Mark Meadows Said Trump Thought Pence Deserved to Be Hanged

A former White House aide offered a vivid portrait of a violent and out-of-control Donald Trump in his presidency’s final weeks, grabbing for the steering wheel and lunging at a Secret Service agent when he wasn’t permitted to travel to the Capitol to join the insurrectionist mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

Cassidy Hutchinson, then an assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave the most gripping testimony yet in a House committee’s hearings on the Capitol riot, providing a front-row seat into the workings of Trump’s inner circle during the attack and days beforehand.

“We were watching the Capitol building getting defaced over a lie,” Hutchinson said, describing her feelings after learning Trump wouldn’t intervene early to try and stop the 2021 attack.

Her testimony came during a hearing Tuesday in which the committee tried to shield her identity until the session began. Her name leaked early Tuesday.

Hutchinson described a president who smashed lunch dishes against the wall when his attorney general wouldn’t back election-fraud claims, ignored requests from his own lawyers to tone down his speech at the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the riot, and ultimately turned callous when his vice president was under threat, suggesting he agreed with the rioters’ cries to hang Mike Pence.

She also described Trump’s rage sitting in his armored vehicle when the Secret Service determined it would be too dangerous for him to go to the Capitol from his rally with supporters.

“I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now,” Trump exploded in response, she said, adding that he tried to grab the steering wheel. Robert Engel, the head of the security detail, grabbed the president’s arm to stop him and said, “Sir, you have to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing,” she recounted. Trump lunged forward as if to grab him by the neck, she said she was told.

Hutchinson delivered a second-hand account told to her by a deputy White House chief of staff, Tony Ornato. Engel was with them “looking discombobulated” in the aftermath, she said.

Hutchinson said White House Counsel Pat Cipollone urged Trump not to join the crowd or go to the House chamber where the Electoral College votes were being counted.

“We’re going to be charged with every crime imaginable” if Trump accompanied rally goers to the Capitol, she said Cipollone told her, citing the crimes of obstructing justice and defrauding the Electoral Count Act.

When he arrived at the rally on the Ellipse, Trump was angry that many of the protesters had stayed outside the security perimeter, leaving a smaller crowd in view of television cameras. Police were sending reports that many of the protesters were stopped at the perimeter because they were carrying weapons, Hutchinson said.

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