- Sam Cabral
- BBC News
6 hours ago
A former White House aide said former US President Donald Trump knew his supporters had weapons when he urged them to storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Former assistant Cassidy Hutchinson testified before the commission investigating the January 6 riots, noting that Trump and his top staff were aware of the potential for violence.
But the planned march went ahead, with Trump saying the gunmen present were “not here to hurt me.”
She said the president also requested that he personally join the Capitol march.
In a series of public hearings, the Democratic-led January 6 committee sought to link the former president’s role directly to efforts to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.
The House committee accuses Trump of carrying out an attempted coup.
The select committee conducted a nearly year-long investigation into how Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to disrupt lawmakers’ work as they certified Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
Yet the congressional committee lacked testimony from inside the White House, that is, someone who could provide a first-hand account of what the situation was like at the White House in the critical hours before the attack.
But at Tuesday’s sixth hearing, which was hastily announced, after the commission said it was revealing new evidence, Hutchinson, 25, filled in that shortfall.
As a principal advisor to the White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, she sat within feet of the Oval Office, spoke daily with Meadows, and was the liaison in the Office of the Presidency (the West Wing of the White House that houses the Oval Office and the presidential staff offices) with Congress .
She said that many senior officials have repeatedly warned that Trump’s January 6 rally could get out of hand.
The Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, told the White House that the event could be “dangerous to the president’s legacy”, while attorney Pat Cipollone expressed fears that it would appear as if the White House was inciting riots.
photo released, Getty Images
Hutchinson testified before the commission investigating the January 6 riots
Hutchinson recalled Meadows saying, days before the attack, that things “could get pretty bad.”
However, on the morning of January 6, when Meadows was told that Trump’s rally attendees had brought guns, knives and other weapons with them, he barely took his eyes off his phone screen and asked, “Anything else?”
Hutchinson also alleged that Trump was told that intelligence agents were turning away some of his supporters because they were armed and violating security measures.
She added that the former president called for the removal of the security services and the filling of the official gathering space with all its capacity, stressing that he repeatedly repeated “they are not here to harm me” and that they should be “allowed to enter,” as she claimed.
During Hutchinson’s testimony, Trump denied her account on his private online platform, Truth Social, saying, “I didn’t want or ask that we give armed people room to watch my talk. Who would ever want that?”
Other parts of Hutchinson’s testimony portrayed the former president as having angry reactions when he was upset about certain events.
When Attorney General William Barr dismissed the president’s allegations of election fraud in a December 2020 interview, Trump smashed crockery in a fit of rage, something Hutchinson said he had done before, as he sprinkled “ketchup” on the dining hall walls. in the White House.
After Trump supporters marched to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he insisted he wanted to join them, and Hutchinson said she was told he had tried to cling to the steering wheel of the presidential car and his staff tried to dissuade him.
She also said her manager, Meadows, asked the president for forgiveness after the January 6 riots.
Hutchinson is one of a number of Republicans and former White House staff who have cooperated with the congressional investigations, but she is the first to testify directly in the case.
Committee Vice Chairman Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans on the panel, praised her cooperation with the investigation, saying that Trump allies have pressured fellow Republicans to “continue to work on the team.”
The January 6 committee will continue its work by holding at least two more public sessions during the next month.