WASHINGTON — One of the star witnesses at Thursday night's prime-time Jan. 6 committee hearing has deep ties to not only former President Donald Trump's administration, but also Northeast Ohio.
Sarah Matthews, a Stark County native, testified under oath during what is scheduled to be the panel's last televised hearing. The North Canton Hoover High School and Kent State University alum served as deputy White House press secretary during the final nine months of Trump's presidency, but made headlines when she resigned just hours after the infamous riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Matthews, a self-described "lifelong Republican," worked for multiple GOP committees on Capitol Hill before becoming a communications staffer on Trump's reelection campaign in June 2019. It was there where she met Kayleigh McEnany, and when the latter was appointed White House press secretary in April of 2020, Matthews was one of a handful of former campaign workers who joined her team in the West Wing.
"I formed a close relationship with Ms. McEnany," Matthews told the committee of her former boss.
That "close relationship" would play a role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the day the U.S. Congress was set to formally certify Trump's 2020 presidential election loss to Joe Biden. Trump had spent the previous weeks spreading false claims that the election had been "stolen" from him, and on that day, the then-president urged thousands of his supporters to march to the Capitol.
Thursday's hearing focused on the three hours and seven minutes between Trump's speech and him finally telling his supporters to go home, during which the crowd stormed the Capitol and forced members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to evacuate the chambers. Matthews recalled a tweet Trump sent claiming Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done" and overturn the election results, something he constitutionally could not do.
"I thought that the tweet about the vice president was the last thing that was needed in that moment," Matthews said. "It was essentially him giving the green light to these people, telling then that what they were doing at the steps of the Capitol and entering the Capitol was okay."
Watch the full hearing in the player below:
Based on her experience, Matthews noted how Trump's supporters "truly latch on to every word and every tweet that he says," and at the time she feared the president was "pouring gasoline on the fire." It was then that Matthews decided to talk to McEnany in the West Wing about asking Trump to condemn the riots and ask those at the Capitol to go home, and McEnany went to go talk to the president.
Minutes later, Trump did indeed send a tweet asking his supporters to "support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement" and "Stay peaceful!" However, Matthews told McEnany she didn't think the message went far enough, prompting a chilling response from McEnany.
"She looked directly at me, and in a hushed tone, shared with me that the president did not want to include any sort of message of peace in that tweet," Matthews testified. "She said that there was a back and forth going over different phrases to find something that he was comfortable with, and it wasn't until Ivanka Trump suggested the phrase 'stay peaceful' that he finally agreed to include it."
According to Matthews, an unnamed colleague of hers then suggested Trump should not condemn the violence at all, believing such an action would be "handing a win to the media." Matthews says she became "visibly frustrated" at that remark, and directed the co-worker's attention to the violence unfolding on television.
"I motioned up at the TV, and I said, 'Do you think it looks like we're f---ing winning?!'" she remembered. "'Because I don't think it does!'"
Five people, including a U.S. Capitol police officer, died as a result of the events of Jan. 6. It wasn't until 4:17 p.m. that Trump finally sent out a video message telling the rioters to go home, and even then, he again lied about the election being "stolen" and expressed his "love" for those who had stormed the building.
Matthews described the final "We love you" message as "disturbing" to her, seeing it as a quasi approval for everything that had happen. She added it was also a breaking point for her personally.
"As a spokesperson for him, I knew that I would be asked to defend that," she said. "I knew that I would be resigning that evening."
Matthews did indeed step down after completing the rest of her work for the day, and on Thursday further described Trump's actions on Jan. 6 as "indefensible" and in a manner of "treating it as a celebratory occasion." She also reaffirmed her own belief that now-President Joe Biden won the election legitimately, and expressed her heartbreak that the Capitol was attacked because of a lie.
"Jan. 6, 2021, was one of the darkest days in our nation's history," she said. "[Trump] needed to agree that he would peacefully transfer power over to the incoming administration, because that's one of our fundamentals and what it means to live in a democracy."