Hutchinson had already been a central witness in the behind-the-scenes hearings for the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, with some excerpts of her testimony played at recent public hearings. In one taped deposition, she detailed how six House Republicans had asked for blanket pardons. She also reportedly said she had witnessed Meadows burning documents after a meeting in the weeks after Election Day in 2020 and that Trump had reacted approvingly to chants from Capitol rioters that they wanted to hang former vice president Mike Pence.
In additional excerpts from those depositions that were shown during Tuesday’s public hearing, Hutchinson described what was going on at the White House as the rioters descended on the Capitol.
At one point, she went into Meadows’ office to see what was being done and found her boss sitting on the couch scrolling through his phone. “I just remember thinking in that moment Mark needs to snap out of this and I don’t know how to snap him out of this but he needs to care,” Hutchinson said.
Minutes later, White House counsel Pat Cipollone came “barreling down the hallway,” she said, and told Meadows that the rioters had gotten to the Capitol and that they needed to go speak with the president. Hutchinson said Meadows replied that the president “doesn’t want to do anything.”
“Pat said something to the effect of … ‘Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the bloods going to be on your effing hands,’” Hutchinson said.
The two men then left to speak with the president.
In another clip from one deposition, Hutchinson said it was her understanding that Trump wanted to include language about pardoning the rioters in a Jan. 7 speech but that he was dissuaded from doing so by White House attorneys.
Hutchinson also testified that both Meadows and Trump’s then-personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani later sought pardons in connection with the events of Jan. 6.
In a series of posts on the social network he had built after he was kicked off Twitter over the events of Jan. 6, Trump described Hutchinson’s story as “fake” and said he hardly knew who she was.
Speaking Tuesday, Hutchinson said she had been disgusted by the events of that day.
“I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed and really, it felt personal,” she said. “I was really sad. As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
Reacting on Twitter, former Trump acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney called the hearing “a stunning 2 hours.”
“That is a very, very bad day for Trump,” Mulvaney wrote.
Hutchinson’s appearance at Tuesday’s public hearing was shrouded in intrigue, with the surprise hearing itself only announced 24 hours before. Previously, the committee had said it would not hold another public hearing until July.
“In recent days, the select committee has obtained new information dealing with what was going on in the White House,” Chair Bennie Thompson said at the start of Tuesday’s hearing. “It’s important that the American people hear that information immediately.”
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/trump-jan-6-capitol-attack-security-steering-wheel
