The January 6th Committee promised a star witness Tuesday at their surprise hearing, and former Donald Trump insider Cassidy Hutchinson more than delivered. The top aide to Trump’s last Chief of Staff Mark Meadows provided vivid testimony on what was actually going on in the White House on that terrible day, and who knew what when.
A true jaw-dropping moment occurred when Hutchinson described being told that Trump tried to head to the Capitol himself on January 6. “I’m the f*cking president, take me up to the Capitol now,” Trump is alleged to have screamed at his Secret Service detail.
Denied the request by agents, Trump tried to grab the wheel of his presidential car, known as the Beast, to take control of the vehicle himself, Hutchinson testified she was told by Tony Ornato, the deputy White House chief of staff, in the late morning of January 6, 2021. “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel,” Secret Service agent Robert Engel informed Trump, according to what Hutchinson was told. “We are going back to the West Wing, we are not going to the Capitol,” Engel continued, grasping one of Trump’s arms. Trump supposedly tried to attack Engel, the head of his Secret Service detail.
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Of particular importance, Engel was in the room in the White House room where Ornato told Hutchinson this story on January 6. “Mr. Engel did not correct or disagree with any part of the story,” Hutchinson told the committee today under questioning.
A bombshell close to Richard Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield admitting under oath on July 13, 1973 the existence of a White House taping system to the Senate committee probing the Watergate scandal, today’s suddenly announced hearing cuts very close to the inner circle of the inner circle of Trump’s White House. A former Special Assistant to Trump, the sometimes whispering Hutchinson was uniquely placed to witness the White House fallout of the 2020 election and the lead-up to January 6.
Also detailing one of a number of dish-throwing temper tantrums by Trump in the White House, Hutchinson’s testimony was sure to provoke Trump to lash out at his ex-Special Assistant – and he did just that. Banned from most social media, Trump took to his own Truth Social to smear Hutchinson and call her a “total phony” mere minutes after her testimony began:
Cutting to the chase fairly quickly right at 10 a.m. PT after a few opening comments by chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Tuesday’s hearing was covered live on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-Span, as well as broadcast networks ABC, NBC and CBS. BBC World News also aired the hearing, but cut to and from breaking news of the sentencing of Ghislaine Maxwell in New York.
In live testimony, and on a previous video deposition, Hutchinson revealed that Trump, Meadows and others in the inner circle knew that many of their supporters in DC that day were armed. The aide detailed a meeting in the White House at about 10 a.m. ET on January 6 where Deputy Chief of Staff Ornato told others that the MAGA mob had “knives, guns, in the form of pistols and rifles, bear spray, body armor, spears and flagpoles.”
Hutchinson also told the select committee and the viewing TV audience that Trump himself knew a portion of the crowd had weapons due to Secret Service concerns and security measures that had been put in place for his own protection – as you can see in this clip below:
In what may become a blueprint for a possible Justice Department indictment, Hutchinson today spoke of the direct concerns some in the White House expressed to Meadows about the probability of violence and Trump encouraging such behavior in his speech on DC’s Ellipse that day. She further detailed intel that top White House officials had of the violence breaking out at Congress as the likes of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence were being evacuated for safety.
Up until Monday, it looked as if the January 6th committee would be joining their Congressional colleagues and go dark in a scheduled recess. However, nearly three weeks after the primetime hearing of June 9, the announcement Monday of a new hearing raised the stakes that the committee may be at a pivotal point in this real-life crime docuseries of sorts, before closing up shop until later in July.
Starting today’s hearing, Thompson said that the select committee has and will continue to present “the details of a multi-part pressure campaign driven by the former President aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 Presidential election and blocking the transfer of power” Citing “Donald Trump’s big lie” that the election was stolen from the former reality TV host and handed to Joe Biden, Rep. Thompson said that “n additional weeks” Trump’s role in instigating and fanning the flames of what became the bloody and violent siege of the Capitol on January 6 would be presented.
Thompson hinted to the “massive body of evidence” the committee had amassed on Trump and his inner circle in their move to circumvent American democracy.
Hutchinson herself seemed to add to that evidence in spades today.
As well as her testimony of temper tantrums and more, she additionally elaborated on conversations among top Trump aides in the lead-up to January 6 that implied direct working knowledge of the horrors of how that day would go.
“Are you excited for the 6th, it’s going to be a great day,” Rudy Giuliani told Hutchinson on January 2 after a meeting with Meadows, the White House aide told Cheney on Tuesday. “We’re going to the Capitol, it’s going to be great,” the ex-NYC mayor added. “The President’s going to be there, he’s going to look powerful, he’s going to be with the members, he’s going to be with the senators. Talk to the Chief about it, talk to the Chief about it, he knows about it.”
Meadows himself told Hutchinson that “things might get real real bad on January 6,” she testified today.
“In the days before January 2, I was apprehensive about the 6th,” Hutchinson added early in her live testimony Tuesday. “I had heard general plans for a rally. I had heard tentative movements to potentially go to the Capitol. But when hearing Rudy’s take on January 6 and then Mark’s response, that evening was the first moment that I remember feeling scared and nervous of what could happen on January 6th.”
Having spoken with the committee four times before today, Hutchinson, accompanied by her new lawyer Jody Hunt, offered direct insight into the mentality and perhaps more importantly the expectations that the Trump White House had for January 6.
January 6, 2021 was the day that Congress was set to officially tally the Electoral College votes and confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. In the weeks after the election was called in the former VP’s favor on November 7, Trump and his minions had been working the phones, the courts and the levers of power to stymie and eventually flip the results. Unsuccessful on all fronts, team Trump’s call for a massive rally in D.C. on the morning of January 6 had all the hallmarks of a last hurrah until large portions of the crowd, many with weapons and in various stages of combat gear, headed towards the Capitol.
As was seen by millions all over the nation and the world, the MAGA mob overpowered police, broke inside the halls of American democracy and ran wild looking for key members of Congress and then Vice President Mike Pence. With little to no direction from the administration to stop the attack, it took hours for control of the Capitol to be reestablished and the confirmation vote to finally be held later than day amidst shattered glass and defaced offices and chambers.
Though Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in on January 20 under almost unprecedented security, the efforts by Trump and his gang had all the makings of a coup d’état – a fact many top Republicans acknowledged at the time and deny now.
After discussing the reaction within the White House on January 6th to the attack on the Capitol, today’s hearing is about to end. Further testimony from Hutchinson may come later and off-camera as members of the select committee have more questions for her.
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