President Joe Biden chided former President Donald Trump saying he “lacked the courage to act” during a speech before the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives on Monday.
“For three hours, the defeated former president of the United States watched it all happen as he sat in the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office,” Biden said referring to the hoard of Trump supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol building during the certification of his 2020 election win. “While he was doing that, brave law enforcement officers are subjected to the medieval hell for three hours.”
Biden continued to compare the president’s actions to the actions of law enforcement.
“You saw what happened,” he continued. “The Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police, and other law enforcement agencies, were attacked and assaulted before our very eyes — speared, sprayed, stomped on, brutalized. And lives were lost.”
The January 6 public hearings conducted by the House select committee that has interviewed over a thousand people and gone through stacks of records in the past year in its probe of the Capitol attack and surrounding events showed evidence of law enforcement’s reaction to the attack.
Last week, the hearings revealed that former Vice President Mike Pence‘s Secret Service detail “feared for their own lives.” Pence had been pressured by Trump and his attorney John Eastman to use his role as the overseer of the certification to reject certain electors in swing states to overturn the 2020 election and keep Trump in the White House. Pence refused. Notably, Trump tweeted a criticism of Pence before calling on his supporters to leave the Capitol building.
“The mob was accomplishing President Trump’s purpose, and he did not intervene,” committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) remarked at the hearing.
