A 25-Year-Old Woman Just Blew Up the Trump Administration’s January 6 Plot

Former officials in the Trump administration have been evading the January 6 hearings by either pleading the Fifth Amendment dozens of times or by refusing to testify altogether. But today, Cassidy Hutchinson, the 25-year-old former aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, captivated the country by airing—in great detail—a whole lot of their dirty laundry for them. Hutchinson’s testimony not only underscored that former President Donald Trump is a petulant baby, but that he also really didn’t care if his supporters harmed or killed people that day. (We also learned that his secret service code name, which presidents choose, was MOGUL.)

To be clear, Hutchinson is a conservative who previously interned for both Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). She said during her testimony that she believed Trump had done “good things” for the country. We are not calling her a hero or praising her politics, but she does have more courage than many men decades older than her. Unlike them, it appears that she doesn’t have to be worried about potential prosecution, which may have something to do with her former superiors’ silence.

Here’s a list of just some of the absolutely wild things Hutchison shared today, under oath:

• Trump was angry on January 6 that police weren’t letting armed people past the metal detectors, aka magnetometers, into his rally, because he wanted the area full of his supporters. Hutchinson said: “I overheard the president say something to the effect of ‘I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f-ing mags away. Let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here.’”
• White House counsel Pat Cipollone had urged Trump not to walk to the Capitol building on January 6 because he was allegedly worried Trump could get charged with obstructing the electoral count and inciting a riot. Hutchinson said that, on the morning of January 6, Cipollone told her “something to the effect of ‘please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.’”
• Hutchinson said she heard secondhand that when Secret Service informed Trump that they wouldn’t be taking him to the Capitol in his presidential limo, he tried to grab the car’s steering wheel and lunged at a Secret Service officer. According to Hutchinson, Tony Ornato, a White House official, recounted Trump screaming, “I’m the f-ing president. Take me up to the Capitol now.” Trump then “reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” Hutchinson said Ornato told her. She said Ornato also told her that Trump “lunged” at Robert Engel, the Secret Service agent in charge.
• On the day that Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press that he hadn’t found widespread evidence of voter fraud, Trump threw his lunch against the White House dining room wall, leaving ketchup dripping down the wall.
• Trump didn’t think the rioters were doing anything wrong and thought Mike Pence “deserved” the chants calling for him to be hung. Hutchinson: “I remember Pat saying something to the effect of, ‘Mark, we need to do something more, they’re literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung.’ And Mark had responded something to the effect of, ‘You heard it, Pat, he thinks Mike deserves it, he doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.’”
• Both Rudy Giuliani and Meadows sought presidential pardons.
• In a speech he gave on Jan. 7, Trump wanted to say that he was going to pardon the rioters but lawyers made him cut it.

Trump, who was banned from Twitter after the insurrection, issued a response to today’s hearing in multiple posts on Truth Social:

I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and “leaker”), and when she requested to go with certain others of the team to Florida after my having served a full term in office, I personally turned her request down. Why did she want to go with us if she felt we were so terrible? I understand that she was very upset and angry that I didn’t want her to go, or be a member of the team. She is bad news!

Never complained about the crowd, it was massive. I didn’t want or request that we make room for people with guns to watch my speech. Who would ever want that? Not me! Besides, there were no guns found or brought into the Capitol Building…So where were all of these guns? But sadly, a gun was used on Ashli Babbitt, with no price to pay against the person who used it!

Hutchinson is a conservative woman but, at the end of the day, Trump and the MAGA movement will attack her—and anyone else who dares to criticize them.