Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao was one of the last top Trump administration officials to learn of the trauma of January 6th – because she was stuck in a long line taking photos with agency employees while the Capitol riot raged.
Chao testified to the House January 6 Committee that the long photo-line days before the end of the Trump administration kept her from learning that rioters had broken through police barriers, then climbed scaffolding and busted through Capitol windows, later occupying the House and Senate chambers.
‘I was at the Department, and I was taking farewell photographs with employees. So there was a long line, and that took about the afternoon. And an assistant came in at about, I think, 3:30, and said the Capitol had been breached, I think that was the word,’ she testified, according to an interview transcript released by the House January 6 committee.
Asked if she wasn’t aware of the events from TV or other sources, Chao, whose husband Mitch McConnell was Senate Majority Leader, responded: ‘I was taking photographs with departing …’
Stuck in a moment: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said she was taking part in a ‘long’ photo line with departing agency staffers on January 6. She didn’t learn about the Capitol riot until hours after the breach, she said
She said she didn’t watch Trump’s speech on the Ellipse where he called on supporters to ‘fight like hell,’ an event other cabinet members also said they missed. ‘It was a busy day,’ she said.
Asked if she took any official action after learning the news, Chao responded: ‘I was in the middle of taking pictures. There was a long queue of colleagues who were waiting a long time to take their photograph. I I didn’t really quite understand what the assistant told me,’ she explained.
Asked when she got additional information on what was going on at the Capitol, she said, ‘It was probably at the end of the day.’
Chao didn’t reach out to Trump, Vice President Pence, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, or other top officials, she said, and she doesn’t have a recollection of a phone call with Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia – who emerges in transcripts as leading an effort to try to get Trump to resign.
Former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia held conversations with fellow cabinet members after January 6th. Mike Pompeo considered his idea to try to get Trump to resign ‘fanciful’
‘I believe in the peaceful transfer of power. I believe in democracy,’ said Chao, who resigned January 7, citing the events of January 6
A mob broke through police barriers to enter the Capitol January 6
Chao and Pompeo each said they missed Trump’s January 6 speech
Asked if she thought Trump met the moment that day, Chao responded: ‘I wish that he had acted differently’
Scalia testified that the shared a call and discussed what to do in the wake of the incident.
She also said she did not recall talking to Scalia about the cabinet possibly invoking the 25th Amendment on temporarily removing a president from office.
Pressed on whether she discussed it, she said it was the ‘waning days’ of the administration, that she was focused on helping her staff ‘get jobs’ and ‘tidying up.’
She called Scalia and honorable man but said she didn’t have a recollection of a conversation between them that day.
Chao, a longtime government official who has been been regularly attacked by Trump with hits on her name that many have called racist, was pressed on why she resigned the following day.
‘I came as an immigrant to this country. I believe in this country. I believe in the peaceful transfer of power. I believe in democracy. And so it was – it was a decision that I made on my own,’ she said.
Asked if she thought Trump met the moment that day, she responded: ‘I wish that he had acted differently.’
She said she didn’t reach out directly to Trump when she resigned, conveying the information to Meadows as a ‘courtesy.’
But asked if she was mad at Trump, or worried it would be an acrimonious conversation, she responded: ‘No.’ She said she didn’t consult with anyone else before making her decision to leave.
Asked if she reached out to ‘any people’ in the Capitol that afternoon, she said she hadn’t.
Her questioner didn’t want to pry into ‘spousal communications’ but asked if she contacted anyone in a secure location during the riot. ‘I checked in on my husband,’ she said.
Another cabinet official, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, testified about former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia’s invitation to take part in a cabinet meeting with Trump.
‘And his request of me was, would I be willing to support or participate in a Cabinet meeting with the President of the United States? I told him I didn’t think that was a productive course of action.’
Pompeo said he thought Trump was ‘unlikely to resign’ and that cabinet members should focus on the transition. The committee told Pompeo that Scalia recalled Pompeo telling him such a meeting could backfire and anger Trump, pushing him to take an improper action.
Pompeo says that wasn’t consistent with his recollection.
‘Secretary Scalia also indicated, just as you did, Secretary Pompeo, that there was discussion about the possibility of the President resigning, to which you responded sarcastically, “Can you imagine how that conversation will go?”‘ according to his interviewer.
Pompeo responded that he would have said the likelihood of Trump resigning was ‘very low.’
Pompeo was vague about whether he had a specific conversation with former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was in the Middle East at the time, about the 25th Amendment.
‘I’m sure the words “25th Amendment” came up in some conversations. I have no specific recollection of that. But it was never anything that I had a conversation with anyone that I can recall that was remotely serious,’ he said.
He said he considered using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump ‘fanciful,’ Bloomberg News reported.
The soon-to-be-disbanded January 6 panel played Scalia’s testimony at a public hearing saying he told Trump in December 2020 he should concede, notwithstanding Trump’s claims of election fraud.
‘I told him that I did believe, yes, that once those legal processes were run, if fraud had not been established … I believed that what had to be done was concede the outcome,’ he said.
