WASHINGTON — Cassidy Hutchinson, a key aide in Donald Trump’s White House, told the House committee investigating the violent Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was informed that the supporters he addressed that morning had weapons, but he told officials to “let my people in” and march to the Capitol.
Mr. Trump demanded to accompany them, she said, and at one point he aggressively grabbed the steering wheel in the presidential limousine after he was told by security officials that it wasn’t safe. Ms. Hutchinson, who was an aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, said she was told that by Mr. Meadows’ deputy.
She said she wasn’t sure what he would have done at the Capitol as a violent mob of his supporters was breaking in. There were conversations about him “going into the House chamber at one point,” she said.
Ms. Hutchinson quoted Mr. Trump as directing his staff, in profane terms, to take away the metal-detecting magnetometers that he thought would slow down supporters who’d gathered in Washington. In videotaped testimony played before the committee, she recalled the former president saying words to the effect of: “I don’t f-in’ care that they have weapons.”
“They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f-in’ mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here,” she testified.
As Mr. Trump spoke to thousands of supporters on the Ellipse behind the White House — and more gathered on the Washington Monument grounds, Ms. Hutchinson said, she received an angry call from Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had just heard the president say he was coming to the Capitol. “Don’t come up here,” Mr. McCarthy told her, before hanging up.
In the days before the attack, Ms. Hutchinson said that she was “scared and nervous for what could happen” ahead of the riot after conversations with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Meadows, and others.
Mr. Meadows told Ms. Hutchinson that “things might get real real bad,” she said. Mr. Giuliani told her it was going to be “a great day” and “we’re going to the Capitol.” She said deMr. Meadows was unconcerned as security officials told him that people at Mr. Trump’s rally had weapons — including people wearing armor and carrying automatic weapons.
A month earlier, Ms. Hutchinson said, she heard noise inside the White House about the time an Associated Press article was published in which then-Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department had not found evidence of voter fraud that could have affected the election outcome.
She said she entered a room and noticed ketchup dripping down a wall and broken porcelain. The president, it turned out, had thrown his lunch across the wall over the article and she was urged to steer clear of him.
The 25-year-old, who was a special assistant and aide to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, has already provided a trove of information to congressional investigators and has sat for four interviews behind closed doors. But the committee called the hearing this week to hear her public testimony.
Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said that in recent days, the panel had received information about what Mr. Trump and his aides were saying during critical hours of Jan. 6 and that it was critical for Americans to hear that information immediately.
The committee’s vice chairman, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, said the hearing would shed light on Mr. Trump’s conduct, the “actions and statements” of senior advisers and what they knew about the prospect of violence in the days before the attack. She told the panel in earlier interviews that Mr. Meadows was warned about possible unrest.
Ms. Hutchinson’s appearance was cloaked in extraordinary secrecy. The committee announced the surprise hearing with only 24 hours’ notice.
In brief excerpts of testimony revealed in court filings, she told the committee she was in the room for White House meetings where challenges to the election were debated and discussed, including with several GOP lawmakers. In one instance, she described seeing Mr. Meadows incinerate documents after a meeting in his office with Rep. Scott Perry (R., Pa.), Politico reported in May.
She also revealed that the White House counsel’s office cautioned against plans to enlist fake electors in swing states, including in meetings involving Mr. Meadows and Mr. Giuliani. Attorneys for the president advised that the plan was not “legally sound,” Ms. Hutchinson said.
The panel has held five hearings so far, mostly laying out Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on various institutions of power in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, when hundreds of the Republican’s supporters violently pushed past police, broke into the building, and interrupted the certification of Democrat President Biden’s election victory.
The committee has used the hearings to detail the pressure from Mr. Trump and his allies on Vice President Mike Pence, on the states that were certifying Mr. Biden’s win, and on the Justice Department, using live interviews, video testimony of private witness interviews, and footage of the attack.
Lawmakers said last week that the two July hearings would focus on domestic extremists who breached the Capitol and on what Mr. Trump was doing as the violence unfolded.
First Published June 28, 2022, 11:27 a.m.
