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| Photo Credit: AP. |
A former White House official who served as aide to Trump era White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has accused Donald Trump of dismissing security warning about armed protesters during the January 6 riot and made desperate attempts to join his mob of supporters as they marched to the Capitol.
Cassidy
Hutchinson described an angry, defiant president who made repeated attempts to
help armed protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to
protest his 2020 election defeat. She said during her interview Trump later
grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service
refused to let him to go to the Capitol.
Hutchinson
noted that when the crowd became violent and chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump
declined to intervene.
Trump
“doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong,” Hutchinson recalled hearing from
her boss, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to The Associated
Press.
Hutchinson
said she was told Trump fought a security official for control of the presidential
SUV on January 6 and demanded to be taken to the Capitol as his misguided
supporters laid a violent siege on Congress despite being warned that day that
some of his supporters were armed.
The former
aide said she was told of the altercation in the SUV immediately afterward by a
White House security official, adding that Bobby Engel, the head of the detail,
was in the room and didn’t dispute the account at the time, according to The
Associated Press.
Engel had
grabbed Trump’s arm to prevent him from gaining control of the armored vehicle,
she was told, and Trump then used his free hand to lunge at Engel, according to
The Associated Press.
The
Associated Press reported that Hutchinson’s account was quickly disputed on
Tuesday, adding that Engel, the agent who was driving the presidential SUV, and
Trump security official Tony Ornato are willing to testify under oath that no
agent was assaulted by the former president and Trump never lunged for the
steering wheel, a person familiar with the situation said.
While the
chaos was ongoing at the U.S. Capitol, White House aides became alarmed and
often divided into factions with some supporting the baseless widespread voter
fraud narrative promoted by the President while others expressed caution.
Hutchinson recalled
that while the restive crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump “thinks Mike
deserves it,” according to what Meadows told aides. Mr Trump had tweeted during
the attack that Pence didn’t have the courage to object to Biden’s win as he
presided over the joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
She said she
was “disgusted” at Trump’s tweet about Pence during the siege.
“It was
unpatriotic, it was un-American, and you were watching the Capitol building get
defaced over a lie,” Hutchinson said, adding that, “I still struggle to work
through the emotions of that.”
Trump denied
much of Hutchinson’s testimony on his social media platform, Truth Social,
calling her a “total phony” and “bad news,” according to The Associated Press.
Hutchinson also
said he received an angry call from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy
before the crowd left for the Capitol, who had just heard the president, say he
was coming. “Don’t come up here,” McCarthy told her, before hanging up,
according to The Associated Press.
She told the
panel that Trump had been informed early in the day that some of the protesters
outside the White House had weapons, but he responded that the protesters were
“not here to hurt me,” The Associated Press reported.
According to
The Associated Press, Hutchinson quoted Trump as directing his staff, in
profane terms, to take away the metal detecting magnetometers that he thought
would slow down supporters who were gathered for his speech on the Ellipse, in
back of the White House. She had said in a clip of an earlier interview with
the committee that she recalled the president saying words to the effect of “I
don’s f-in’ care that they have weapons.”