'I Don't Want to Say the Election's Over': Unseen Footage of Trump on Jan. 6 Revealed at Hearing

The House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 played outtakes of former President Donald Trump’s speeches recorded at the White House on Jan. 6 and Jan. 7, 2021

The House Select Committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, revealed at Thursday's primetime hearing unseen raw footage of President Donald Trump on the day of, and day after, the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump recorded and released a video message from the White House Rose Garden while the riot was underway on Capitol Hill, urging the mob to disperse and telling his supporters, "We love you. You're very special."

Much of Thursday's hearing was dedicated to presenting evidence of what Trump did and didn't do in the 187 minutes before he finally called off the attack, after hours of pleas from his inner circle and others at the Capitol and elsewhere to do so.

"I know your pain, I know you're hurt," Trump said in the footage that was eventually released. "But you have to go home now, we have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order."

The next day he recorded another video from inside the White House. Outtakes of both videos were shown during the hearing on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump walks down the West Wing Colonnade to speak to the American Legion Boys Nation and the American Legion Auxiliary Girls Nation in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, July 26, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty

"The staff that remained at the White House on Jan. 7 knew the president needed to address the nation again and they had a speech prepared for him that morning. But he refused for hours to give it," Rep. Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat and former Navy officer who sits on the Jan. 6 panel, said at Thursday's hearing.

Luria said the committee heard testimony that Trump was finally convinced to deliver the message later in the evening of Jan. 7 by advisors who warned of "concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th Amendment or by impeachment."

House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building
Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty

The outtakes, Luria said, were taken more than 24 hours after the video filmed in the White House Rose Garden.

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After a few takes, Trump is seen saying, "This election is now over. Congress has certified the results," before stopping himself and saying on camera, "I don't want to say the election is over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election is over, okay?"

His daughter and former senior advisor, Ivanka Trump, can be heard off camera coaching the president on the precise words to say in the video.

In a later moment of footage, Trump stumbles over the word "yesterday" and asks for it to be taken out of the prepared remarks.

In another shown during the hearing, he smacks the presidential podium while repeating the line: "My only goal was to secure the integrity of the vote."

Thursday marked the last in a series of televised hearings the committee scheduled this summer.

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair, said there will be more hearings in September after investigators spend August "pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts."

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