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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The Secret Service has denied allegations that former President Donald Trump assaulted agents in his bid to join his riotous supporters who marched on the Capitol on January 6 2021 as alleged by a former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Hutchinson
who was an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had recounted
at the January 6 panel how Mr Trump had an altercation with some agents of the Secret
Service and made a gesture at the SUV steering wheel in a bid to grab it and
drive himself to join supporters at the U.S. Capitol after he was told he could
not be taken there.
The agents
made a quick rebuttal of the claims prompting Trump loyalists to dismiss the
overall credibility of her testimony in Congress.
The Hill
reported that the Secret Service continues to admit through back channels that
Trump had wanted to go to the Capitol where his supporters had laid a violent
siege on Congress to provide the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
“There’s a
lot of what Ms. Hutchinson said that is true. Certainly [Trump] wanted to go to
the Capitol, that much we know. He said that publicly, he reiterated that
inside the car,” a source close to the Secret Service told The Hill on Tuesday.
The Secret
Service also pushed back on Hutchinson’s account that Trump lunged for the SUV
steering wheel and then toward the neck of Secret Service agent Robert Engel
after he was told he was going back to the Oval Office and not the Capitol.
Hutchinson
based her testimony on information relayed to her at the White House shortly
after the rally by Tony Ornato who temporarily served as deputy chief of staff
for operations, according to The Hill.
Ornato and
Engel who are active Secret Service agents have both denied the allegations and
said they are willing to testify under oath to dispute Hutchinson’s account, according
to The Hill. The unnamed driver is also denying the account by Hutchinson.
“Ornato is a
red herring,” the source said, noting that he was in his office at the time and
not at the rally, The Hill reported.
“There are
three people in that vehicle: Bobby Engel, President Trump and the limo
driver,” the source said, and both agents are “saying that did not happen.”
Rep. Jim
Banks (R-Ind.) described Hutchinson’s account as discredited.
“The sham
committee’s star witness is already discredited less than 24 hours after her
testimony,” said Banks. “It was all hearsay.”