WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee held a surprise hearing Tuesday delivering alarming new testimony about Donald Trump’s angry, defiant and vulgar actions as he ignored repeated warnings against summoning the mob to the Capitol and then refused to intervene to stop the deadly violence as rioters laid siege.
Witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a lesser-known White House aide, rebuffed Trump’s team warnings against testifying and provided first-hand knowledge of what she saw and heard in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a proximity to power that gives stunning new details in the panel’s year-long investigation.
With calm, detailed recollections, Hutchinson testified about a defiant Trump who knew there were guns and other weapons in the rally crowd at the White House, sent his supporters to the Capitol anyway and tried unsuccessfully to physically pry the steering wheel from his presidential limousine driver so he could join them.
Before joining the White House, Hutchinson had worked in some of the most conservative Republican offices on Capitol Hill. She was hired as special assistant to the president and promoted up to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Here are highlights from the sixth hearing.
ANGRY, DEFIANT, VULGAR TRUMP
Trump was angry and defiant on the morning of Jan. 6, as he assessed the size of the crowd for his rally in front of the White House, upset that not everyone who had answered his summons to come to Washington could get in to see him because of the security lines.
Told that guns, knives and other weapons were being confiscated from the security screenings, Trump didn’t care. “They’re not here to hurt me,” the president said. He wanted to take away the magnetometer stations to allow more people inside the grounds, regardless of their weaponry.
“Take the effing mags away,” an agitated Trump barked at security moments before taking the stage, Hutchinson recalled.
WHITE HOUSE LAWYERS WORRY OF CRIMES
Trump’s lawyers at the White House were trying to tamp down the president’s speech to the crowd he had summoned for his “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, and they were trying to stop his plans to go to the Capitol that day when Congress would be certifying the election results for Joe Biden’s victory.
Hutchinson testified that lawyer Eric Herschmann said it “would be foolish” to include some of the language the defeated president wanted to add to his speech — comments like fighting for Trump, or him telling the crowd “I’ll be there with you.” Herschmann warned such language shouldn’t be included for legal concerns and because of the optics it would portray.
That language ultimately stayed in the script as Trump rallied the crowd to “fight like hell” and promised he would join them at the Capitol.
Days before Jan. 6, White House counsel Pat Cipollone suggested there were “serious legal concerns” if Trump went to the Capitol with the crowd, Hutchinson recalled.
“We need to make sure this doesn’t happen,” she recalled Cipollone saying in the run-up to the rally.
The morning of Jan. 6, Cipollone restated his concerns that if Trump did go to the Capitol to intervene in the certification of the election, “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”
Read More: 1/6 Takeaways: Angry Trump, dire legal warnings and ketchup