On Monday, the House committee investigating the Jan 6. insurrection released text messages and emails belonging to Mark Meadows on the day of the attack. Before ceasing to cooperate with the investigation, Meadows provided about 9,000 documents to the panel. Among these documents were text messages from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity on Jan. 6.
Ingraham hosts the nighttime program, The Ingraham Angle. Kilmeade hosts the morning show, Fox & Friends. Hannity is a prime-time host on the channel, and also once appeared at a campaign rally with former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Liz Cheney, (R-Wyoming) and chairwoman of the panel, read the text messages aloud to the committee.
“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” wrote Ingraham to the former chief of staff. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
These words contrast with the sentiment Ingraham espoused on her show. Hours after the attack, she espoused the baseless claim that members of Antifa were involved in the insurrection.
“Earlier today the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” Ingraham reported on her show that night. “Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.”
Ingraham also voiced support for the “legitimate concerns about how these elections were conducted,” though she stated that these concerns should not have led to violence.
Kilmeade pleaded to Meadows on Jan. 6, texting about then-President Trump, “Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.”
Similarly, Hannity asked Meadows of Trump, “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”
Hannity condemned the attacks on his show, stating that the insurrectionists “must be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” Though he did not explicitly blame Antifa, Hannity said, “I don’t care if the radical left, radical right — I don’t know who they are. They’re not people I would support. So how were officials not prepared? We got to answer that question. How did they allow the Capitol building to be breached in what seemed like less than a few minutes?”
The House committee investigating the matter voice questions similar to those posed by Hannity. With regard to the concerned text messages from the Fox News hosts, Rep. Adam Schiff, (D-California), asked the panel, “How did Meadows react to these cries for help? Whom did he tell? What did he do? And, critically, what did the president of the U.S. do and what did he fail to do?”
