‘This made us all unemployable’: Trump White House aides respond to Jan. 6 in angry text exchange
A text exchange between Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff Julie Radford and White House aide Hope Hicks reveals their anger over then-President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, hurting them professionally, according to newly released documents collected by the House select committee investigating the Capitol Hill insurrection.
“In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter,” Hicks wrote to Radford on January 6, 2021. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.”
Hicks added: “This made us all unemployable. Like untouchable. God I’m so f***ing mad.”
Radford responded by texting, “I know, like there isn’t a chance of finding a job,” and indicating she already lost a job opportunity from Visa, which sent her a “blow off email.”
The new release is part of a steady stream of documents from the committee, complementing the release of its sweeping 845-page report. The latest comes as the panel winds down its work with the House majority set to change hands from Democrats to Republicans on Tuesday at the start of the new Congress.
In the text messages, Hicks then says “Alyssa looks like a genius,” an apparent reference to Alyssa Farah Griffin resigning from her post as a White House aide one month before the attack on the US Capitol.
Hicks and Radford then discuss Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s in-law Karlie Kloss, the supermodel, tweeting that Trump’s response to the election was anti-American.
“Unreal,” Radford texted.
White House call logs provide fuller picture of who Trump spoke to in the days leading to January 6
The committee also released call logs from the days leading up to January 6, 2021 painting a fuller picture of who the former president was speaking to as he and his allies were plotting for him to stay in office, the first time the panel is releasing White House call logs in their entirety.
The logs have been crucial to the panel’s investigation in piecing together a timeline of events. While the log for January 6 has a seven-hour gap, the committee has gone to great lengths to fill in that part of the timeline through witness interviews and other records.
The day before the US Capitol attack, Trump spoke to then-Vice President Mike Pence. After that conversation, Trump spoke with Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who helped fuel Trump’s election lies in the state, and then the switchboard operator left a note “that Senator Douglas Mastriano will be calling in for the Vice President.”
Trump also talked to a number of members of Congress on January 5, including Sens. Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri tried calling each other many times but could not connect. Trump also spoke with John Eastman, who helped Trump create the fake elector scheme that day.
The January 2 call log shows what happened in the immediate aftermath of the infamous hour-long call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” votes for him to win the state. Once the call with Raffensperger wrapped, Trump had a zoom with his then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani and spoke on the phone with his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and later Steve Bannon.
On January 3, Trump had multiple calls with former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark and GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, as the former President tried and ultimately failed to install Clark as the acting head of DOJ. The call logs reflect a flurry of calls with DOJ officials, including then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue.
At 4:22 p.m. ET that day, Clark is listed as acting attorney general, but earlier in the day he was not.
Secret Service sent security to Capitol in direct response to Trump saying he planned to march on January 6
Newly released documents also show the Secret Service dispatched a security team to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, just a few minutes after Trump announced unexpectedly during his Ellipse speech that he would join marchers headed there.
At about 1:10 p.m. ET, Trump called for supports to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” with him to the Capitol. Internal communications released by the House select committee show the Secret Service Joint Operations Center Counter Surveillance Unit sent an email around 1:15 p.m. ET, alerting that Trump had announced “on LIVE TV that he plans head to the Capitol with the crowd,” although his name is redacted.
“Per the announcement of (redacted) to the Capitol, a response team is being dedicated to the capitol,” agents wrote in the email. Publicly released internal communications frequently redact the code name agents use to refer to the president.
The newly released documents provide fresh insight into how the Secret Service scrambled to respond to the chaos that unfolded that day. The email from the joint operations center shows the agency rushed to provide more security to the Capitol as a direct result of the former president’s comments.
Secret Service leadership was concerned about Trump’s sudden plan to go to the Capitol, and the head of his detail was told the idea was “not advisable,” the documents released by the committee show. They also detail how the agency ran into technical difficulties and confiscated dozens of weapons on January 6, and had warned about the Proud Boys’ violent intentions as early as December 27.
Multiple units within the Secret Service were reporting technical problems, and agents were warned “not to rely” on their technology, according to an email. A timeline provided to the committee by the Secret Service shows some Secret Service radios died at the height of the chaos, but it’s not clear which protective teams were most affected.
Another document details how the Secret Service confiscated hundreds of cans of pepper spray, body armor, and hundreds of weapons such as knives and blunt weapons from the roughly 28,000 people who poured through the magnetometers on the way to the Ellipse.
Trump’s social media guru said the former president ‘does do his own’ tweets
In the wake of January 6, 2021, Dan Scavino, the former deputy chief of staff and social media director in Trump’s White House, texted a rally organizer that Trump “does do his own tweets” after discussing the now infamous “will be wild” tweet on December 19, according to documents released by the select committee.
The panel and security experts have pointed to that tweet from Trump’s account, which promoted a big protest planned for January 6, as a catalyst for the violence that day.
In a text exchange between Scavino and Katrina Pierson, who helped organize the Ellipse rally that preceded the US Capitol attack, the pair were discussing a news article connecting right-wing rally organizer Alexander Ali to the former president.
“I never spoke with Ali. … He is a fraud, and the DJT tweet on December 19 had absolutely nothing to do with Ali, or any of his people,” Scavino texted, before adding: “He does do his own tweets.”
This story has been updated with additional developments Monday.