.png)
7
187 MINUTES OF DERELICTION
At 1:10 p.m. on January 6th, President Trump concluded his speech at the Ellipse. By that time, the attack on the U.S. Capitol had already begun. But it was about to get much worse. The President told thousands of people in attendance to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. He told them to "fight like hell" because if they didn't, they were "not going to have a country anymore." Not everyone who left the Ellipse did as the Commander-in-Chief ordered, but many of them did. The fighting intensified during the hours that followed.[1]
By 1:21 p.m., President Trump was informed that the Capitol was under attack. He could have interceded immediately. But the President chose not to do so. It was not until 4:17 p.m. that President Trump finally tweeted a video in which he told the rioters to go home.
The 187 minutes between the end of President Trump's speech and when he finally told the mob to leave the U.S. Capitol was a dereliction of duty. In the U.S. military, a service member is deemed to be "derelict in the performance of duties when that person willfully or negligently fails to perform that person's duties or when that person performs them in a culpably inefficient manner."[2] As Commander-in-Chief, President Trump had the power—more than any other American—to muster the U.S. Government's resources and end the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He willfully remained idle even as others, including his own Vice President, acted.
President Trump could have called top officials at the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the DC Mayor's Office to ensure that they quelled the violence. He made no such calls. Instead, President Trump reached out to Rudolph Giuliani and friendly Members of Congress, seeking their assistance in delaying the joint session of Congress. And the President tweeted at 2:24 p.m., at the height of the violence, that his own Vice President lacked the "courage" to act—a statement that could only further enrage the mob. Meanwhile, Vice President Michael Pence assumed
577
