Former Aide Says Donald Trump Has Struggled With Secret Service, Struggles To Capitol Hill And Trys To Steer The Presidential Limousine

Donald Trump supporters storming Capitol Hill in Washington DC on January 6, 2021. (Wikimedia Commons/Tyler Merbler)

JAKARTA - Former President Donald Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent angrily in the presidential limousine, when told he could not be taken to the US Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, a former White House aide testified Tuesday.

"I am a 'brave' president, take me to the Capitol now!" Trump insisted, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, explaining what he was told had happened in the limousine that day by Tony Ornato, Trump's chosen White House Chief of Operations.

Trump also tried to grab the wheel of the limousine angrily after learning he wasn't going to be taken there, Hutchinson said, according to CNBC June 29.

Hutchinson reveals the dramatic incident for the first time at an unexpectedly scheduled hearing, of an elected US House committee investigating the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, Washington DC

Trump wanted to go to Capitol Hill that day after speaking at a rally outside the White House to supporters, whom he urged to march with him to Congress and "fight" against the ongoing confirmation of President Joe Biden's election victory.

Riots on Capitol Hill January 6, 2021. (Wikimedia Commons/Tyler Merbler)

But White House lawyers strongly opposed Trump doing so, fearing it could lead to charges of inciting riots or disrupting the Electoral College's certification process.

Pat Cipollone, who was a White House adviser at the time, warned staff "we will be charged with every crime imaginable" if Trump goes to the Capitol, Hutchinson testified.

But he said when Trump ended the rally, he still had the impression from Meadows that it was still possible for him to go to the Capitol and that it most likely would.

Trump then got into the presidential limousine, known as 'The Beast', along with Secret Service Special Agent Bobby Engel, head of the presidential guard.

"So as soon as the President got in the vehicle with Bobby, he thought they were going to the Capitol. and when Bobby told him we didn't have the assets to do it," Hutchinson said, citing what Ornato later told him.

Engel told Trump, "'It's not safe. We're going back to the (White House) West Wing,'" Hutchinson said.

"The president had a very strong, very angry response to that. Tony described him as an angry person," he testified.

Donald Trump. (Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

Trump said something like, "'I'm the next president, take me to the Capitol now!'" he testified.

When Engel later refused again, Trump "reached his hand out to the front of the vehicle to grab the steering wheel," he said. "Engel took his arm, said, 'Sir, you have to get your hands off the wheel. We're going back to the West Wing.'"

Trump "then used his free hand to lunge at Bobby Engel," Hutchinson testified. When Onato told Hutchinson this, he pointed his hand at his clavicle, he said.

Hutchinson also testified that when he saw Engel sitting in the White House after the incident, he looked "somewhat confused" and "lost."

Trump later denied Hutchinson's account and criticized him in a series of posts on his social media sites on Tuesday.

"The Fake Story that I tried to take the wheel of the White House Limousine to drive it to the Capitol is 'sick' and fraudulent, very much like the Unselect Committee itself — Impossible to even do something ridiculous," Trump wrote.

It is known that four people died in the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riots, one was shot dead by police and the other was of natural causes. More than 100 police officers were injured, and one died the following day. Four officers later died by suicide.

The US House of Representatives commission hearings this month featured videotaped testimony from figures, including Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his former attorney general, Bill Barr. They and other witnesses testified, distrusting Trump's false claims of widespread fraud and trying to dissuade them from it.

At the end of about two hours of testimony, Representative Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the nine-member House panel, presented evidence of possible witness interference and obstruction of justice.

He showed a message to unknown witnesses advising them, that strangers would watch their testimony closely and expect fidelity.

Republican Mick Mulvaney, who served as Trump's chief of staff before Meadows, tweeted: "There's an old saying: there's never been a crime, it's always covered up. Things got really bad for the former President today. My guess is it's going to be worse than here."