And while Trump never tried to contact Vice President Mike Pence directly, infuriating Pence’s team, he expressed concern for Pence to the advisers gathered in the dining room outside the Oval Office throughout the afternoon, said General Keith Kellogg, who was among advisers around Trump.
Kellogg’s report comes amid conflicting reports about what the former president knew about the danger his vice president and members of Congress were in on January 6 and when he heard about it.
After returning to the White House after his midday rally at Ellipse, Trump and his aides gathered around the flat-screen television in the presidential dining room as their supporters began to break into the Capitol, according to Kellogg.
At the time, Trump was angry with Pence for informing him that he would not attempt to overturn the election results. The former president continued to focus on electoral counting until late.
While television footage showed rioters entering the Capitol, passing security barriers, Trump asked aides whether Pence was safe, according to Kellogg, who was Pence’s national security adviser, but was with the president that day.
Aides informed Trump that the vice president was under control of the Secret Service and was taken to a safe location, Kellogg said.
“He was absolutely concerned about Pence,” he said of Trump. Kellogg had been in communication with the vice president through Pence’s Capitol team. They were communicating with the White House and taking this information to Kellogg.
Another person familiar with the situation confirmed Kellogg’s report to CNN.
Several sources told CNN that Trump never tried to contact Pence directly.
At 2:24 pm Eastern time, Trump tweeted that Pence lacked “courage”, a message that came minutes after the vice president was rushed from the Senate floor to safety. The people in the room said they didn’t fully understand how bad the situation was at the time the tweet was sent, as they do now in retrospect.
In the next few minutes, however, the gravity of the situation became more evident. Assistants gathered in the dining room weighed how to respond, ultimately convincing Trump to tweet to protesters to be peaceful – a sentiment he initially resisted, said another source familiar with the matter.
Another source involved countered this characterization, saying it was a very dynamic environment and that there were several versions of the tweet being passed on.
At one point, White House officials were informed of a plan to evacuate Pence to Andrews Joint Base, which never happened. Pence remained on Capitol Hill and then returned to the Senate chamber to oversee the certification of the Electoral College.
Separately, the night before the January 6 rally, Trump heard protesters gathering for the next day’s rally in the Oval Office, according to a person familiar with the matter. The crowd’s energy prompted Trump to ask what could be done to put maximum pressure on lawmakers to oppose Electoral College certification.
Aides said his speech would be the focus of the day.
CNN’s Jamie Gangel contributed to this story.