- Sarah Matthews called Trump’s tweet about Pence ‘pouring gasoline on the fire.’
- Matthew Pottinger complained about the delay in mobilizing the National Guard.
- The witnesses will help flesh out what was happening in the White House during the attack.
WASHINGTON – Former White House aides under Donald Trump, Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, who each resigned because of the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, are expected to be the next witnesses at the House investigative hearing Thursday, according to reports.
CNN, the New York Times and the Associated Press reported Matthews and Pottinger will testify.
Matthews, who was deputy press secretary, quit the day of the attack. She issued a statement that said she was “honored” to serve in the Trump administration, but was “disturbed” by that day’s events.
Matthews has told the committee she saw then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows meet with Trump in the dining room off the Oval Office as the violence escalated. But as aides urged Trump to tweet a message to restore calm, Trump instead called Vice President Mike Pence a coward in a tweet at 2:24 p.m.
“It was clear that it was escalating and escalating quickly,” Matthews said in a videotaped deposition played at the June 16 hearing. “The situation was already bad, and so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.”
Pottinger, who was deputy national security adviser, typed up his resignation letter the night of the attack because of the delay in deploying the National Guard to reinforce local police, according to the book “Betrayal,” by CNN reporter Jonathan Karl.
Pottinger told the committee the Pence tweet prompted him to resign.
“One of my staff brought me a printout of a tweet by the president, and the tweet said something to the effect that Mike Pence, the vice president, didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” Pottinger said in a videotaped deposition played at the June 28 hearing. “I read that tweet and made a decision at that moment to resign.”
Matthews and Pottinger were among several Trump administration officials who resigned soon after the attack, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Mick Mulvaney, a former White House chief of staff serving as a special envoy to Northern Ireland.
The prime-time hearing Thursday will be the eighth during June and July when the committee reviewed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election despite his administration and campaign aides telling him repeatedly he had lost.
More about witnesses:Ketchup, regrets, blood and anger: A guide to the Jan. 6 hearings’ witnesses and testimony
Committee members have said new witnesses stepped forward after revelations in previous hearings.
“It’s very active, new witnesses are coming forward, additional information is coming forward,” a committee member, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
More:On Jan. 6, Trump was out of public view as aides urged him to act. A breakdown of those 187 minutes.
For example, the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the witness called by Trump after the last hearing hasn’t appeared yet.
“I can’t necessarily say that the motives behind every piece of information we know, we’ll be able to explain, but this is going to open people’s eyes in a big way,” a committee member, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
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