Trump Urged Armed Supporters to Capitol, White House Aide Testifies

 

Trump Urged Armed Supporters to Capitol, White House Aide Testifies

 

June 28, 2022, 12:38 p.m. ETJune 28, 2022

June 28, 2022

Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/us/politics/trump-meadows-jan-6-surprise-hearing.html

 

WASHINGTON — The first White House aide to testify publicly before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack provided a damning account on Tuesday of how former President Donald J. Trump, knowing his supporters were armed and threatening violence, urged them to march to the Capitol and sought to join them there, privately siding with them as they stormed the building and called for the hanging of the vice president.

 

The testimony from the aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, was extraordinary even by the standards of Mr. Trump’s norm-busting presidency and the inquiry’s remarkable string of revelations this month. In fly-on-the-wall anecdotes delivered in a quiet voice, she described how frantic West Wing aides failed to stop Mr. Trump from encouraging the violence or persuade him to try to end it, and how the White House’s top lawyer feared that Mr. Trump might be committing crimes as he steered the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.

 

Drawing from conversations she said she overheard in the West Wing and others contemporaneously relayed to her by top officials, Ms. Hutchinson, a 26-year-old who was an aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, provided crucial details about what the former president was doing and saying before and during the riot. She painted a portrait of an unhinged president obsessed with clinging to power and appearing strong, and willing to tolerate violence as a result — as long as it was not directed at him.

 

“They’re not here to hurt me,” she testified that Mr. Trump said as he demanded that security checkpoints be removed outside his rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, knowing that many of his supporters were armed and threatening violence. “Take the f-ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”

 

It was an act of vanity by Mr. Trump, who wanted his crowd to appear as large as possible, that recalled his first day in office, which was consumed by his false claims about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Ms. Hutchinson recounted it as she laid out a day of chaos in the White House, in which the president’s top advisers sought to rein him in and Mr. Trump pressed repeatedly to join up with his supporters.

 

She recalled being told of one particularly dramatic moment in which an irate Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of his vehicle from a Secret Service agent when he was told he could not go to the Capitol to join his supporters, an account that the former president quickly denied and that Secret Service officials said would be rebutted in forthcoming testimony.

 

The revelations, over a two-hour hearing, tied Mr. Trump more closely to the violence that disrupted the certification of President Biden’s victory, raising fresh questions about whether Mr. Trump could face criminal charges for his actions on Jan. 6. At the end, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the panel’s vice chairwoman, hinted at yet another potential area of liability, suggesting that Mr. Trump and his allies could be engaging in an effort to tamper with witnesses and obstruct the committee’s work.

 

Ms. Hutchinson testified that Mr. Trump’s anger had become so uncontrollable in the weeks after the 2020 election that when he was told in December that Attorney General William P. Barr had said publicly that there was no widespread election fraud, Mr. Trump threw a plate in the West Wing, shattering it and leaving ketchup dripping down a wall.

 

In the days leading up to the attack, she said, White House aides were concerned that Mr. Trump might be breaking laws against obstructing justice and impeding a congressional proceeding. On the day of the attack, Mr. Trump rebuffed efforts by aides and family members, including his daughter Ivanka, to put out a statement telling the mob to stand down. Instead, he posted a tweet attacking Vice President Mike Pence, who the committee has said came within 40 feet of the rioters at the Capitol.

 

Committee members and staff listening to Ms. Hutchinson tesify on Tuesday.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

 

“Mark, we need to do something more,” Ms. Hutchinson said she heard the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, tell Mr. Meadows, when he came rushing into her office as Mr. Trump’s supporters entered the Capitol. “They’re literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung.”

 

“You heard him, Pat,” she said Mr. Meadows responded. “He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

 

Ms. Hutchinson said that in the days after the siege, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Mr. Meadows discussed seeking pardons with the president; neither received one.

 

Her testimony elicited praise for her willingness to speak out against Mr. Trump and was compared to some of the most consequential moments in presidential history. John W. Dean III, whose testimony during Watergate rocked the Nixon presidency, compared Ms. Hutchinson’s appearance to the stunning moment in 1973 when Alexander Butterfield, another Nixon aide, revealed in a Senate hearing the secret taping system that would lead to the president’s downfall.

 

“Cassidy met the Butterfield standard with instant gratification,” Mr. Dean said. “It took a long time to learn the content of the tapes. Here we learn immediately what she heard and observed.”

 

No hearing had been scheduled for this week. But on Monday, the committee put out a cryptic news release saying that a witness with new information had come forward and would testify on Tuesday, touching off suspense and speculation about who it might be.

 

Ms. Hutchinson recently sat for a fourth interview with the committee, and, with new counsel advising her, informed the panel of previously unknown information that lawmakers felt needed to get out quickly, according to a person familiar with the committee’s work. More so than previous witnesses, the panel had also grown concerned for her security, and lawmakers decided to try to keep her planned testimony quiet for as long as possible, the person said.

 

The committee’s first four hearings this month had focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, during which he sought to wield his presidential power to pressure the Justice Department, state officials and Mr. Pence to help him stay in office. But the session on Tuesday focused almost exclusively on Mr. Trump’s conduct, revealing how, as the White House learned of a potentially violent effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, the president not only failed to intervene, but appeared to be cheering it on.

 

In Ms. Cheney’s closing remarks, she read aloud from testimony given by two witnesses whom she declined to identify, in which they spoke about having been pressured by Mr. Trump’s allies to withhold information from investigators.

 

“They have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts,” one witness told the committee.

 

Another witness, Ms. Cheney said, told the committee that a Trump ally said Mr. Trump wanted the witness to “know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

 

Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack appears to be laying out evidence that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:

 

An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.

 

Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.

 

Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.

 

Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.

 

Strong arming the Justice Department. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.

 

Trump’s rage. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth hearing, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also revealed that Mr. Trump, demanding to go to the Capitol, tried to grab his vehicle’s steering wheel from a Secret Service agent.

 

Ms. Cheney said such attempts raised questions about whether Mr. Trump was engaged in ongoing criminal conduct.

 

“I think most people know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns,” she said.

 

Dozens of Trump administration officials and aides have testified privately before the committee, and video and audio clips of what they told investigators have been a central part of the committee’s hearings. But until Tuesday, no official who worked directly for Mr. Trump in the White House had sat before the committee to give live, nationally televised testimony.

 

After the hearing, Ms. Hutchinson was immediately surrounded by a phalanx of news photographers who had been documenting her every gesture as she sat, alone at a witness table, facing the committee. At times during her testimony she seemed nervous, but she appeared to gain confidence as she testified. By the end, the panel’s chairman praised her courage, and made an appeal to other witnesses to follow her example and speak out.

 

“If you’ve heard this testimony today and suddenly you remember things you couldn’t previously recall, or there are some details you’d like to clarify, or you discovered some courage you had hidden away somewhere, our doors remain open,” Mr. Thompson said.

 

Ms. Hutchinson said Mr. Meadows was worried as early as Jan. 2 that Mr. Trump’s rally could get out of control — “Things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6,” she said he told her. She testified that Anthony M. Ornato, the former White House chief of operations, warned Mr. Meadows on Jan. 6 that the crowd seemed ready for violence, and had knives, guns, bear spray, body armor, spears and flagpoles.

 

She said Mr. Meadows appeared unmoved by the information, only asking Mr. Ornato whether he had informed Mr. Trump, which Mr. Ornato said he had.

 

Later, Ms. Hutchinson described being within earshot of Mr. Trump as he demanded that his supporters be able to move around the Ellipse freely even though they were armed.

 

As the mob began to descend on the Capitol, Ms. Hutchinson said she heard Mr. Trump insist on going to Capitol Hill to join them. When Mr. Cipollone heard of the prospect, she testified, he objected. “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable,” Ms. Hutchinson said Mr. Cipollone told her.

 

Ms. Hutchinson said members of the president’s cabinet were distressed enough by the assault on the Capitol and the president’s encouragement of the mob and refusal to intervene that they quietly discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. The ignominious prospect of being the first president to be subject to the amendment was one of the reasons he agreed to record a video on Jan. 7 committing to a peaceful transfer of power, she said.

 

Mr. Trump responded angrily to Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, using profanity and calling her “disgraceful” and a “phony.”

 

But she told the committee she was doing her duty, speaking out against what had happened on a dark day in American history. She said she had been particularly dismayed when, as violence raged at the Capitol and the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” the president had attacked Mr. Pence anew on Twitter.

 

“As an American, I was disgusted,” she said. “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”

 

Reporting was contributed by Maggie Haberman, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Chris Cameron, Carl Hulse and Peter Baker.

 

Luke Broadwater covers Congress. He was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles at The Baltimore Sun that won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award in 2020. @lukebroadwater

 

Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike