Hope Hicks testifies Trump refused to tell supporters to be non-violent on January 6, instructing them instead to 'fight like hell'

• Former Trump aide Hope Hicks said she and others urged Trump to decry any violence on January 6.
• Hicks told House select committee investigators that Donald Trump refused to listen.

Donald Trump ignored his former adviser Hope Hicks and other White House officials who urged the embattled former president to instruct MAGA supporters to remain peaceful during the January 6, 2021 march on the US Capitol, according to testimony from Hicks revealed during Monday's final January 6 select committee hearing.

In Monday's new footage, Hicks tells House investigators that she and then-White House attorney Eric Herschmann tried to get Trump to promote the importance of not resorting to violence ahead of his planned "Stop the Steal" rally, but that they were shot down at every turn.

"I communicated to people like Eric Herschmann that it was my view that it was important that the president put out some kind of message in advance of the event," Hicks says in her taped testimony to the panel investigating the deadly attack on Congress. Hicks notes that she didn't talk directly to Trump about trying to turn the temperature after his 2020 election loss, but said Herschmann had tried — and failed — to convince Trump to do just that.

"Mr. Herschmann said that he had made the same recommendation directly to the president. And that he had refused," Hicks said.

In fact, Trump did the exact opposite that morning, prodding those who gathered to hear his airing of grievances on the National Ellipse to "fight like hell" before pointing them towards the vote certification effort happening on Capitol Hill.

Hicks met with House select committee members in October to share her insights into everything that happened that day.

The former model turned Trump whisperer reportedly broke with her then-boss because of his baseless election fraud claims. She told Trump that he'd lost and "nobody's convinced me otherwise," according to internal deliberations highlighted in the Trump-centric tome "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021."