The Jan 6 committee investigating the Capitol Hill riots and then-president Donald Trump’s links to the insurrection that shook the US, showed the Republican’s top campaign officials discussing his response three days later, on January 9, via text messages. 

Texts between Tim Murtaugh, communications director for his reelection campaign, and Matthew Wolking, a campaign spokesman, showed their dissatisfaction at Trump’s marked silence on the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who succumbed to injuries on January 7. 

Murtaugh noted it was “shitty” for the 76-year-old not to have acknowledged the death of the officer. Wolking added it was “enraging” to him, before continuing, “Everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie”. 

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Trump’s positioned himself as the candidate of “law and order” gaining the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the US, for his re-election campaign in 2020. However, Rep Bill Pascrell, Jr, from New Jersey’s 9th congressional district highlighted in a NY Daily News op-ed how Trump had actually hurt law enforcement, including scrapping  Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and Byrne Memorial Justice (Byrne JAG) grants. These two, for years, had given departments across the US fund to hire new staff and provide equipment, supplies, and training to cops. 

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Murtaugh continued in the messages that if Trump acknowledged the death of the cop, he’d be “faulting the mob”, which he wouldn’t do because “they’re his people”. The campaign advisor added that it would also mean an admission on part of the then-president that “what he lit at the rally got out of control”. The message concluded there was “no way” that Trump would acknowledge something that could “ultimately be called his fault”. 

The chiefs have testified earlier that over 140 officers were injured in the riots that took place on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, when Trump alleged that the presidential election had been stolen from him.