Visual: Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony from the Jan. 6 hearing
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Like no witness before her, Cassidy Hutchinson brought the public inside the West Wing on Jan. 6 and in the days surrounding it. In live testimony and clips from her videotaped deposition, she used vivid detail to recount scenes involving President Donald Trump and some of his closest associates.
From Oval Office dining room to the backstage area at the White House Ellipse, she explained how Trump and the people around him reacted to key moments leading up to the pro-Trump riot, quoting extensively from her interactions with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as well as from discussions she overheard involving the president.
Here are four of the revelatory scenes that Hutchinson described:
Dec. 1, 2020: Ketchup on the wall
Hutchinson was within earshot of the Oval Office dining room on Dec. 1, 2020, when President Donald Trump saw that his attorney general, William P. Barr, told the Associated Press that the Justice Department had not found evidence of widespread voter fraud. She heard a commotion and, when the valet beckoned her into the dining room, she observed the aftermath of the president’s reaction.
Jan. 2, 2021: ‘We’re going to the Capitol’
On Jan. 2, 2021, four days before the attack on the Capitol, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani met with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others. Hutchinson walked Giuliani out of the White House that night and heard him preview the events of Jan. 6.
Jan. 6, 2021: ‘They’re not here to hurt me’
Backstage before Trump’s speech to supporters at the Ellipse, Hutchinson stood near the president as he assessed the size of the crowd and, in her telling, requested that metal detectors be removed so that people with firearms could attend, saying, “They’re not here to hurt me.”
Jan. 6, 2021: Not going to the Capitol
Hutchinson described what Tony Ornato, deputy chief of staff for operations, told her about Trump’s reaction to being told he could not join his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
