The texts show the private alarm of Trump’s top defenders on Jan. 6

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WASHINGTON – As mobs stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, some of Donald Trump’s top defenders in the media – and even his own son – sent urgent text messages to the White House chief of staff urging to him to summon the then president. do more to stop the violence.

But they did not show the public the same sense of alarm just hours after the deadly insurrection. And since then they have joined some of the nation’s top Republicans in reducing Trump’s role in the attack-part of a larger effort to rewrite Jan. 6 history.

Here are some of the furious messages Trump allies sent to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as the insurgency unfolded and what they have told the public about events since then:

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DONALD TRUMP JR.

“He has to condemn it s-— ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough, ”Trump’s eldest son wrote in a text message to Meadows about his father. That’s according to excerpts read Monday by Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, vice chair of a House committee investigating the incident.

Earlier on Jan. 6, before the violence, the younger Trump tweeted that his father was “there are people !!!” in a photo of the majority of pro-Trump demonstrators gathered in Washington. When news started coming out that the Capitol had been violated, Trump Jr. changed. his tone, tweeting, “It’s wrong and not who we are. Be peaceful,” and “Don’t start acting like the other side. We have a country to save and it doesn’t help anyone.”

But, nearly a week later – and after the House impeach President Trump for inciting insurrection – Trump Jr. has begun. to advance the false narrative that authorities knew violence was coming on Jan. 6 but had not done enough to prepare – in part because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ignored warnings about what could happen.

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“If federal law enforcement agencies had prior knowledge that this was a planned attack, POTUS would not have provoked anything,” Trump Jr. tweeted. on Jan. 14. “If he didn’t provoke anything, Nancy Pelosi and the Dems used the impeachment in another fake political witch-hunt.”

GOP members of Congress, including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, have promoted similar false claims about Pelosi’s delay of military aid to help Capitol Police officers trying to suppress the -attack.

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LAURA INGRAHAM

“Mark, the president needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home,” the Fox News Channel host wrote, according to excerpts of text Cheney read. “It’s hurting all of us. He’s ruining his legacy.”

But on his show on the night of January. 6, Ingraham cited false claims that the rioters included leftist provocateurs, saying, “They are probably not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled to the whole majority. ”

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He added: “If you’re a Trump supporter hoping to show your support for the president, well, today’s antics in the Capitol have been the opposite.” Ingraham also made a false assertion that there were “legitimate concerns” that voter fraud was potentially damaged. the 2020 election that Democrat Joe Biden won, but he said, “That should never lend any license to violence or other unrest.”

Since then Ingraham has repeatedly downplayed the attacks on Jan. 6. In April, he said the “most dangerous insurrectionist in America” were not those who participated in the mob. Instead, he said, “The real threat to our future is Biden, and the great -heeled, powerful forces that want to lose sight of what has been great in America in the past.”

In a phone interview in March with Trump, Ingraham asked him: “Are you worried that the U.S. Capitol, after Jan. 6, has become a fortress, protecting the Capitol from the people who should really be in charge of it, not the people sitting in the Capitol? ” He then did not object when Trump said the mob posed a “zero threat” and suggested that authorities were “prosecuting many of those people” for being part of it.

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Ingraham said on his show on Tuesday that, “Both publicly and privately, I said what I believe: that the January 6 violation of the Capitol was a terrible thing.”

“They have committed crimes. Some people are unfairly persecuted and persecuted and persecuted, “he said.” But it’s not an insurrection. ”

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SEAN HANNITY

“Can he give a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol? ”The Fox News Channel host wrote in Meadows about Trump, according to excerpts of text Cheney read.

On his show on the night of January. 6, Hannity said those responsible for the attack “should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” but he was also quick to express concerns that law enforcement was not prepared for it to happen.

“I don’t care if the radical left, radical right – I don’t know who they are. They’re not people I’m going to support, ”Hannity said then.“ So how come the officers weren’t ready? We need to answer that question. How did they allow the Capitol building to break down in seemingly less than a few minutes? “

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During her show Monday, Hannity called the House committee investigating the attack a “Democrat sham” and a “waste of your time and money.” He also falsely said that Trump pushed for additional protection on the Capitol before Jan. 6 but Pelosi denied He had Meadows as a guest, but did not mention text messages.

On Tuesday, Hannity opened her show likening what happened to the Capitol attack to demonstrations across the country after the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer.

“All riots, obviously, are bad. All of them, “Hannity said.” And in this program, we strongly condemn the violence in January. 6 as we condemned all violent unrest in the summer of 2020. “

Hannity called Cheney reading his text in the Meadows “a weak attempt to smear your real and, perhaps I think, President Trump,” and argued that what he wrote was consistent with what he said on the air on the day of attack on the Capitol.

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“I say the same thing privately that I say to all of you,” Hannity said.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed without permission.

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