"Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence."[197]
"Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence."[198]
Once Trump returned to the White House, he was informed almost immediately that violence and lawlessness had broken out at the Capitol among his supporters.[199] At 2:24 p.m., President Trump applied yet further pressure to Pence (see infra), posting a tweet accusing Vice President Mike Pence of cowardice for not using his role as President of the Senate to change the outcome of the election: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"[200] Almost immediately thereafter, the crowd around the Capitol surged, and more individuals joined the effort to confront police and break further into the building.
The sentiment expressed in President Trump's 2:24 p.m. tweet, already present in the crowd, only grew more powerful as the President's words spread. Timothy Hale-Cusanelli—a white supremacist who expressed Nazi sympathies—heard about the tweet while in the Crypt around 2:25 p.m., and he, according to the Department of Justice, "knew what that meant." Vice President Pence had decided not to keep President Trump in power.[201] Other rioters described what happened next as follows:
Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like officially, the crowd went crazy. I mean, it became a mob. We crossed the gate.[202]
Then we heard the news on [P]ence … And lost it … So we stormed.[203]
They're making an announcement right now saying if Pence betrays us you better get your mind right because we're storming that building.[204]
Minutes after the tweet—at 2:35 p.m.—rioters continued their surge and broke a security line of the DC Metropolitan Police Department, resulting in the first fighting withdrawal in the history of that force.[205]
President Trump issued this tweet after he had falsely claimed to the angry crowd that Vice President Mike Pence could "do the right thing" and ensure a second Trump term, after that angry crowd had turned into a violent mob assaulting the Capitol while chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!"[206] and after the U.S. Secret Service had evacuated the Vice President from the Senate floor.[207] One minute after the President's tweet, at 2:25 p.m., the Secret Service determined they could no longer protect the Vice President in his
