President Trump walked through the corridor from the Oval Office into the Presidential Dining Room and sat down at the table with the television remote and a Diet Coke close at hand.[125] For the rest of the afternoon—as his country faced an hours-long attack—he hunkered down in or around the dining room, watching television.[126] He left only for a few minutes—from 4:03 p.m. to 4:07 p.m.—to film a video in the Rose Garden, only a few steps away, after hours of arm-twisting.[127] But otherwise, the President remained in the dining room until 6:27 p.m., when he returned to his private residence.[128]
What happened during the 187 minutes from 1:10 p.m. to 4:17 p.m., when President Trump finally told the rioters to go home, is—from an official standpoint—undocumented.
For instance, the Presidential Daily Diary—the schedule that tracks every meeting and phone call in which the President partakes—is inexplicably blank between 1:21 p.m. and 4:03 p.m.[129] When asked to explain the gap in record-keeping on and around January 6th, White House officials in charge of its maintenance provided no credible explanation, including: "I don't recall a specific reason."[130]
The men who spent most of the afternoon in that room with the President, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, both refused to comply with lawful subpoenas from the Select Committee.[131] Others in the dining room appeared before the Select Committee but cited executive privilege to avoid answering questions about their direct communications with President Trump.[132] Others who worked just outside of the Oval Office, like the President's personal secretaries Molly Michael and Austin Ferrer Piran Basauldo, claimed not to remember nearly anything from one of the most memorable days in recent American history.[133]
The White House photographer, Shealah Craighead, had been granted access to photograph the President during his January 6th speech, but once she got to the White House—and it became clear that an attack was unfolding on the Capitol's steps—she was turned away.[134]
"The President [didn't] want any photos," she was told.[135]
Here's what President Trump did during the 187 minutes between the end of his speech and when he finally told rioters to go home: For hours, he watched the attack from his TV screen.[136] His channel of choice was Fox News.[137] He issued a few tweets, some on his own inclination and some only at the repeated behest of his daughter and other trusted advisors.[138] He made several phone calls, some to his personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, some to Members of Congress about continuing their objections to the electoral certification, even though the attack was well underway.[139]
