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Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, is standing by her testimony before the Jan. 6 committee that then-President Trump “lunged” at two Secret Service agents and tried to grab the steering wheel to go to the Capitol.
“Ms. Hutchinson stands by all of the testimony she provided yesterday, under oath, to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” her attorneys, Jody Hunt and William Jordan, told Fox News in a statement on Wednesday.
Hutchinson relayed an account to the committee that she says was told to her by Tony Ornato, another White House aide.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mark Meadows when he was White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, gestures toward her neck as she retells a story involving President Trump as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds a public hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Trump grew irate when a Secret Service agent, Bobby Engel, told him that they were not going to the Capitol on Jan. 6, then “lunged” at Engel and another unnamed Secret Service agent who was driving the presidential SUV, Hutchinson told the committee, recounting what was allegedly told to her by Ornato.
“The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f- president. Take me up to the Capitol now,” Hutchinson testified, noting that she was also told Trump tried to grab the steering wheel.
Both Secret Service agents involved in the alleged incident are prepared to testify that Trump did not lunge at them or try to grab the steering wheel, though he was furious when he was told that the SUV was going back to the West Wing instead of the Capitol, a source close to the Secret Service tells Fox News.
FILE – In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo with the White House in the background, President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Engel, who was in the SUV, and Ornato, who was not in the SUV but allegedly recounted the story to Hutchinson, testified before the Jan. 6 committee in private over the past year. Ornato was shocked when he watched Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday, the source said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Jan. 6 committee, defended Hutchinson as a witness after the pushback, saying that she has “no motivation or interest in lying in any way.”
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“Look, anybody who wants to testify, can come forward and testify under oath about what happened. All we’re interested in is the truth,” Raskin told MSNBC on Wednesday.
Hutchinson also testified that her former boss sought a presidential pardon from Trump, but Meadows denied that on Wednesday.
Fox News’s David Spunt contributed to this report.
