Capitol riot: what was going on in the White House?

Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a top aide to former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, delivered a “bombshell” testimony to the 6 January committee over the inner workings of the White House as the US Capitol insurrection unfolded.

Over two hours the former junior staffer “laid out her knowledge of Trump’s post-election campaign to hold onto power” to the congressional hearing committee, said Politico, “from his desire to go to the Capitol as unrest by his supporters became a riot, to his efforts to allow armed rally goers to join him on the Ellipse hours before the attack”.

Hutchinson was an executive assistant to Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, and a special assistant to the president for legislative affairs. Her testimony has transformed her from a “former junior White House staffer to high-profile star witness”, said the Associated Press, as her account of the day “raised new questions about whether officials around Trump could face criminal charges”.

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The weapons claim

Perhaps the most major disclosure from her testimony was the revelation that Trump directed his supporters to march on the Capitol, despite knowing they were armed and could cause serious harm.

Before the president took the stage at the Ellipse “Stop the Steal” rally on 6 January 2022 – described by Politico as designed to “amplify his baseless election fraud claims” and which “later metastasized into the Capitol riot” – Hutchinson said she overheard Trump urging the Secret Service to remove security magnetometers and let in people with weapons.

“I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump is supposed to have furiously told Secret Service agents, according to Hutchinson. “Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the fucking mags [magnetometers] away.”

The Guardian called the alleged response from the former president “significant” as it “makes clear that he had been informed that his supporters were carrying weapons, and that he knew those armed people intended to make a non-permitted march to the Capitol”.

Trump had taken to the stage, telling his supporters both there at the Ellipse and around the Washington monument that he would march to the Capitol with them, thereby “giving them the strongest incentive to descend on the joint session of Congress”, said the paper.

The Secret Service agent lunge

Hutchinson’s testimony also included an explosive second-hand account she heard from Trump’s top presidential security official, Tony Ornato. She told the hearing that the security official had described how the former president tried to wrestle the steering wheel away from the head of his security detail, Robert Engel, after learning they would be returning him to the White House, and not heading to the Capitol.

“The president said something to the effect of ‘I’m the fucking president. Take me up to the Capitol now,’ to which [Engel] responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.’”

She said she was told that the president “reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel” before Engel “grabbed his arm” and told him they would not be going to the Capitol.

“Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel,” Hutchinson testified, and recounted that Ornato had motioned to his clavicles in a choking motion.

Since Hutchinson's testimony, a source close to the Secret Service told CBS News that both the agent and driver travelling in the car with Trump were willing to testify under oath that the former president did not physically attack either of them and did not grab the steering wheel at any time.

Calling off the rioters

Hutchinson also testified that in the days leading to the Capitol attack, White House counsel Pat Cipollone pleaded with her to ensure no one, including the president, went up to the Capitol building, fearing they could be charged with federal crimes.

She said he told her: “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. We are going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”

She told the court that as the attack unfolded, Cipollone pleaded with her boss Meadows, to contact the president in order to call off the rioters.

“I remember Pat saying to him, something to the effect of, ‘The rioters have gotten into the Capitol, Mark, we need to go down and see the president now.’ And Mark looked up [from his phone] and said ‘He doesn’t want to do anything, Pat,’” she told the hearing.

She said Cipollone continued to pressure Meadows to convince Trump to call off the rioters: “Something needs to be done, or people are going to die, and blood is going to be on your fucking hands. This is getting out of control.”

Throwing plates

Hutchinson also testified that she was present in the room when Trump learned that his then attorney-general, William P. Barr, said in an interview with the Associated Press that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud that would call into question Joe Biden’s win.

“I remember hearing noise coming from down the hallway, so I poked my head out of the office,” Hutchinson told the committee. She said that the White House valet had “motioned for me to come in, and then pointed toward the front of the room, near the fireplace mantle, where I first noticed there was ketchup dripping down the wall and there’s a shattered porcelain plate on the floor.”

Hutchinson said the valet had told her that the president was “extremely angry at the attorney-general’s AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall”.

Federal crimes charge?

While the congressional hearing is not a court of law, which means it is unable to charge anyone with alleged crimes, it can make a criminal referral to prosecutors at the Department of Justice.

Whether the US Justice department thinks it has a case against the former president is still an “unanswered question” said ABC News. US Attorney-General Merrick Garland has not commented on a possible criminal case against Trump nor against any other high-profile people named at the public hearings so far.

But some legal experts have said that Hutchinson’s testimony could give prosecutors more facts to pursue. A former senior Justice Department lawyer, David Laufman, told the Washington Post that Hutchinson’s testimony “contained credible nuggets of information that would support” prosecutors who were looking at Trump as a target in a seditious conspiracy investigation.

Trump responded to Hutchinson’s testimony on his social media site, Truth, claiming he had “heard very negative things” about her, and calling her a “phony” and a “leaker”.