Sarah Matthews, a former White House staffer who testified before the House Jan. 6 committee over the summer, on Wednesday looked back at her decision to resign from President Donald Trump’s administration on the day of the Capitol riot.
Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, recalled the video Trump tweeted out while his supporters were storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“That was really the moment for me when I knew that I was going to resign,” Matthews told Jake Tapper on “CNN Tonight.”
The video showed Trump calling on his supporters to “go home” and repeating his lie that the election was stolen. “We love you, you’re very special,” Trump said as his backers battered cops, trashed the Capitol building and chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”
Matthews said in her resignation statement that she was “deeply disturbed” by what happened.
“He failed to act that day. He had every opportunity to call off the mob and condemn the violence,” she said on CNN. “We have seen from taped testimony from several of my colleagues that folks were pleading with him to do that. And he didn’t ever pick up the phone once.”
Trump’s continued lies about election fraud, she added, “pose a threat to our democracy.”
Matthews told her view of what happened inside the White House to the House Jan. 6 panel during an earlier hearing. She recalled to CNN how the official House Republican Twitter account called her a “liar and pawn in Pelosi’s witch-hunt” even before she testified.
“I thought it was definitely an embarrassing look for them,” she said, adding that she was working as a House staff member when that since-deleted tweet was posted.
“Everything I said has been corroborated in the taped testimony that we have seen from my colleagues, that President Trump had people around him begging him to condemn the violence, to call off the mob, and he did not act,” she said.
Asked whether other Trump White House staffers, including her former boss Kayleigh McEnany, actually believe Trump’s election lies or push them to appease him, Matthews said it’s a combination.
“There are some folks who know better and are smart enough to see through this,” she said. “They know that there’s no proof of the election being stolen, but they wish to stay in the good graces of Trump World, and they prioritize their ambition and careers for that.”
She added: “But then I do think there are some people who truly are detached from reality and have convinced themselves enough that the election was stolen.”
Today’s Jan. 6 committee reportedly will show Secret Service video and emails alerting Trump to the likelihood of violence that day and his zeal to join his supporters on the Capitol, according to The Washington Post.
During her testimony in July, Matthews pointed to a Trump tweet singling out Pence for failing to “have the courage to do what should have been done,” referring to the then-vice president’s refusal to reject the certification of Trump’s Electoral College defeat.
Matthews told the panel Trump’s tweet was “pouring gasoline on the fire and making it much worse.”