A House committee has voted to subpoena former president Donald Trump, demanding he testify as it unveiled new video and described his plan to overturn his 2020 election loss, which led to the assault on the US Capitol.
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With alarming messages from the US Secret Service warning of violence and vivid new video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders pleading for help, the January 6 panel showed the raw desperation at the Capitol.
The panel said Trump had acted in a "premeditated" way ahead of January 6, 2021, despite countless aides and officials telling him he had lost.
Trump is almost certain to fight the subpoena and decline to testify.
"We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6's central player," said Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the committee's vice chair, ahead of the vote, which was unanimous.
In the committee's 10th public session, just weeks before the congressional midterm elections, the panel summed up Trump's "staggering betrayal" of his oath of office, as Chairman Bennie Thompson put it, describing the then-president's unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's victory.
While the effort to subpoena Trump may languish, the committee has made clear it is considering whether to send its findings in a criminal referral to the Justice Department.
In one of its most riveting exhibits, the panel showed previously unseen footage of congressional leaders phoning for help during the assault as Trump refused to call off the mob.
Pelosi can be seen on a call with the governor of neighbouring Virginia, explaining as she shelters with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and others that the governor of Maryland has also been contacted.
Later, the video shows Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders as the group asks the Defence Department for help.
"They're breaking the law in many different ways," Pelosi says at one point. "And quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States."
In never-before-seen Secret Service messages, the panel produced evidence that extremist groups provided the muscle in the fight for Trump's presidency, planning weeks before the attack to send a violent force to Washington.
The Secret Service warned in a December 26, 2020, email of a tip that members of the right-wing Proud Boys planned to outnumber the police in a march in Washington on January 6.
To describe the president's mindset, the committee presented new and previously seen material, including interviews with Trump's top aides and Cabinet officials - including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia - in which some described the president acknowledging he had lost.
Ex-White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin said Trump once looked up at a television and said, "Can you believe I lost to this (expletive) guy?"
Cabinet members also said in interviews shown at the hearing that they believed that once legal avenues had been exhausted, that should have been the end of Trump's efforts to remain in power.
"In my view, that was the end of the matter," Barr said of the December 14 vote of the Electoral College.
Under committee rules, the January 6 panel is to produce a report of its findings, likely in December.
At least five people died in the January 6 attack and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by Capitol Police.
More than 850 people have been charged by the Justice Department, some receiving lengthy prison sentences for their roles.
Australian Associated Press
