WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said the day of the attack on the United States Capitol that she hoped then-President Donald Trump would come to the compound so she could “hit it.”
Pelosi’s daughter, documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, captured the moment and more on Jan. 6 in footage shot for HBO and first obtained by CNN. It aired hours after the House Select Committee investigated the attack played other clips from the footage during his ninth hearing Thursday.
“Tell him if he comes here, we’re going to the White House,” the speaker jokes, reacting to Trump’s speech at the White House timeskip earlier in the day.
Another clip shows Pelosi speaking to his staff as a crowd began to gather at the Capitol. In it, Pelosi’s chief of staff, Terri McCullough, informs the speaker that the Secret Service had “dissuaded” Trump from coming to the Capitol to join his supporters.
“They told him they didn’t have the resources to protect him here,” McCullough says. “So at the moment he’s not coming, but that could change.”
“I hope he comes,” Pelosi replies. “I want to hit him. This is my moment. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on Capitol grounds. I want to hit him, and I’m going to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”
Video released by CNN showed other clips, similar to those shown during the hearing, featuring Pelosi and other congressional leaders as they rush for help as the Capitol is under siege. .
The montage shown during the hearing showed congressional leaders pleading for help from governors, the acting secretary of defense and the acting attorney general as rioters attacked the Capitol.
“I’m going to call Secretary Effing of the DoD,” then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D.N.Y., said in the montage, referring to the Department of Defense as he sat with Pelosi in an undisclosed room at 3 The two Democratic leaders were seen calling Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on Schumer’s flip phone, demanding a “massive” response.
Video from the hearing also showed Pelosi speaking to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, in which she wondered if he could deploy his state’s National Guard troops to the Capitol. She told Northam that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., was making the same request of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Schumer and Pelosi were also seen on the phone with Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen asking him to get Trump to cancel his supporters.
“Why don’t you ask the President to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility – a public statement that they should all leave?” said Schumer.
Footage also showed Pelosi speaking to Vice President Mike Pence by phone twice that day about how they could resume certification of the 2020 election results.
In additional footage obtained by NBC News that was not shown during the hearing, Pelosi, Schumer and other leaders can be seen in a protracted debate over whether to reconvene Congress in Fort McNair and to end proceedings immediately or to wait perhaps “days” until the Capitol could be secured. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he wanted lawmakers back on Capitol Hill as soon as possible to show the insurgents hadn’t succeeded.
“The overwhelming thing we have to do is validate the presidency,” Pelosi told her fellow leaders as they hunkered down in a secure site in Fort McNair. “It weighs against whether we do it on Capitol Hill or whether we do it in the hallway here.”
Eventually, members returned to the Capitol a little after 7 p.m. to complete the process.
Pelosi and Trump had a very strained relationship throughout his presidency, which included the time in 2019 when she and other Democratic leaders walked out of a meeting at the White House with Trump after having what Pelosi described as a “crisis.” At the end of Trump’s third State of the Union Address of 2020, Pelosi celebrates torn up a copy of his address.