Cassidy Hutchinson, a former senior White House official during the Donald Trump administration, declared Tuesday before the House of Representatives commission investigating the assault on the Capitol that the president was informed that many people gathered in a capital esplanade the On the morning of January 6 they had weapons, but he told the authorities: “let my people in.”
“They are not here to harm me. take the damn mags away [magnetómetros]. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here,” Hutchinson quoted the then president as saying.
One of the top aides to then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, Hutchinson said she was “scared and nervous about what could happen” before the riots and after speaking with Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, Meadows and others. .
Madows told him that “things could get a lot worse.” And Giuliani, that they would “go to Capitol Hill” as part of a plan to keep Trump in power, that “the president will be there” and “it will be great.”
He said Meadows was unconcerned, despite being told by security officials there were people with guns, including some with AR-15s and Gluck pistols.
Hutchinson told the panel that she had been concerned beforehand because she had heard of plans for the march and possible drives to the Capitol, where hundreds of Trump supporters violently shoved police, smashed windows and doors and disrupted Joe Biden’s certification of his victory in the presidential elections.
She recalled how White House officials had repeatedly tried to warn the president about what might happen on January 6 and how she had personally warned Meadows. “I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed,” she said. “She was really saddened as an American. I was upset. It was unpatriotic. Y unamerican. We were watching the Capitol be defaced for a lie.”
Hutchinson also said that Trump ordered to be taken to Capitol Hill to join his supporters. The president leaned forward and tried to grab the limousine’s wheel to steer it toward the Capitol. “Mr. Engel, from his personal security, grabbed his arm and said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the wheel.'”
“Engel told him that he couldn’t go because it wasn’t safe. The president had a very strong and very angry response,” Hutchinson said. Said Trump: “I am the fucking president. Take me to the Capitol now.”
Then Trump used his free hand to lunge at Bobby Engel,” Hutchinson said, bringing her left hand to her throat to indicate what Trump had done.
Hutchinson said he learned of the physical altercation from Tony Ornato, a Secret Service agent who served as the White House’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
Neither Ornato nor Engel have testified before the Committee.
Today’s hearing gave the image of a president bursting into anger as he realized the reality that he had lost the election, not just on January 6, but in the weeks leading up to the insurrection.
Furious after Attorney General Bill Barr announced in December 2020 that he had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, Trump threw his lunch against the wall, according to Hutchinson.
The former official said she saw a broken china plate and “ketchup dripping down the wall” in the White House dining room. “The chief of staff had expressed that the president was furious at what the attorney general had said and that he had thrown his lunch against the wall,” Hutchinson said. Such tantrums were not uncommon for Trump, she said.
“Throughout my job I noticed several times that the president would knock over the plates or flip the tablecloth over to let the entire contents of the table fall to the floor and break,” Hutchinson said.
