Aide testifies she was told Trump lunged at Secret Service and steering wheel when told he couldn’t go to Capitol

By Hannah Rabinowitz and Clare Foran, CNN

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified during a congressional hearing Tuesday that she was told that former President Donald Trump became “irate” when informed by security that he would not be going to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, because the situation was not secure.

And she testified that she heard a secondhand account of how Trump was so enraged at his Secret Service detail for blocking him from going to the Capitol that he lunged to the front of his vehicle and tried to turn the wheel.

Tony Ornato, then-White House deputy chief of staff, told Hutchinson that Robert Engel, who was the Secret Service agent in charge on January 6, 2021, repeatedly told Trump on their way back to the White House after Trump’s Ellipse speech that it wasn’t safe to go to the Capitol.

According to Hutchinson, Ornato recounted Trump screaming, “I’m the f**king President. Take me up to the Capitol now.”

Trump then “reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” Hutchinson remembered learning. She added that, according to Ornato, Trump used his other hand to “lunge” at Engel.

Engel and Ornato have both testified to the committee behind closed doors, but their statements were not been used in Tuesday’s hearing.

Trump denied key elements of Hutchinson’s testimony on Truth Social.

“Her Fake story that I tried to grab the steering wheel of the White House Limousine in order to steer it to the Capitol Building is ‘sick’ and fraudulent,” Trump wrote.

“Wouldn’t even have been possible to do such a ridiculous thing,” he added.

The-CNN-Wire
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