What we learned on Day 6 of the Jan. 6 committee hearings

Read the Full Transcript

• Judy Woodruff:

  The congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol today held a quickly scheduled hearing, its sixth this month, to present what it called new and urgent evidence about what former President Donald Trump knew and said before, during and after the insurrection.

  Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, presented the most compelling and detailed account yet of the actions of the former president's inner circle.

  And she shared her reaction as she watched the events of January 6.

  Cassidy Hutchinson, Former Aide to Mark Meadows: I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed, and, really, it felt personal. I was really sad.

  As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol Building get defaced over a lie.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Today was the first time Hutchinson publicly appeared before the committee, but she has spoken several other times behind closed doors. And in video from those depositions, Hutchinson explained that Trump knew some of the members of the crowd were armed with weapons because he grew frustrated about the Secret Service security procedures, specifically the metal detectors, making the crowd at his January 6 speech smaller than he wanted.

• Cassidy Hutchinson:

  He wanted it full. And he was angry that we weren't letting people through the mags with weapons.

  I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the president say something to the effect of: "I don't effing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the effing mags away."

• Judy Woodruff:

  Our congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins and White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López have been following the hearings today. They both join me now.

  Laura, let me begin with you.

  Cassidy Hutchinson, not a name we were familiar with, but she was at the center of so much what was going on in the White House, certainly had a lot of access. How did she fill in the timeline of what took place?

• Laura Barrón-López:

  That's right, Judy.

  So, Cassidy Hutchinson is — has worked for Republicans for a very long time, and she was in daily contact with her boss, Mark Meadows, as well as a lot of other senior White House officials throughout her time in the White House and leading up to January 6.

  She testified that multiple — on multiple occasions, there were warnings and raised concerns about threats of violence on that day. She said that she overheard Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's lawyer, talking about Proud Boys and Oath Keepers being present at the events that day.

  And then she also gave very important testimony about an exchange that she had with Pat Cipollone, White House counsel to President Trump. And in that exchange, Cipollone told Hutchinson on January 3 that he was really worried about legal concerns that the White House could face if President Trump decided to go to the Capitol on January 6, making a movement that would be very logistically difficult.

  And he also warned her again on the morning of January 6. Here's what Cipollone said to Hutchinson:

• Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY):

  And we understand, Ms. Hutchinson, that you also spoke to Mr. Cipollone on the morning of the 6th as you were about to go to the rally on the Ellipse.

  And Mr. Cipollone said something to you like, make sure the movement to the Capitol does not happen. Is that correct?

• Cassidy Hutchinson:

  That's correct.

  I saw Mr. Cipollone right before I walked out onto West Exec that morning. And Mr. Cipollone said something to the effect of: "Please make sure we don't go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We're going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen."

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Now, that exchange that Hutchinson recalled was new. We had never heard that before. And also the specific crimes that Cipollone was talking about, he told Hutchinson that he thought that they could face obstruction of proceeding charges, as well as defrauding of electors charges.

  And still, despite all of those warnings, the president wanted to go to the Capitol and urged his staff to make it possible for him.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, Laura, Cassidy Hutchinson testified about how she traveled in the president's motorcade to the rally that was taking place on the morning of January 6.

  And she also testified about the president's reaction when he learned that a number of the people at that rally or in that area were carrying weapons.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  That's right.

  As you mentioned earlier, Judy, the president was really upset that he — his supporters were not being allowed into where his speech was at, which is the Ellipse, which is right outside of the White House. And it was because that they had weapons, they had knives, they had other very dangerous paraphernalia on them.

  And the president said, let them through, they aren't going to hurt me, and that he was pretty much dismissing threats of violence. Now, after his speech at that Stop the Steal rally with his supporters, the president then went to go get into his motorcade with — into the vehicle that we call the Beast.

  And when he got in, he got in with Robert Engel, who was his top Secret Service agent that day. And he was under the impression that he was going to be able to go from that speech to the Capitol along with his supporters.

  And when he was told by Robert Engel that he was not going to be able to do that due to resources, here's how the president reacted:

• Cassidy Hutchinson:

  The president had a very strong, a very angry response to that. Tony described him as being irate.

  The president said something to the effect of: "I'm the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now," to which Bobby responded: "Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing."

  The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said: "Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We're going back to the West Wing. We're not going to the Capitol."

  Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel. And when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Hutchinson was told that exchange about that episode in the Beast by Antony Ornato, who was then deputy chief of staff to the president.

  And she said that, when she was told — she was told that when they returned to the White House, because, again, she was in the motorcade with the president throughout the day when he went to the speech when he came back to the White House from the speech.

  And she said that, when she was told that, Robert Engel was standing there in the room, again, that Secret Service — Secret Service agent with the president, and he did not refute anything that was said in that episode.

  And as the days — as the day went on, then rioters broke into the Capitol, which we all watched as they started to descend into the Senate. And Hutchinson said that, at that point, she witnessed Pat Cipollone, White House counsel to the president, confront Mark Meadows chief of staff, and that Cipollone was very concerned because we were starting to hear chants about hanging Vice President Mike Pence from the rioters that had descended on the Capitol.

  And here is what Cipollone said to Meadows:

• Cassidy 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 effing hung."

  And Mark had responded something to the effect of: "You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn't think they're doing anything wrong."

• Laura Barrón-López:

  The big picture here, Judy, is that we have heard from Hutchinson's testimony time and again all of the warning signs and all of the concerns about what would happen on January 6, and that the president appeared to be dismissing the threats of violence, not just to members of Congress, but also to his vice president.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And I'm going to have Lisa pick it up from here.

  Lisa, when it comes to the president's then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, we did learn more today about his role in all this.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  That's right, a lot of names here, but central is Mark Meadows.

  And let's remind our viewers who we're talking about and his own history. Mark Meadows came to Congress as a member from North Carolina. And we can look at some of the associations in a graphic that we have here. There you go.

  Mark Meadows, he, in 2015, formed the Freedom Caucus with Jim — Congressman Jim Jordan. And then, in 2020, he became the chief of staff to President Trump, central figure.

  And what we have heard described today in testimony, Judy, was a picture of a chief of staff who just was not acting, to the degree to which it almost seemed it was a passiveness that may have bordered on permissiveness of what was going on in the White House's Oval Office.

  On January 2 in particular, Cassidy Hutchinson described a conversation with Rudy Giuliani. She was walking him out of the White House. He brought up plans for January 6 in a way that really got on her radar like never before. She walked back into the White House, and she was asked today, did she then talk to Mark Meadows, her boss, about what she heard from Giuliani?

  Here's her response.

• Cassidy Hutchinson:

  I went back up to our office. And I found Mr. Meadows in his office on the couch. He was scrolling through his phone.

  I remember leaning against the doorway and saying: "I just had an interesting conversation with Rudy, Mark. It sounds like we are going to go to the Capitol."

  He didn't look up from his phone and said something to the effect of: "There's a lot going on, Cass, but I don't know. Things might get real, real bad on January 6."

  That evening was the first moment that I remember feeling scared and nervous for what could happen on January 6.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Fast-forward to January 6, and Hutchinson says her boss, Mark Meadows, was unresponsive to her pleas to pay attention to what was going on to the Capitol.

  She — he wasn't even really concerned about Jim Jordan when she first brought that issue up. And then she recounted this moment, when White House counsel Pat Cipollone reached out to Meadows to try and get him to get the president more involved. Here's that conversation.

• Cassidy Hutchinson:

  "The rioters have gotten to the Capitol, Mark. We need to go down and see the president now."

  And Mark looked up at him and said: "He doesn't want to do anything, Pat."

  And Pat said something to the effect of, and very clearly had said this to Mark, something to the effect of: "Mark, something needs to be done, or people are going to die and the blood's going to be on your effing hands. This is getting out of control. I'm going down there."

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Just extraordinary testimony.

  We also heard today that — from Hutchinson that Meadows himself asked for a pardon. We, of course, reached out to Mr. Meadows' attorneys for a response to all of this. We have not heard back yet.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Lisa, there was literally one explosive disclosure after another.

  Anything else you would add that was noteworthy in the way of accusations? And how are the former president and the others around him responding to all this?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  I will say some Republicans have reacted in texts with me, direct messages, with just a simple exclamation point.

  But it's important to point out that the president has in fact been responding today. Here are some of the quotes that he's put out on social media today.

  First, he said of Hutchinson: "I hardly know who this person is."

  Of that limo anecdote, the idea that he reached out and assaulted a security aide, he said, that's a "fake story." And he also said: "There's no cross-examination for this so-called witnesses. This is a kangaroo court."

  And I should remind viewers, of course, that President — former President Trump in the past has disassociated himself, said he doesn't know people that we know he has been associated with in the past. So I would want to add that piece of context.

  Now, overall, let's talk about all these accusations. Laura and I have presented a lot of reporting it's easy to get lost in. But we wanted to summarize what we learned today overall.

  First, that President Trump knew about weapons here in Washington, D.C., and a chance for violence from the crowd as it was getting ready to go to the Capitol, and that he himself wanted to march into the Capitol with the crowd. The other accusation is that he assaulted the security chief sworn to protect him by — because he wanted to take over and get himself to the Capitol.

  And then another accusation, Judy, that is important, witness tampering, that the committee said that they now have messages from Trump allies to witnesses saying that they are sure they will be loyal. That, of course, is also a potential federal crime.

  And I think, with all of this, what we're seeing now is the committee kind of honing more and more evidence for criminal cases. That still remains in the hands of the Department of Justice, of course. And we also know more hearings are ahead. We don't know when.

• Judy Woodruff:

  That's right. They point — pointed to hearings upcoming, more information to be disclosed.

  Lisa Desjardins, Laura Barrón-López, we thank you both.

Improved audio player available on our mobile page