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  5. Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned against Trump encouraging protests at state capitols 'esp with weapons' in newly disclosed text to Mark Meadows

Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned against Trump encouraging protests at state capitols 'esp with weapons' in newly disclosed text to Mark Meadows

Jake Lahut   

Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned against Trump encouraging protests at state capitols 'esp with weapons' in newly disclosed text to Mark Meadows
Politics2 min read
  • A new text was made public by the Jan. 6 select committee Wednesday involving Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
  • She said Trump should discourage armed protests at state capitols "given how hot the situation is."

Fox News opinion host Laura Ingraham once again appeared in records disclosed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

A Wednesday letter from the committee to House minority leader Kevin McCarthy included a January 12, 2021 correspondence between Ingraham and Meadows in which the pundit gave communications strategy advice for how former President Donald Trump should handle protests planned at several state capitol buildings.

"Remarks on camera discouraging protest at state capit[o]ls esp with weapons will be well advised given how hot the situation is," Ingraham texted Meadows, according to the committee's letter. "[E]veryone needs to calm down and pray for our country and for those who lost their lives last week."

A January 11, 2021 FBI bulletin warned of armed protests that were "being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the US Capitol from 17 January through 20 January." And in the spring of 2020, protesters carried assault weapons into Michigan's capitol building in Lansing.

Fox News did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the latest texts disclosed by the committee.

Ingraham, along with a few other prominent Fox News colleagues, privately pleaded with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to get former President Donald Trump to call off his supporters as the Capitol riot unfolded.

Ingraham condemned the violence on-air during special coverage as the Capitol siege was unfolding and suggested the leftist group antifa was at least partly to blame for the riot, despite no evidence supporting that claim. At the same time, she privately sent an urgent text message to Meadows, pushing him to have the president call off his supporters.

"Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy," she texted Meadows on January 6.

Ingraham's January 12 exchange with Meadows was disclosed in the context of the committee asking Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to come forward with any information and documents he has in connection to the day's events, including his conversations with the Trump White House.

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