Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House adviser in the Trump administration, said Tuesday in Washington that the former president was told that the protesters who staged an attempted occupation of the Capitol were armed, but he insisted that they be allowed to proceed. More: Hutchinson accuses Donald Trump of having tried to lighten security and of wanting to join the protesters, to the point of having tried to take control of the presidential limousine.

“What happens my people” and march to the Capitol, Donald Trump is reported to have said shortly before thousands of his supporters violently clashed with police as they tried to enter the building. Five people died that day.

In testimony Tuesday before the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack, Hutchinson quoted Trump instructing his team, using various profanities, to remove metal detectors that he believed the president would waste his supporters’ time. .

“I don’t want to know they have guns”Trump said, quoted by Cassidy Hutchinson. “They are not here to hurt me. I wonder if they have weapons or not,” he specifically said. “Get the f*** off the magnometers,” the president is said to have repeated several times to his security team, referring to the metal detectors.

The former adviser to the President’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, guarantees that he heard these statements directly.

Hutchinson also told the committee that the president at the time expressed a desire to join the protesters. After the security team denied that request, Trump allegedly tried to take control of the presidential limousine in which he was traveling to leave the place on the right. trying to grab the steering wheel of the car driven by a secret service agent.

The president said something like ‘I’m the president’s son of a bitch, take me to the Capitol now’, to which [Robert Engel, responsável dos Serviços Secretos] he replied ‘We have to go back to the west wing,’” the adviser said. “The President tried to get to the front of the vehicle to grab the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm and said, ‘You have to take your hand off the wheel. Let’s go back to the West Wing, not the Capitol.’”

One of the agents then tried to immobilize the President’s hand, who, with the other, tried to squeeze the agent’s throatunsuccessfully.

Trump has already reacted to Hutchinson’s statements, denying this last part. “Her false story that I tried to grab the wheel of the White House limousine to take her to the Capitol is sick and fraudulent, as is the committee itself,” the former president wrote on his social network, Truth Social, according to what he said. The New York Times.

A president who didn’t think it was wrong to want to hang his vice president

Amid chants from protesters demanding that Vice President Mike Pence be hanged, Hutchinson said he was told by the White House chief of staff that the president did not want to take any action on the matter. “He thinks Mike deserves it. Don’t think you’re doing anything wrong.”Mark Meadows will have told him.

As usual, the vice president assumed the presidency of the Senate at that time; in that capacity, Trump hoped that Pence would not validate the results of the presidential election, which gave victory to Joe Biden, in the upper house of Congress. “I hope Mike does the right thing,” the President even said before the rally, before the crowd swarmed the Capitol.

The president also sent tweet to criticize Pence before and during the rally, which Hutchinson deeply disliked.

As an American, I was disgusted. He was not patriotic, he was not American. We saw that the Capitol building was defaced because of a lie,” he said.

Hutchinson also recounted to lawmakers a series of conversations she had that day and the days before with her boss, Mark Meadows, and Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that made her believe that the January 6 violence was somehow over. manner anticipated by the team and possibly supported.

Meadows reportedly told Hutchinson that “things can get really bad.”, he said, as Giuliani told him it would be “a great day” and that the goal was the Capitol. The adviser said she was “scared and nervous about what could happen.”

The January 6 attack followed an impassioned speech by Donald Trump near the White House, where he encouraged his supporters to march on Capitol Hill, launching baseless accusations that Democrats had committed voter fraud in that vote, which gave him the victory over Joe Biden in the presidential election. .