Latest from the Jan. 6 hearings: A key witness “stands by” stunning Trump evidence as the GOP tries to discredit her
In an unexpected hearing on Tuesday, Cassidy Hutchinson, the senior staffer to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave testimony to the committee looking into the attacks on the Capitol on January 6.
She testified to the committee that the president, when informed that his supporters were highly armed just before he urged them to march on the Capitol, remarked, “I don’t f***ing care if they have weapons.”
On January 6, after addressing hordes of fans, the president reportedly grew “irate” when his security team forbade him from making an unscheduled trip to the Capitol. He allegedly sought to grasp the wheel of the presidential limousine and allegedly punched a Secret Service agent.
According to Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, the president eventually declared that Vice President Mike Pence “deserves” to have radicals yelling that he should be hanged for refusing to annul the 2020 election as riots broke into the Capitol.
By asserting that he hardly knew the “ill” Ms. Hutchinson, the former president rejected the testimony.
Despite denials from Secret Service personnel, a former Trump White House aide is sticking by his statement from January 6.
In her account of an altercation between former president Donald Trump and Secret Service personnel who disobeyed his orders to bring him to the Capitol during the riot on January 6, Cassidy Hutchinson stands by her account.
Ms. Hutchinson, who worked as Mark Meadows’ principal assistant from April 2020 until the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency in January 2021, shocked US viewers this week by testifying about a number of outrageous encounters that showed how the twice-impeached former president responded to the worst attack on the US Capitol since 1814.
Her evidence on Tuesday before the House Select Committee on January 6 revealed, among other shocking details, how Mr. Trump and his closest aides were inattentive to the violence that took place during the pro-Trump Capitol attack.
Tony Ornato, a Secret Service special agent who was sent to the Executive Office of the President at Mr. Trump’s request, and Robert Engel, the head of his Secret Service protective detail, are the subjects of one incident that has attracted attention.
