A preliminary summary of the House January 6 select committee’s findings shows the panel as having corroborated an ex-White House aide’s testimony regarding how former president Donald Trump behaved towards his protective detail after they told him he couldn’t accompany a riotous mob of his supporters at the US Capitol.
In June, former Trump White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson shocked the world when she told the select committee she’d been told that Mr Trump became so enraged after the head of his Secret Service detail told him his armoured SUV would be returning to the White House after he spoke at the 6 January 2021 “Save America” rally on the Ellipse that he grabbed the vehicle’s steering wheel and attacked the agent charged with protecting his life.
Ms Hutchinson, a former aide to ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, said then-White House deputy chief of staff for operations Tony Ornato — himself a Secret Service agent who’d been seconded to Mr Trump’s political staff at his request — told her the then-president had been “irate” on the short ride back to the Oval Office with the head of his detail, Robert Engel.
“The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f***ing president. Take me up to the Capitol now,’ To which Bobby responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing,’” Ms Hutchinson recalled.
She said Mr Ornato told her Mr Trump “reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” at which point Mr Engel grabbed his arm and told him: “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.”
At that point, she said Mr Trump “used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel”
The ex-White House aide’s testimony was met with furious denials from anonymous sources within the Secret Service, where Mr Ornato returned after the end of the Trump administration (though he resigned after being asked to provide more sworn testimony to the panel).
Mr Ornato also denied recounting any such incident to Ms Hutchinson in an interview with the panel, with the summary to the committee report noting that he “does not recall that he conveyed the information to Cassidy Hutchinson regarding the SUV, and also does not recall that he conveyed similar information to a White House employee with national security responsibilities who testified that Ornato recalled a similar account to him”.
“The Committee is sceptical of Ornato’s account,” the report said.
That scepticism appears to come from subsequent interviews with other White House officials, including a Secret Service agent who told the committee he had “no reason” to believe Ms Hutchinson would lie.
The panel also reported hearing testimony from “several sources” about what happened in Mr Trump’s vehicle, describing what transpired as a “furious interaction” between Mr Trump and Mr Engel.
“The vast majority of witnesses who have testified before the Select Committee about this topic, including multiple members of the Secret Service, a member of the Metropolitan police, and national security officials in the White House, described President Trump’s behavior as ‘irate,’ ‘furious,’ ‘insistent,’ ‘profane’ and ‘heated.’”
