had — or, shortly before I had gotten back to the White House. I had traveled from another location. I saw for the first times the images on TV that showed the chaos unfolding at Capitol. One of my aides gave me a piece of paper with the tweet you just read. It was very disturbing to me and I read it. It was disturbing and worrying to see the president attacking Vice President Pence for fulfilling his constitutional duty. I felt that the tweet was the opposite of what was needed at the time, which was a deescalation. And that’s why I had said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured on the fire. That was the moment I decided to resign and that this would be my last day at White House. I simply didn’t want to be associated with the events that were unfolding on the Capitol.

REP. ELAINE LURIA:Thank you. And, Ms. Matthews, what was your reaction to the president’s tweet about Vice President Pence?

SARAH MATTHEWS:It was clear that the situation at Capitol was violent and rapidly escalating, so I thought that the tweet regarding the vice president was the best thing for that moment. I was thinking that he was wrong to tweet this. He was basically giving permission to these people to do whatever they wanted and enter the Capitol. And he shouldn’t have been doing that. He should have been telling them to go home, to leave, and to denounce the violence he was witnessing.

And I’m someone who has worked with him. I was part of the campaign, and traveled all over the country with him to attend many rallies. And I’ve seen the impact that his words have on his supporters. They latch on to every word and tweet he posts. So, I believe that he was just trying to add fuel to the fire by tweeting the message about Mike Pence.

REP. ELAINE LURIA:As you can see, the vice-president had to be evacuated twice more to safety at 2:26. He was also within 40 feet from the rioters. The attack escalated rapidly right after the tweet.

RIOTER 1:Get up! Get up!

RIOTER 2: Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

REP. ELAINE LURIA:What did President Trump do during this chaos? He called senators again to delay the electoral count. While the vice-president was being evacuated from Senate, President Trump called Senator Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville is one of Trump’s strongest supporters. Later, Senator Tuberville said that he had ended the call to allow him to evacuate the Senate chamber. Let’s listen.

SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE: He called — didn’t call my phone, called somebody else, and they handed it to me. And I basically told him — I said, “Mr. President, we’re not doing much work here right now because they just took our vice president out. And, matter of fact, I’m going to have to hang up on you. I’ve got to leave.”

REP. ELAINE LURIA:Senator Josh Hawley was also forced to flee. He had walked across the Capitol’s east front earlier in the afternoon, just before the joint session began. As you can see from this photo, he raised a fist in solidarity to the protesters gathered at the security gate. We spoke to a Capitol Police officer who was there at the time. She told us that Senator Hawley’s gesture riled up the crowd, and it bothered her greatly, because he was doing it in a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers. After the protesters he had helped to rile up stormed Capitol, Senator Hawley fled. You can see the results yourself.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER:Mr. Meadows was flooded with texts from Republican members in Congress, including former and current Trump administration officials, media personalities, and from his friends. Like President Trump’s staff, they knew President Trump had to speak publicly to get the mob to stop.

Let’s look at just a few of these text messages. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham said, “The president needs to tell [the] people in the Capitol to go home.” Former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney urged, “Mark: he needs to stop this, now.” Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade said, “Please get him on tv. Destroying everything [that] you guys have accomplished.”

When we interviewed White House counsel Pat Cipollone, he told us that he knew the president’s two tweets were not enough. Let’s listen to what he said.

INVESTIGATOR:I think the question is: Did your tweets prove enough? Your advice to the president was not mentioned.

PAT CIPOLLONE:No, I think more needs to be done. OK. I felt that a public statement was necessary.

REP. LIZ CHENEY:If you were to talk about staff members who think more should be done, or think the president needs to tell people to go home. Who would you choose?

PAT CIPOLLONE:I would put Pat Philbin and Eric Herschmann; overall Mark Meadows; Ivanka; once Jared got it, Jared, General Kellogg. I’m probably missing some, but those are — Kayleigh, I think, was — was there, but I don’t — Dan Scavino.

REP. LIZ CHENEY:Who on the staff didn’t want people to leave Capitol Hill?

PAT CIPOLLONE:What about the staff?

REP. LIZ CHENEY:What about the White House?

PAT CIPOLLONE: I don’t — I can’t think of anybody, you know, on that day who didn’t want people to get out of the — the Capitol, once the — you know, particularly once the violence started. No. I mean —

INVESTIGATOR:What about the president, though?

REP. LIZ CHENEY: Yeah.

PAT CIPOLLONE: She said “the staff.” So I answered.

REP. LIZ CHENEY: No, I said, “in the White House.”

PAT CIPOLLONE: Oh, I’m sorry. I apologize. I thought you said, “Who else on the staff?” I can’t reveal communications. But, obviously, I think, you know — yeah.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER: Let’s pause on that last statement. While Pat Cipollone is careful about executive privilege there is no doubt about what he said. Most people wanted President Trump to direct the mob disperse. Trump refused.