Ex-White House aide delivers explosive public
testimony to January 6 panel
Cassidy Hutchinson tells committee Trump knowingly
directed armed supporters to march to the Capitol
Lauren
Gambino and Hugo Lowell in Washington
Tue 28 Jun
2022 20.55 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/28/january-6-committee-session-new-evidence
In explosive
public testimony, a former White House aide on Tuesday told the committee
investigating the January 6 insurrection that Donald Trump knowingly directed
armed supporters to march to the US Capitol in a last-gasp effort to invalidate
the results of the 2020 presidential election that he lost.
Appearing
at a hastily scheduled hearing on Capitol Hill, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former
aide to Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also painted a devastating
portrait of a president spiraling out of control and a White House staff often
ambivalent about the violence building around them.
Hutchinson
also offered extraordinary new details that the White House – and the former US
president – were aware that the rally on January 6 could turn violent days
before Trump stepped on stage at a rally on the Ellipse and urged his
supporters to “fight like hell” to keep him in power.
“I felt
like I was watching a bad car accident about to happen, where you cannot stop
it,” Hutchinson, a conservative Republican who worked just steps from the Oval
Office, testified at the panel’s sixth and most revealing hearing to date.
Over the
course of two hours, Hutchinson offered a shocking view into the West Wing in
the moments before, during and after the siege of the US Capitol.
On the
morning of January 6, Hutchinson was present for a briefing with Meadows, in
which they were informed by Tony Ornato, the White House deputy chief of staff,
that members of the crowd amassing in Washington were carrying knives, guns,
rifles, bear spray, body armor and spears. Asked if Trump had been briefed,
Meadows affirmed that he had.
When they
arrived at the Ellipse, Hutchinson said Trump was furious that the crowd was
not at capacity and demanded Secret Service loosen security precautions to let
in supporters who didn’t want to go through metal detectors because, she recalled
overhearing him say, “they’re not here to hurt me”.
Back at the
White House, she recalled a disturbing conversation with Ornato, who rode in
the presidential limousine with Trump after his remarks. Ornato told her that
Trump became “irate” when he was told he would be returning to the White House
instead of going to the Capitol. Relaying Ornato’s account, Hutchinson
testified that Trump told a Secret Service agent: “I’m the effing president,
take me up to the Capitol now.”
When the
agent said he could not, Trump lunged for the steering wheel and when that
failed, grabbed at the agent’s throat to try to choke him, she said. That
agent, Robert Engel, was present when Ornato described the altercation to
Hutchinson and did not dispute his account.
Tump was so
enraged that he had been prevented from going to the Capitol on January 6 that
he threw his lunch against the wall. It wasn’t the first time she had witnessed
such an outburst from the president.
Just weeks
before, Trump also threw his lunch against the wall in a fit of rage after the
publication of an Associated Press interview with his attorney general, William
Barr, in which he said the president’s claims of a stolen election were without
merit.
“There was
ketchup dripping down the wall, and there was a shattered porcelain plate on
the floor,” Hutchinson recalled of that episode.
The
committee on Monday abruptly scheduled a hearing for Tuesday, after previously
saying it would not hold any more hearings until next month. Opening the
hearing, the committee’s chair, Congressman Bennie Thompson, said it was
“important that the American people hear that information immediately”.
It is the
sixth public hearing held by the committee after a year-long investigation into
the Capitol attack. Two more hearings are expected next month.
Hutchinson,
a 25-year-old Republican who worked steps from the Oval Office, has provided
the committee with some of its most shocking revelations to date. Among her
other disclosures, she told the panel that Trump approved of his supporters
chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and that several far-right members of Congress who
had attempted to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory
sought pardons after the attack. The disclosures emerged during Hutchinson’s
closed-door testimony to the committee, videos of which have been played during
the hearings.
On Tuesday,
Hutchinson recalled walking Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to his car
on the evening of 2 January, when he told her that Trump was planning to go to
Congress to be with his allies on Capitol Hill during the certification. When
she reported this to Meadows, she said he replied something to the effect of:
“Things might get real, real bad on January 6.”
Hutchinson
said: “That evening was the first moment that I remember feeling scared and
nervous about what could happen on January 6. I had a deeper concern with what
was happening with the planning aspects.”
She also
told the committee that she recalled mentions of the far-right groups the Oath
Keepers and the Proud Boys when Giuliani was around at the White House in the
days leading up to January 6.
Among
Hutchinson’s many disclosures, she testified that Meadows and Giuliani both
sought presidential pardons. She also told the committee that members of
Trump’s cabinet discussed invoking the 25th amendment, which allows for the
forced removal of a president.
Tuesday’s
hearing came as a surprise after Thompson said last week that the panel would
not hold another hearing until July. But the committee also made clear that the
public sessions were prompting more witnesses to come forward, helping to
uncover new evidence about what Thompson said was the “culmination of an
attempted coup”.
In its
episodic presentation, the committee has made use of recorded depositions with
witnesses, blending the tapes with moving public testimony and dramatic
speech-making from lawmakers and staff who led the investigation.
At least
two more hearings are expected next month to explore the role of far-right and
paramilitary groups organized and prepared for the January 6 attack and Trump’s
abdication of leadership during the hours-long siege of the Capitol.
At the end
of the hearing, Thompson again urged anyone with information to come forward.
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