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Civic Register
| 6.28.22

Meadows Aide Tells January 6th Committee That Trump Didn't Care That His Supporters May Be Armed

How do you feel about the January 6th hearings?

What’s the story?

  • The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol held three public hearings over the last week, including a surprise hearing on June 28th that members had planned to occur after the end of the Fourth of July recess in mid-July.
  • The hearing on June 21st focused on efforts by President Donald Trump to pressure state and local officials to change election results to tip the outcome in his favor; the June 23rd hearing featured Trump’s pressure on the Justice Dept. and requests for pardons; while the June 28th hearing centered on a Trump aide’s perspective on the lead up to and aftermath of January 6th, including what happened during the riot.

June 28th Hearing

  • The select committee Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified that Trump was angry at the Secret Service for requiring supporters at his rally on the Ellipse to go through magnetometers and be screened for weapons. She said that Trump claimed, “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f---ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”
  • She testified that Trump wanted to go to Capitol Hill on January 6th. Hutchinson testified that she heard secondhand that Trump was so insistent that he told Secret Service agents to drive there, and when they refused, Trump tried to grab the steering wheel and lunge to push an agent out of the way. 
  • Following her testimony, NBC’s Peter Alexander tweeted that a Secret Service agent told him the agent she named, Bobby Engel, and the presidential limousine driver are willing to testify under oath that the incident didn’t happen. That reporting was echoed by Fox New’s David Spunt who had another source. 
  • Trump disputed Hutchinson’s claims in a post on his social media platform. He denied the presidential limo incident and her claim that he threw his lunch at the wall in a fit of rage about the election. 
  • Hutchinson testified that members of the Cabinet were considering invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the powers of the presidency from Trump. She also said that Meadows and Rudy Giuliani requested pardons for their roles in the January 6th effort to overturn the election. She said both anticipated the scenes at the Capitol could turn bad in the days prior to January 6th. 
  • On the day of the riot, she said Meadows was often looking at his phone and largely unmoved as the January 6th riot unfolded. Hutchinson testified that she heard Meadows tell members of the White House legal team that Trump said the rioters who chanted “hang Mike Pence” weren’t doing anything wrong and Pence deserved it.
  • Other Meadows aides, including Ben Williamson, pushed back on allegations that Meadows was indifferent about the initial violence at the Capitol. Williamson said he testified under oath that Meadows quickly reacted as the violence began.
  • You can watch the full committee hearing here.

June 23rd Hearing

  • The select committee heard testimony from officials in the White House Counsel’s office and Dept. of Justice (DOJ) regarding Trump’s plan to fire Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replace him with Jeff Clark, who wished to aid the president’s plan to overturn the election results by using the DOJ’s resources. Rosen had moved into the acting attorney general role after former Attorney General Bill Barr resigned after resisting Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
  • Eric Herschmann, a White House legal adviser, testified that after Clark discussed his plan, he told him that “you just admitted your first step or act you would take as attorney general would be committing a felony.” 
  • The committee played video from the deposition of Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified that Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Scott Perry (R-PA) requested presidential pardons for their role in coordinating efforts to raise objections and overturn election results. 
  • Brooks said he requested the pardon out of concern Democrats would try to prosecute Republicans who simply objected to election results. Biggs said that allegations he sought a pardon are false. Gohmert said he asked for pardons for other people unrelated to January 6th. Perry denied that he asked for a pardon for himself or other members of Congress. Greene denied that she asked for a pardon. Gaetz hasn’t commented on whether he sought a pardon.
  • You can watch the full committee hearing here.

June 21st Hearing

  • Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye, were election workers in Georgia who Trump attacked by name in a call with the Georgia secretary of state after becoming the focus of election fraud conspiracies that were found to be unsubstantiated. Ruby testified that she and her daughter had to move out of their home because of death threats they faced and said:
“I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security - all because a group of people starting with #45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”
  • Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling, both Republicans who were repeatedly attacked by Trump when they pushed back on his false claims about the election in that state, testified in the hearing. Raffensperger testified that the state of Georgia investigated every allegation of voter fraud, but that those probes proved conclusively that his claims were false. Sterling testified that workers and contractors from Dominion Voting Systems, which was the focus of some of Trump’s false claims, were facing death threats from supporters of the conspiracy theories.
  • Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers (R) testified that when he told Trump’s legal team they hadn’t brought forward substantially credible allegations of election fraud, Giuliani responded, “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”
  • The hearing revealed that a staffer for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) exchanged texts with a staffer for Vice President Mike Pence on January 6th regarding a handoff of slates of false Trump electors for Wisconsin and Pennsylvania before the certification. However, the Pence aide rebuffed the attempt and told Johnson’s aide that the plan would not go forward. Johnson later said his office received the document from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), but Kelly denied having any contact with Johnson. 
  • While states can submit dueling slates of electors for the Electoral College to sort out after a contested election, such slates must be submitted by state governors or the legislature to be considered, and none of the slates of Trump electors in question were properly submitted. 
  • The hearing revealed deep skepticism from Attorney General Bill Barr and in the White House Counsel’s office about the legal validity of Trump’s plan, and some of the fake electors asked the Trump campaign to cover legal fees they may incur. 
  • You can watch the full committee hearing here.

Committee Controversy

  • The January 6th select committee has been a source of controversy since its inception in the summer of 2021. Earlier efforts to form a 9/11-style independent commission fell apart after Democrats wanted to retain the power to appoint all of its staffers and Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate. 
  • That led the House to create the select committee and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appointed Democrats plus Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who had been an outspoken critic of Trump’s efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election. 
  • Pelosi then rejected two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) GOP picks for the committee ― Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) ― which was contrary to prior precedent in the House. In retaliation, McCarthy withdrew the remaining GOP members of the committee and declined to name new ones. 
  • The speaker then added Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who is also a Trump critic, to the committee which then began its work with just her selections on the committee and no lawmakers chosen by Republican leadership.
  • With no GOP lawmakers who were chosen by their party’s leadership on the panel, the select committee’s public hearings have lacked the sort of adversarial cross-examination that you see in typical congressional committee hearings.


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— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: Tyler Merbler via Flickr / Creative Commons)