New Trump Senior Press Aide Criticized His Actions After Jan. 6 Coup Attempt

An aide recently installed into a top Donald Trump campaign job excoriated the former president for his behavior during his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt, particularly his lack of concern for the death of a Capitol police officer hours after the man was assaulted by Trump’s mob.

Tim Murtaugh, the former president’s campaign communications director for his failed 2020 reelection bid, was hired by the 2024 campaign this summer and earlier this month reportedly was promoted to run the communications effort.

In so doing, Murtaugh becomes possibly the only top campaign staffer who criticized Trump for his actions and inactions on that day either publicly or through those criticisms becoming public.

“Shitty not to have acknowledged the death of the Capitol Police officer,” Murtaugh wrote to a colleague in a Jan. 9, 2021, text message revealed by the House select committee that investigated Jan. 6. “You know what that is, of course, if he acknowledged the dead cop, he’d be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won’t do that, because they’re his people. And he would also be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault. No way.”

In a sworn deposition before the committee, Murtaugh called Trump’s mob “criminal” and “unpatriotic” ― a marked contrast to his then and now boss, Trump, who has promised to pardon those prosecuted for their actions on Jan. 6, including the hundreds who have been charged with assaulting police officers.

“I don’t think it’s a patriotic act to attack the Capitol. But I have no idea how to characterize the people other than they trespassed, destroyed property, and assaulted the U.S. Capitol. I think calling them patriots is, let’s say, a stretch to say the least,” Murtaugh told the House committee.

Neither Murtaugh nor senior Trump officials responded to HuffPost queries about whether Trump is aware of Murtaugh’s previous statements.

Trump, who is a now a convicted felon free on bail while awaiting sentencing for trying to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn actor in the days ahead of the 2016 election, is also facing two separate indictments for his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6. He also was found liable by a jury for “sexual abuse,” which the judge in the case clarified as “rape” in the common parlance. And he was found liable for nearly a half billion dollars in civil fines after a jury found he had committed massive, ongoing fraud in his business.

Despite all this, Trump has retained the loyalty of a range of Republican political consultants who joined his staff following his failed coup and during his subsequent court proceedings.

One top Trump campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that accepting Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen from him, or least not having pushed back against it, was an unwritten condition of employment.

Following Trump’s departure from office, Murtaugh tried to find work in corporate communications, but, according to an interview he gave promoting a book about his recovery from alcoholism, he could not because of his association with Trump. His apparent recent promotion would put him above Trump campaign staff who have not criticized the former president.

Trump has sought revenge against elected officials who refused to help him overturn the election he had lost or, even worse in his eyes, voted to impeach or convict him for inciting the Jan. 6 attack.

He successfully recruited loyalists to run against them and in most cases either persuaded them to not seek reelection or successfully defeated them. In the case of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused to help Trump overturn his election loss in that state, Trump recruited former Republican senator David Purdue to challenge Kemp in the primary and spent $4.3 million from his small-donor-funded committee, Save America. It was more than Trump spent on any other race in the 2022 midterm elections. (Kemp won the primary in a landslide.)

Though Trump has allowed other former critics back into his graces, this generally happens only after that critic has publicly apologized or explained away his previous statements.

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), for example, likened Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters as “cultural heroin” during Trump’s 2016 run for president and even said he feared that Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”

Vance subsequently ran for the Senate, in the process renouncing all his previously stated criticisms about Trump, and won with Trump’s endorsement. He earlier this year was chosen as Trump’s running mate.