Jan. 6 Committee Reveals More Lines Trump Removed from 'National Healing' Speech Day After Deadly Attack

According to an edited script for a Jan. 7 speech, Trump allegedly declined to say, “I am directing the Department of Justice to ensure all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”

Donald Trump. Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty

House investigators have revealed more of what former President Donald Trump left out of a speech delivered the day after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

On the evening of Jan. 7, 2021 — more than 24 hours after calling rioting supports "very special" and telling them, "We love you," but also to "go home" — then-President Trump gave another speech from the White House.

Last Thursday, Rep. Elaine Luria said during a televised hearing that the president was reluctant to give the second speech but was convinced to deliver the message by advisors who warned of "concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th Amendment or by impeachment."

Luria then showed video outtakes in which Trump refused to say, "This election is now over."

On Monday, she shared a new video, prefacing it with this assertion: "There were more things he was unwilling to say."

The video, which includes witness testimony gathered during the committee's ongoing investigation, shows a marked-up document labeled "Remarks on National Healing."

Trump's daughter and a former White House advisor, Ivanka Trump, tells the panel that the document "looks like a copy of a draft of the remarks for that day" and that the black lines crossing out some words and adding others "looks like my father's handwriting."

Had he followed the script shown in the video Luria posted on Twitter, Trump would have said, "I am directing the Department of Justice to ensure all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We must send a clear message — not with mercy but with JUSTICE. Legal consequences must be swift and firm."

Those lines, however, were crossed out in black pen.

Also edited out of the script were these lines: "I want to be very clear: you do not represent me. You do not represent our movement."

"You do not represent our country" was left in the script.

Mark Wilson/Getty

Trump also allegedly changed a line of the speech that said, "And if you broke the law, you belong in jail." According to the black pen edits, the script was changed to, "And if you broke the law, you will pay."

An earlier comment in the remarks, "Like all Americans, I am outraged and sickened by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem," was shortened to, "I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem."

Another Trump advisor, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, gave testimony about the Jan. 7 speech. "We felt like it was important to further call for de-escalation," he said, referring to the draft remarks prepared for the president.

Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the Jan. 6 committee in June, appeared in the new video and said that there was a "large concern of the 25th Amendment potentially being invoked," referring to the constitutional process in place to remove a president if he or she is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

Cassidy Hutchinson. Stefani Reynolds/getty

"The primary reason that I had heard, other than, you know, we did not do enough on the 6th, we need to get a stronger message out there to condemn this otherwise this will be your legacy," Hutchinson, a former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said in her testimony.

"The secondary reason to that was: think about what might happen in the final 15 days of your presidency if we don't do this," she continued. "There's already talks of invoking the 25th Amendment. You need this as cover."

Also in the video, an investigator asks Kushner why Trump apparently crossed out the line about "lawbreakers" being "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." The former president's son-in-law said, "I don't know."

By sharing more evidence this week after ending the summer series of eight televised hearings, the Jan. 6 committee backed up a statement by its vice chair, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who said Thursday there will be more hearings in September after investigators spend August "pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts."