Former President Donald Trump sent a tweet attacking Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021 after he was told by his then-chief of staff Mark Meadows there was violence breaking out at the Capitol, committee member Rep. Pete Aguilar, a Democrat from California, revealed Thursday.
At 2:24 p.m. ET, eleven minutes after rioters breached the Capitol building, according to the committee, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
According to Aguilar, the committee’s “investigation found that immediately after the President’s 2:24 p.m. ET tweet, the crowds both outside the Capitol and inside the Capitol surged.”
After the tweet, Aguilar said the mob was able to overwhelm police. Pence was evacuated at 2:26 p.m. ET — two minutes after Trump’s tweet — to a loading dock under the Senate plaza.
According to previous testimony given to the committee by Meadows’ aide Ben Williamson and White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, Meadows went to tell Trump about the violence at the Capitol before Trump sent the tweet targeting Pence.
“We had all talked about — at that point about how it was bad and, you know, the situation was getting out of hand,” Matthews said in video testimony played during the hearing. “We thought that the President needed to tweet something and tweet something immediately.”