By It was a bombshell testimony by someone inside the White House that grabbed headlines all over the country. It showed that President Donald Trump was out of control. It showed that he desperately wanted to join the throng of protestors and rush to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to join an alleged “insurrection.”
At the time, Reuters wrote, “An angry Donald Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of the Secret Service limousine when the then-president was told he would not be joining supporters moving on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a former aide testified on Tuesday.
Speaking to the House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described Trump’s actions after he finished a speech at the Ellipse outside the White House where he exhorted supporters to march on the Capitol.”
It turns out that it was also false and appears more and more to look like a low-level staffer telling the anti-Trump House committee what it wanted to hear.
Two years later, House Republicans spoke to someone who was actually a witness: the driver.
The New York Times writes:
“The president was insistent on going to the Capitol,” recounted the driver, whose name was not disclosed. “It was clear to me he wanted to go to the Capitol. He was not screaming at Mr. Engel. He was not screaming at me. Certainly his voice was raised, but it did not seem to me that he was irate — certainly not, certainly didn’t seem as irritated or agitated as he had on the way to the Ellipse.”
But, the driver said, Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel or physically accosted the agents, contradicting one of the most sensational and hotly disputed elements of testimony given to the House Jan. 6 committee by a White House aide. The transcript of the driver is the first extensive eyewitness account of what happened in the armored vehicle to be made public.
“I did not see him reach,” the Secret Service driver told investigators for the House panel. “He never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all. You know, what stood out was the irritation in his voice, more than his physical presence.”
The driver’s transcript adds detail to one of the most scrutinized episodes of Jan. 6, 2021. The transcript was never released publicly by the House Jan. 6 committee, which entered into an agreement with the Secret Service regarding 12 interviews to avoid disclosing “privacy information, for-official-use-only information, intelligence and law enforcement sensitive records and raw intelligence information.”
The driver’s new testimony contradicts what Cassidy Hutchinson said two years ago. A former White House aid to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, she previously testified under oath that she had heard that the former president had reached for the steering wheel the day of the Capitol riot.
Hutchinson told the January 6 Committee what they wanted to hear: that Trump had ordered his deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato and Engel to take him to the Capitol before then reaching for the steering wheel from the backseat and grabbing one of his Secret Service agents.
Trump has always disputed Hutchison’s attempt to get her 15 minutes of fame, saying in 2022, “I thought it was absolutely crazy. This committee is, a lot of people say, illegally formed, but when you look at what they’re doing and when you look at what they’re saying and what they’re doing to the country — now, the good news is, a lot of people aren’t watching, a lot of people aren’t listening to it — but they’re trying to do real harm.”
“This lady yesterday, is there something wrong with her?” he continued. “She said I jumped from a car and I started strangling … a Secret Service agent who I know very well? I grabbed the steering wheel of a car, said I wanted guns at my rally. I didn’t want guns. I have to speak too, and I don’t want guns for anybody.”
“The Secret Service came out and said this story is completely false. The woman is living in fantasy land,” Trump added. “I think it’s just a shame that this is happening to our country.”
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