OPINION: Trump Lunged At Secret Service and Steering Wheel When Told He Couldn't Go To Capital On Jan 6th

Style Magazine Newswire | 7/1/2022, 7:41 a.m.

By Clare Foran and Hannah Rabinowitz for StyleMagazine.com

Cassidy Hutchinson testified during the hearing 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 Jan. 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 presidential SUV 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 Jan. 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, Or- nato recounted Trump screaming, “I’m the F’ing President. Take me up to the Capitol now.”

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

Here’s how Hutchinson de- scribed the President’s anger at being prevented from going to the Capitol:

“Tony proceeded to tell me that when the President got in the beast, he was under the impression from Mr. Meadows that the off-the-record movement to the Capitol was still possible and likely to happen, but that Bobby had more information. So as the President had gotten into the vehicle with Bobby, he thought they were going up to the Capitol and when Bobby relayed to him, we’re not, we don’t have the assets to do it, it’s not secure, we’re going back to the West Wing, the President had a very strong, very angry response to that. Tony described him as being ‘irate.’ The President said something to the effect of ‘I’m the F-ing President, take me to the Capitol now.’”

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

Asked by CNN for comment about today’s testimony regarding Trump allegedly lunging at his security detail and other claims about security on Jan. 6, a Secret Service spokesperson said the US Secret Service has “been cooperating with the Select Committee since its inception in spring 2021, and will continue to do so, including by responding on the record to the committee regarding the new allegations surfaced in today’s testimony.”