Trump told Pence that certifying the election would be a “career killer,” Valet testified

President Donald J. Trump’s threat to his Vice President, Mike Pence, was clear and direct: If you defy my attempt to overturn the 2020 election by announcing the results, your future in Republican politics past.

“Mike, this is a political career killer if you do this,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Pence by phone on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, according to the White House aide who was with the president for most of the day. and told Congress that he had overheard the conversation.

The testimony of Mr. Trump’s valet, provided to the now-defunct House of Representatives committee in 2022 but not previously released publicly, offers a rare firsthand glimpse into the former president’s conduct in the hours before, during and after a crowd of his supporters. stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory.

On the clerk’s account, captured in a transcript obtained by The New York Times, an agitated Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to overturn the election and spent hours agonizing over Mr. Pence’s denial after Congress was engulfed in violence. When told that a civilian had been shot outside the House chamber during the mob attack, Mr. Trump seemed unconcerned.

“I just remember seeing it in front of him,” the clerk said of a note Trump received with news of the victim as he watched the riot unfold on television. “I don’t remember how it got there or anything. But there was no response.”

As unflattering as parts of the aide’s testimony to Mr. Trump were, he did not corroborate some of the more explicit and damning claims that witnesses before the Jan. 6 committee had made.

For example, the clerk said he did not recall hearing Mr. Trump use vulgar language in describing his view that Mr. Pence was a coward, or that he agreed with rioters who chanted that Mr. Pence would be hung up. And he recalled hearing the president ask whether he had contacted top officials about sending the National Guard to Capitol Hill — though there is no evidence he ever did so.

“Did you hear the president say that?” a House committee staff investigator asked the clerk on Jan. 6, inquiring about reports that Mr. Trump had called Mr. Pence a slur intended to refer to a wimp.

“I didn’t – no, sir,” replied the clerk.

Mr. Trump himself has not disputed that he used that language, and Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff testified that Mrs. Trump told her that Mr. Trump had had a “troubling” conversation with Mr. Pence and that the president had accused him of cowardice , using “the ‘p’ word.” The clerk also acknowledged that he was not always with the president and that he had left the Oval Office during part of Trump’s phone call with Pence.

At another point, the clerk was asked if he could recall “any comments the president or anyone around him had made regarding the chants: ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ ”

He responded that he remembered the chorus, “but I don’t remember any comments from the president or any of the staff.”

Mr. Trump has previously defended the rioters’ use of the chant, telling ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that “people were very angry” and calling that anger “common sense.”

House Republicans provided the transcript to The Times after obtaining it from the White House, which was reviewing and editing it along with a handful of others provided by the House committee. The copy reviewed by The Times is heavily redacted and refers to the clerk simply as “a White House employee.”

For more than a year since they gained control of the House of Representatives, Republicans have been scrutinizing the work of the Jan. 6 committee, looking for signs of bias. They have suggested that the panel did not release certain transcripts because they contradict some of the testimony of a prominent witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an assistant to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff. While much of her testimony has been corroborated, Ms. Hutchinson acknowledged that in some cases she relied on second- or third-hand accounts in her testimony before the panel.

“It took a lot of work to get this,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican who is leading the GOP investigation, said of the transcript of the clerk’s testimony and a series of others he obtained from the White House and the ministry had received. of Homeland Security.

Mr Loudermilk admitted there was “some testimony in there that may not be favorable to Trump”, but he added: “We’re putting it all out there, not doing what the select committee did, and putting out things that will happen. favorable on our side.”

However, in court filings, federal prosecutors who have charged Mr. Trump with crimes over his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election have said that some of the committee’s transcripts were subject to confidentiality agreements, and that they were sent to the White House and the secret service had been sent. Review and editing service before release. Federal prosecutors said they provided these “sensitive, non-public transcripts” to Mr. Trump and his legal team, This is evident from a lawsuit from last year.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chaired the House committee on Jan. 6, said nothing in the clerk’s report changes the essential facts of what his panel found about Mr. Trump’s role in calls from supporters to Washington to challenge the election results and do nothing. stop their attack on the Capitol.

“Despite Mr Loudermilk’s efforts to rewrite the violent history of January 6, the facts set out in the select committee’s final report remain undisputed – and nothing of substance was omitted or concealed,” he said. “Although the clerk did not witness everything that happened at the White House that day, the testimony confirms Trump’s indifference to the violence and his anger at Vice President Pence for fulfilling his duty under the Constitution.”

The clerk also shed more light on how Trump’s White House had fallen into dysfunction during his final weeks in office. He said Trump was often “frustrated,” “appalled” and “angry” with Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel who regularly served as a check on some of the former president’s more extreme impulses — so much even that the clerk asked aides to keep the lawyer away from the president during lunch so as not to upset him.

The clerk also confirmed Trump’s tendency to tear up documents and other materials given to him, which, according to the law governing presidential archives, deemed to be retained.

“That’s typically what he would do when he’s done with a document,” the clerk said of Mr. Trump. “But that was his cue that he was done reading and just threw it on the floor. He would tear up everything – tear up newspapers, tear up photos.”

The clerk also testified that on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump expressed interest in speaking with Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi about sending the National Guard to the Capitol — a move that has been a point of much debate, given the hours-long delay in the final arrival of the troops.

Mr Loudermilk said it was that aspect of the clerk’s story that caught his attention.

“That’s what struck me: ‘Okay, this is completely in contrast to what we’ve seen, and I’ve never seen this before.’ And so we started digging,” Mr. Loudermilk said.

But ultimately, Mr. Trump made no such call, General Milley told the House panel.

The clerk also testified about the contrast between the reaction of White House staffers and Mr. Trump as the riot was underway.

After returning from a speech to a raucous crowd at the Ellipse, Mr. Trump was told that “they are rioting in the Capitol,” the clerk recalled.

“And he said, ‘Oh, really?’ And then he said, ‘Okay, let’s go and see,’” and went to watch the violence on television.

The clerk spoke of a feeling of “disbelief” and then of panic that fell over the staff.

“It was like, ‘What are we going to do?’ He said officials were “running around freely – running from office to office and everywhere,” while Mr. Trump appeared calm.

But hours later, the president was still fretting about Mr. Pence.

“Me and him, I think by the end of the day he just said Mike had let him down,” the clerk said. “And that was it.”