Fox News host Laura Ingraham sent a text message to then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6, urging then-President Donald Trump to tell people at the U.S. Capitol to "go home."
On the same day she sent that text, Ingraham appeared on Fox News and promoted suggestions that members of Antifa were involved in the storming of the Capitol building, citing a now corrected article from The Washington Times.
Ingraham's text to Meadows was revealed by Republican Representative Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6, at a hearing on Monday.
According to Cheney, Ingraham wrote to Meadows: "Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home."
"This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy," the Fox News personality's message said.
That night, Ingraham spoke about the storming of the Capitol on her show, The Ingraham Angle, and condemned the violence while also making an unsubstantiated claim about Antifa involvement.
Ingraham called scenes in Washington, D.C. "chaotic," and said the Capitol was "under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement."
"Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd," Ingraham went on.
Ingraham added that any Trump supporters involved who had wanted to show support for the now-former president had achieved the opposite.
Annnnd Laura Ingraham immediately begins her program by saying "there are some reports that antifa was sprinkled throughout the crowd," also lamenting that the Capitol riot will "only make the lives of MAGA supporters more difficult." pic.twitter.com/xPba1JADWz
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 7, 2021
"There are legitimate concerns about how these elections were conducted and in the middle of a pandemic with all the new restrictions, but that never should have lent any license to violence or other chaos," she said.
While covering voting on objections to the Electoral College votes that took place late on January 6 after the riot, Ingraham cited an article from The Washington Times that claimed Antifa supporters had been identified at the Capitol by a firm using facial recognition software.
That Times article was contested and newspaper issued a correction to the article by January 8, saying that the company mentioned had not identified Antifa supporters in the crowd and apologized to the company.
The FBI later said there was "no indication" that Antifa was involved and prosecutions of the alleged rioters appear to bear out that finding.
Ingraham was not the only Fox News host to send a text message to Meadows on January 6. Her network colleagues Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade also communicated with the then White House chief of staff.
Hannity reportedly wrote: "Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol," while Kilmeade said: "Please get him on TV, destroying everything you have accomplished."
