January 6 committee airs new footage of congressional leaders at Fort McNair during Capitol insurrection
By Marshall Cohen
The Jan. 6 select committee aired previously unseen footage from Fort McNair, the DC-area Army base where congressional leaders took refuge during the insurrection and scrambled to respond to the unfolding crisis.
CNN has obtained additional footage from Fort McNair that wasn’t shown by the committee. The exclusive footage will air on CNN on Thursday night at 8 p.m. ET, during a special edition of “Anderson Cooper 360°.”
During Thursday’s hearing, committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said the footage shows how Trump administration officials and congressional leaders worked around then-President Donald Trump to put down the riot that he had incited.
“You’ll see how everyone involved was working actively to stop the violence, to get federal law enforcement deployed to the scene to put down the violence and secure the Capitol complex,” Raskin said. “All of them did what President Trump was not doing what he simply refused to do.”
The footage shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top officials working the phones and coordinating with Trump Cabinet members and other officials to attain the resources needed to quell the insurrection and secure the Capitol.
It also shows two phone calls between Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence, who took on an impromptu leadership role on January 6, coordinating the emergency response.
The footage was captured by Alexandra Pelosi, a documentary filmmaker and daughter of the Democratic speaker of the House. The filmmaker provided some of her footage to the January 6 select committee.
The new footage revealed how Schumer dressed down then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. During their heated phone call, Schumer implored Rosen to intervene directly with Trump, and tell Trump to call off the mob. During the call, Pelosi told Rosen that the pro-Trump rioters were “breaking the law… at the instigation of the President of the United States.”
“The concern that we have for personal safety transcends everything,” Pelosi told Rosen.
Pelosi is seen on the phone with then-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, discussing getting the state’s National Guard dispatched to the Capitol.
During the committee’s hearing Thursday the panel labeled the footage as showing lawmakers at an “undisclosed location.” It has been public knowledge since January 6, 2021, that senior congressional leaders from both parties took refuge at Fort McNair, an Army base in DC, while the Capitol was overrun.
The-CNN-Wire
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