The Jan. 6 House committee on Thursday revealed behind-the-scenes footage of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders desperately pleading for assistance and resources from the Trump administration during the Capitol riots.
These never-before-seen videos were among the more remarkable revelations contained within what may be the final meeting of the House panel investigating the insurrection attempt and former President Donald Trump’s role in inciting the violent attack.
Prior to the committee unveiling the footage—filmed by Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi—the members detailed Trump and his allies’ pre-planned plot to assert that the he’d won the 2020 presidential election on Election Day—even if he had clearly lost.
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At one point, for instance, the committee shared a memo written by Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton days before the election urging Trump to deliver a victory speech based solely on the first ballots counted.
“We had an election today—and I won,” Fitton’s email read. “The ballots counted by the Election Day deadline show the American people have bestowed on me the great honor of reelection to president of the United States.”
Just before the members voted to subpoena Trump, the committee aired a montage of clips featuring Pelosi, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and other top officials evacuating the Capitol chambers and taking shelter in a secure location.
After telling her colleagues that they needed to finish the electoral certification or the rioters “will have a complete victory,” Pelosi and Schumer were filmed ringing up several Trump administration figures begging them to not only send them help but also to get the then-president to call off his supporters.
“We have some senators who are still in their hideaways that need massive personnel now,” Schumer said to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. “Can you get the Maryland National Guard to come too?”
Pelosi, meanwhile, told Miller she was also going to reach out to the D.C. mayor. Additionally, the speaker called Virginia’s then-governor Ralph Northam to see if he could send assistance to the Capitol.
Eventually, Schumer and Pelosi got Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on the phone at 3:25 p.m., informing him of their safety concerns and the immediate harm members of Congress and their staff faced.
“Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility?” Schumer exclaimed. “A public statement that they should all leave!”
Republican leaders also joined in some of the calls to the Department of Defense alongside Pelosi and Schumer, calling for additional backup from nearby military bases.
Finally, the committee aired footage of a phone call between Pelosi and Vice-President Mike Pence discussing the need to certify the election by the end of the evening, adding that the hope was that they could limit the number of objections.
“I’m trying to figure out how we can get this job done today,” the speaker said. “We talked about it earlier. This happened earlier, and so we want to expedite this, and hopefully, they can confine it to just one complaint, Arizona, and then we could vote and that would be, you know, then just move forward with the rest of the states.”
Recapping her conversation with Pence to her fellow colleagues, Pelosi complained about the “poo-poo that [the rioters] are making all over” the Capitol, “figuratively and literally.”
In a follow-up call with Pelosi at 5:59 p.m., Pence told the speaker that she would soon receive a call from the sergeant-at-arms letting her know that both the House and Senate would be able to reconvene and continue the certification process.
