The House committee investigating the Donald Trump-inciting riot at the Capitol dug up texts showing Fox News stars and at least one of Trump's interminable sons sent panicked texts urging Trump to call the whole thing off.
According to the Daily Beast, the committee revealed text messages from three different Fox News hosts and weaselling Donald Trump Jr., begging him to intervene. The ex-president barely lifted a finger to stop the rioting until it was nearly over and then issued a weak statement in which he called the participants very special. Everyone involved in the texts began to theorize about why Trump wasn't responsible.
He needs to condemn this shit immediately. The Capitol Police did a good job in their statement, but Jr. wrote that the statement wasn't enough.
I am pushing it hard. I agree.
The Oval Office address is needed, Jr. said. He has to lead. It has gotten out of hand and gone too far. This was not the end of it, with Rep. Liz Cheney stating that Jr. had text messaged again and again.
Three of Fox News's most prominent MAGA stans begged for Trump to stop in separate messages. Can he make a statement? People should leave the Capitol. The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This hurts all of us. His legacy is being destroyed.
One of the hosts of Fox a.m. show Fox & Friends wrote a letter asking for him to be on TV. Everything you have accomplished is being destroyed.
The first two hosts on the air acted as though the mob of MAGA hat-wearing conspiracy theorists and far-right whackos might have been infiltrated by anti-fascists who triggered the violence. When you have members of the Trump support organizations threatening to show up at the same time, there is a big split amongMAGA groups that have come to peacefully protest with whoever is behind this intrusion in, said Ingraham on air. On his radio show, he agreed with a caller who said that antiFA was probably to blame and that they might be wearing pro-Trump disguises. The president's supporters might have been rightfully agitated, as Kilmeade laid the groundwork to claim.
Four years of denying that their president won the election, four years of investigation, and 75 million people voting, I think this is the end of it all. They feel that they have not had their day in court.
Jr. may have been more concerned about keeping his dad in office, as at the rally preceding the violence, he threatened Republican lawmakers with retribution if they didn't stall the certification of Biden's victory. He said that federal authorities may have known about the violence and failed to stop it, but that is not true.
The materials concerning the riot were subpoenaed by the committee and handed over, but then he suddenly refused to cooperate, claiming that the material was covered by executive privilege, which upset his former boss. The New York Times reported that the committee unanimously voted to recommend the rest of the House vote to hold Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress. The speaker of the House could refer the matter to the U.S. attorney for prosecution or the sergeant-at-arms of the House could arrest him and drag him before the committee for punishment.
Contempt charges are more intended to get cooperation out of congressional witnesses than they are to get serious criminal penalties, but as a high-profile indictment of the person in question by the nation's governing body, they are supposed to be somewhat embarrassing. The committee is all but certain to recommend the House hold ex-Justice Department staffer Jeffrey Clark in contempt on Wednesday, after a full vote by the House.
George J. Terwilliger III told the Times that his client had never stopped cooperating but was only holding out for courts to confirm that the material wasn't protected by executive privilege. The communications should have been submitted to the National Archives under federal record-keeping laws even if they were protected.
The aide for Trump Jr. declined to speak to the Daily Beast. Fox News didn't return the Daily Beast's request for comment, but we will update in the unlikely event we hear back.
