Vice President Mike Pence’s Security Detail Feared For Their Lives on Jan. 6

The security detail protecting former Vice President Mike Pence expressed fear for their own lives during the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, according to fresh Congressional testimony revealed on Thursday night. 

Some feared they would have to fire their service weapons “or worse,” and discussed saying goodbye to their family members as the attack played out, a White House security official whose name was withheld to protect his identity told the Congressional committee investigating the attack.  

“Members of the VP detail were starting to fear for their own lives,” the official told the committee in recorded testimony played in Thursday night’s hearing. “There was a lot of yelling.” 

The official said: “There were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth.” 

There were “a lot of very personal calls over the radio,” the official said. “It was disturbing.” 

The fresh details of what happened inside the Capitol during the attack add to the drama of what happened that day, when a mob of enraged Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol, prompting Pence’s security detail to evacuate him to an unnamed secure location. On Thursday night, members of the committee blasted former President Trump for failing to act to help stop the attack—and for tweeting criticism of Pence even as his security detail was beginning to worry they might be killed in the riot. 

At 2:24 p.m. that day, Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary.”

At 2:26, Pence had to be evacuated a second time, and he came within 40 feet of the rioters, according to the committee.

Trump had pushed Pence relentlessly to help him overturn the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, during what was supposed to be a largely ceremonial counting of the electoral college votes in the Capitol. Ultimately, Pence refused, enraging Trump and his supporters.

The committee played testimony from multiple former staffers from Trump’s White House expressing their shock and dismay at Trump’s tweet that afternoon, which they said appeared to encourage the mob that, famously, had begun to change “Hang Mike Pence!”

“It was him giving the green light to these people,” Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House communication manager who attended the Thursday night hearing, testified. “He shouldn’t haven’t done that. He should have told them to go home, and to leave.” 

Trump’s supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet,” Matthews said. Trump’s tweet about Mike Pence was “pouring gasoline on the fire.”

The committee also played testimony from another former Trump White House staffer, Cassidy Hutchinson, who said: “As an American, I was disgusted.”