Tuesday’s blockbuster testimony before the House Jan. 6 Select Committee brought the American public directly into former President Donald Trump’s inner White House sanctum to understand his thinking and motivation as the Capitol insurrection was being planned and launched. The evidence and testimony strongly suggest that he knew an attack was planned, that some attackers were armed, and that he was directly involved in the insurrection’s violent outcome. Trump allegedly was so anxious to be a witness to the siege that he physically grappled with his limousine security personnel when they told him he could not go to Capitol Hill amid the Jan. 6, 2021, pandemonium.
Testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, portrayed the president alternately as a willing conspirator and power-crazed madman. He threw dishes in anger when told by then-Attorney General Bill Barr that there was no legal justification to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. In addition to allegedly reaching for the steering wheel of his limousine, he may have reached for the throat area of a security adviser who told him conditions on Capitol Hill were too dangerous for him to go there during the insurrection. That account is, at best, third-hand and requires corroboration under oath from those directly involved. But the account doesn’t conflict with other witness accounts to Trump’s violent behavior and Barr’s conclusion that Trump had become “unhinged.”
When advised that there were people carrying assault rifles and handguns just beyond the security perimeter for his Jan. 6 rally, Trump angrily protested as Hutchinson stood nearby in a security tent, “They’re not here to hurt me.” He and Meadows seemed entirely uninterested in the presence of armed men among the crowd members who, soon afterward, stormed the Capitol. If Trump didn’t know what their plans were, how else could he have been so confident that they weren’t there to hurt him — especially since Trump and his spin doctors repeatedly blamed Antifa leftists for the siege?
Hutchinson also recalled a meeting with Meadows two days before the rally in which he warned her that “things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6.” That remark followed concerns she and others raised after reading security briefings about potential violence that day. She said Trump also was aware of those reports. Yet he proceeded with the rally and insisted on language in his speech directing the crowd toward the Capitol to “fight.”
For many Americans, such revelations only confirm what they’ve known from the beginning about the man who, upon entering the White House in 2017, was deemed by 27 psychiatrists around the country to exhibit dangerous sociopathic tendencies. Shockingly, Republicans across the country still regard Trump as some kind of savior who was robbed of reelection in 2020 and who deserves to represent the party in the 2024 race. It’s doubtful their devotion to Trump will be swayed, as if to confirm his 2015 statement that he could shoot someone in the middle of Manhattan and not lose their support.
Those who haven’t drunk the Trump Kool-Aid should be more convinced than ever that he belongs in jail. The case has never been stronger for that outcome, and judging from recent FBI raids and seizures, the Justice Department seems to think likewise. The FBI appears to be closing in, having searched the house of Trump lawyer Jeffrey Clark with a warrant while he had to stand on the street in his pajamas. Separately, agents seized the phone of John Eastman, another Trump legal adviser. These actions strongly suggest that the Justice Department is building a case for criminal prosecution.
Trump, in predictable fashion, tried to portray Hutchinson as a nobody whom he barely knew at the White House and who was disgruntled after being refused a position on Trump’s post-White House team. During her testimony, the committee displayed photos of her in close proximity to Trump in his Air Force One presidential office. Other White House insiders back the credibility of her account.
“Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson’s role or her access in the West Wing either doesn’t understand how the Trump [White House] worked or is attempting to discredit her because they’re scared of how damning this testimony is,” former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews tweeted.
Nevertheless, the committee’s case would be strengthened if other witnesses could summon Hutchinson’s courage and testify. What the committee won’t receive is cooperation from the cowards who bent the law to the breaking point and subsequently requested pardons from Trump or exercised their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination when appearing before the committee.
Among those who also allegedly sought a pardon was Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the fast-talking, sanctimonious Trump defender who encouraged the president’s defiant stand and worked overtime to help block House confirmation of the 2020 election result. Jordan claims he can’t recall details of the multiple telephone exchanges he had with Trump and Meadows on Jan. 6, but records show he had a 10-minute call with Trump that morning. Hutchinson said Jordan called Meadows later, as the insurrection was in progress, with chants of “Hang Mike Pence” audible in the background.
These credible allegations bear all the hallmarks of a coup engineered directly from the White House with the president’s full knowledge and cooperation. Efforts by the likes of Jordan, Meadows and others to block the facts from public exposure appear to be quickly unraveling. This is the salve that a wounded nation so desperately if it is ever to heal.
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