Witnesses refuted a number of Trump’s key talking points
Trump has repeatedly insisted,
without evidence, that prior to Jan. 6 he offered to send 20,000 National Guard troops to secure the Capitol that day but that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to accept the offer. Hours before Thursday’s hearing got underway,
Trump repeated that assertion on his social media platform Truth Social. But the select committee swiftly knocked down the claim, showing clips from interviews with multiple former White House staffers, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Gen. Kieth Kellogg, who served as national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. Both stated definitively that they were not aware of Trump issuing orders to send the National Guard or any other law enforcement personnel to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The committee also introduced testimony from two new witnesses who corroborated key details from the testimony of
former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who previously testified that she was told about an alleged altercation between Trump and his Secret Service detail after the former president was told that it would not be safe for him to join his supporters at the Capitol following his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
Hutchinson said she heard about the altercation, which involved Trump grabbing for the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle and lunging at Secret Service agent Robert Engel. Trump has
forcefully denied the account, but on Thursday Luria revealed that the panel has since obtained “evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry exchange in the presidential SUV, including testimony we will disclose today from two witnesses who confirmed that a confrontation occurred.”
