Hawley, Tuberville received calls from Trump while evacuating the Senate floor

At Thursday’s hearing of the Jan. 6 House select committee, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said that the committee had determined that as the Senate was being evacuated during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, President Donald Trump made calls to senators to urge them to continue to delay the count of the Electoral College vote. Among those called by the president were Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who was seen on security footage running from the Senate chamber.

Video Transcript

ELAINE LURIA: During this chaos, what did President Trump do at that point? He went back to calling senators to try to further delay the electoral count. While the vice president was being evacuated from the Senate, President Trump called Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of his strongest supporters in the Senate. As Senator Tuberville later recalled, he had to end the call so that he could evacuate the Senate chamber himself. Let’s listen.

TOMMY TUBERVILLE: He called– didn’t call my phone, called somebody else, and they handed it to me. And I basically told him, I said, Mr. President, we’re not doing much work here right now because they just took our vice president out. And matter of fact, I’m going to hang up on you, I’ve got to leave.

ELAINE LURIA: Senator Josh Hawley also had to flee. Earlier that afternoon, before the joint session started, he walked across the east front of the Capitol. As you can see in this photo, he raised his fist in solidarity with the protesters already amassing at the security gates.

We spoke with a Capitol Police officer who was out there at the time. She told us that Senator Josh– Senator Hawley’s gesture riled up the crowd, and it bothered her greatly because he was doing it in a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers. Later that day, Senator Hawley fled after those protesters he helped to rile up stormed the Capitol. See for yourself.