Explosive testimony at an unexpected hearing from the Jan. 6 committee on
Tuesday brought into sharper focus the actions former President Trump took on
the day of the violent Capitol attack.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide to former White House Chief of Staff
Mark Meadows, testified that Trump had wanted the Ellipse to be fully packed
with supporters for his speech on Jan. 6, which was hampered by some of them
watching from a distance in order to avoid going through metal detectors and
surrendering their weapons.
"I don't effing care that they have weapons — they're not here to hurt me,"
Trump said, according to Hutchinson. "Take the effing [magnetometers] away and
let my people in."
The bombshell testimony indicates Trump knew the crowd was armed when he
instructed his supporters to march to the Capitol to "fight like hell" against
certifying the 2020 election results.
Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, told NPR's Rachel Martin that
Hutchinson's testimony about Trump requesting the magnetometers be removed
builds a "prosecutable case against Donald Trump."
"He knew right before he took that stage that that crowd was armed. He knew they
were headed to the Capitol and he was so confident that they were not going to
do anything to him, they were there for him, that he was willing to risk his own
security by telling people that he wanted those mags taken down," Honig said.
"To me, that could lend itself to a conspiracy charge, to an obstruction charge,
even to a seditious conspiracy charge, which requires a showing that force was
part of the plan."
Hutchinson also quoted her former boss saying that Trump "doesn't want to do
anything" about calls for violence against then-Vice President Mike Pence.
"He thinks Mike deserves it," she recalled Meadows saying.
David French, an editor with the conservative publication The Dispatch, praised
Hutchinson for "the most extraordinary congressional testimony I've ever seen,"
and said her appearance before the committee shifted his skepticism about it
producing evidence that Trump was criminally responsible for the Capitol attack.
"Hutchinson's sworn testimony closes a gap in the criminal case against Trump,
and Trump is closer to a credible prosecution than ever before," he wrote.
The right-leaning Washington Examiner said Hutchinson's testimony "ought to ring
the death knell for former President Donald Trump's political career" and that
"Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again."
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108573335/hutchinsons-bombshell-jan-6-testimony-sways-legal-experts-and-conservative-media
Trump not only knew that members of his insurrection mob were armed — he had
advance knowledge that they *were going to be* armed. He knew it because Trump
and Meadows and Bannon and Flynn and Giuliani all were in on the *planning* of
the insurrection. Planning for the insurrection was going on for *weeks* in the
fucking Oval Office. Trump was well aware of everything the "Proud Boys" and
"Oath Keepers" and other seditious conspirators were planning on doing.