After a January 6, 2021 speech to thousands of his supporters in Washington, former President Donald Trump angrily demanded that his staff take him to the US Capitol to quell his efforts to certify his election loss to Joe Biden, a former A White House staffer testified on Tuesday.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified before the Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday that when his staff informed the then-president that they would return to the White House instead of driving to the Capitol, Trump grew furious, and jumped at the wheel of the presidential limousine known as “The Beast.”
Hutchinson, who drove a separate vehicle in the motorcade, said she found Robert Engel, the head of Trump’s security service, “a little lost” in the White House. Anthony M. Ornato, the former White House chief of operations, was also present and told Hutchinson what had happened on the drive back from the rally to the White House.
“He’d said, ‘Did you hear what the hell happened in the Beast?’ I said, “No, Tony, I just got back. What happened?” Tony went on to tell me that when the president stepped into The Beast, he had the impression of Mr. Meadows that the off-the-record move to the Capitol was still possible and likely to happen, but that Bobby had more information. when the president got in the car with Bobby, he thought they were going to the Capitol, and when Bobby told him, “We’re not, we don’t have the resources to do it. It’s not safe We’re going back to the West Wing,” the president said. [a] very strong, very angry reaction to that. Tony described him as furious. The president said something along the lines of, “I’m the effing president. Take me to the Capitol now!’ To which Bobby replied, ‘Sir, we need to get back to the West Wing.'”
Earlier in her testimony, Hutchinson described how White House attorneys had refused to agree to Trump’s plan to travel from the meeting to the Capitol.
However, Trump was not deterred and the situation escalated in the limousine, Hutchinson testified.
“The President reached to the front of the vehicle to grab the steering wheel. Mr. Engle grabbed his arm and said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol. ‘ Then Mr. Trump used his free hand to lunge at Bobby Engle, and when Mr. Ornato told me this story, he gestured to his collarbones.”
Engle, who listened to Ornato’s retelling of events, didn’t correct any part of it, Hutchinson said.
In a statement posted on social media on Tuesday, Trump said he “barely” knew “who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson” was, adding that she was “bad news”!
After Hutchinson detailed the scene in the beast, Trump posted a second message on social media
“Her fake story that I tried to grab the wheel of the White House Limousine to send it to the Capitol is ‘sick’ and fraudulent, as is the Unselect Committee itself – it wouldn’t even have been possible to do something so ridiculous” Trump wrote. “Her story about throwing me food isn’t true either…and why should SHE have to clean it up, I barely knew who she was?”