During the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol in Washington, DC, then-President Donald Trump claimed his vice president, Mike Pence, "deserved" to be hanged, according to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who spoke at the first House select committee hearing on the mayhem.
"Over a series of hearings in the coming weeks, you will hear testimony, live and on video, from more than half a dozen former White House staff in the Trump administration, all of whom were in the West Wing of the White House on January 6,” Cheney said in her opening statement.
“You will hear testimony that ‘the president did not really want to put anything out’ calling off the riot or asking his supporters to leave. You will hear that President Trump was yelling and ‘really angry’ at advisers who told him he needed to be doing something more.”
Cheney went on to add that Trump's reaction to screams of "hang Mike Pence" from his supporters at the Capitol will also be revealed during the series of public hearings.
"Aware of the rioters' chants to ‘hang Mike Pence’, the president responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea’. Mike Pence ‘deserves it,’" the representative said.
The remark Cheney quoted elicited gasps, according to a reporter. She went on to say that the public will hear the evidence that the former president "refused for hours to do what his staff, his family, and many of his other advisers begged him to do: immediately instruct his supporters to stand down and evacuate the Capitol."
"Tonight, you will see never-before-seen footage of the brutal attack on our Capitol, an attack that unfolded while a few blocks away President Trump sat watching television in the dining room next to the Oval Office," she said.
Ivanka Trump: 'I Accepted' When Bill Barr Said 'There Was No Fraud'
In a piece of video evidence shared during Cheney's remarks, Ivanka Trump, the former president's daughter and White House adviser, reacted to then-Attorney General William Barr saying that the 2020 election was not stolen. Ivanka was asked about her reaction to Barr's statement by interviewers.
"It affected my perspective," Ivanka testified. "I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he said."
The video was the committee's first presentation of Ivanka's testimony, though more are planned.
In total, the committee will hold six sessions during which it will reveal Donald Trump's alleged plot to overturn the election, which eventually resulted in a violent insurgency aimed at preventing Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.
The committee's next hearing is scheduled to take place on June 13.