#Trump #force #limousine #Capitol #day #riot #advisers
Former US President Donald Trump attempted to grab the wheel of his Secret Service limousine driver to join the crowd marching on the US Capitol, a senior adviser to his administration testified on Tuesday.
Trump got into his car after speaking to his supporters at a rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, Cassidy Hutchinson told a congressional panel, and he was told he couldn’t be with his supporters, who are out before the protest assembled a deadly riot.
“I’m the damn President, take me to the Capitol now,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson, who said the story was relayed to her by another government official.
White House Attorney Pat Cipollone has raised legal concerns that Trump would march to the Capitol with his supporters, Hutchinson said.
“We’ll be charged with every crime imaginable if we pull this off,” Hutchison recalled of Cipollone’s warning.
Hutchinson, a former senior White House adviser with unique access to Trump and the inner workings of the West Wing, testified at the sixth June hearing of the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol.
As executive assistant to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, she was a central figure in the White House around the time of the Jan. 6 riot last year.
In some of the most explosive testimonies from the hearings so far, Hutchinson said Trump and some of his top lieutenants were aware of the possibility of violence before the attack — contradicting claims the attack was spontaneous and unrelated to the government.
– ‘Things could become real’ –
Hutchinson said she recalled her boss saying four days before the riot, “January 6 could be really bad.”
Hutchinson visited Meadows, she said, after a meeting at the White House that included Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani.
As they walked to Giuliani’s car, he asked her if she was “upset” about January 6, she testified.
When she asked what happened that day, Hutchinson testified that Giuliani “replied something with the effect of ‘We’re going to the Capitol,'” Hutchinson said.
“‘It’s going to be great. The president’s going to be there. He’s going to look mighty. He’s going to be with the members. He’s going to be with the senators. Talk to the chief about it. Talk to the chief about it. He knows about it.’
She told Meadows what Giuliani said, she testified.
“He didn’t look up from his phone and say something along the lines of ‘It’s busy Cass, but I don’t know. It could get really, really bad on Jan. 6,'” Hutchinson told the hear.
“When I heard Rudy’s attitude on January 6th and then Mark’s response, that was the first moment I remember feeling scared and nervous about what might happen on January 6th,” she added.
Hutchinson told the committee she heard the names of far-right groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were debating at the White House as Jan. 6 drew near.
Meadows and Trump were aware of the possibility of violence, including the fact that members of the pro-Trump mob were armed when they gathered on the Ellipse that day, Hutchinson said.
– ‘No reaction’ –
When she said the violence broke out in Meadows, Meadows “had almost no reaction,” Hutchinson said.
Vice Chair Liz Cheney said the committee received police reports that people at the Trump rally on the Ellipse had knives, tasers, pepper spray and blunt objects that could be used as weapons.
Police feeds played at the hearing showed others outside the rally had firearms, including AR-15 semi-automatic rifles.
Hutchinson has already been the source of several blockbuster revelations, videotaped at two previous hearings, memorably naming a group of House Republicans seeking a pardon from Trump in the wake of the violence.
She has also been in touch with officials in the battleground state of Georgia, where Trump infamously pressured officials to “find” enough votes to overcome Biden’s victory margin in a phone call that is the subject of a criminal investigation.
According to CNN, it was Hutchinson who told the select committee that Trump voiced his approval of the “Hang Mike Pence” chants by Capitol rioters — a claim that was among the many glaring allegations that emerged from the opening hearing on March 9 June.
Meadows himself has refused to testify before the panel since handing over thousands of text messages and other documents in the early stages of the investigation.
The House of Representatives despised Meadows in December, but the Justice Department chose not to impeach him.
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