Alcindor: So, what also happened this week was a surprise January 6 committee hearing. It had some of the most explosive testimony yet.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that former President Trump demand armed protesters be allowed into his January 6 rally and that Trump insisted on joining the crowd at the Capitol. She also said former President Trump grabbed the neck of a Secret Service agent and the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle when he was told it was too dangerous to go to the Capitol.
But some have pushed back on parts of her story, and many Republicans have dismissed her words as hearsay.
Meanwhile, new insights from Hutchinson about former White House chief of staff Pat Cipollone and chief -- and former chief of staff Mark Meadows may have opened up a whole new lane in the investigation.
Hutchinson: I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, 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.
Alcindor: The January 6 committee has now subpoenaed Pat Cipollone to testify.
Joining us now to discuss this, Jacqueline Alemany, congressional investigations reporter for "The Washington Post."
Jacqueline, Jackie, thank you so much for being here.
You’ve been covering January 6 inside and out. So, I want to just ask you what stuck out to you and what was different about this week.
Jacqueline Alemany, Congressional Investigations Reporter, The Washington Post: Yeah, Yamiche, it was certainly one of maybe the most explosive congressional testimonies that we’ve seen in history. For all the comparisons to John Dean, Cassidy Hutchinson might have actually surpassed expectations, but with these revelations and with the committee achieving what they wanted to do, which was breakthrough to the broader American public, has also come intense scrutiny and criticism from Trump and his allies specifically, trying to poke holes in Cassidy Hutchinson’s credibility and open the committee up to criticism that they did not thoroughly vet some of her claims in the lead up to her -- the scramble to get her on the dais.
That being said, the majority of her testimony has not been contested. There was only one small anecdote, that anonymous Secret Service agents have come out against, but the rest of it has so far stood the test of time, and there are other committees hoping to subpoena Republicans like Pat Cipollone to corroborate some of the more explosive revelations, such as the president actually encouraged armed rioters to march to the Capitol.
Alcindor: I want to ask you about Pat Cipollone. He obviously, as you just said, was subpoenaed to testify. How problematic might it be for the committee if he doesn’t show up?
Alemany: I -- the committee right now, it’s a fairly mixed bag on feelings on if you will ultimately show up. And so, the latest reporting that we have is that his lawyers are in close negotiations and that is it's quite possible that he is prepared to provide at least written testimony. But what the committee would obviously like would be for that to be videotaped so they could ultimately take the videotaped depositions and present it to the American public.
And it really could be key to, I think, breaking through some of these criticisms from those in the conservative media ecosystem, who are putting unsubstantiated attacks on Hutchinson and her testimony. But at the end of the day, Pat Cipollone, whether or not he cooperates, might not be key. The committee after all has been doing this for over a year now, and they have mountains of evidence, and are still prepared to reveal some other bombshells in their finale hearing, which is now scheduled for not next week but the week after.
Alcindor: And, Peter, in thinking about sort of the focus of these hearings, 13 million people supposedly watched Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony. You told our producers that people shouldn’t get lost in sort of back and forth because there were so much other things that were talked about.
We covered former President Trump together. What’s your take on sort of what we learned and the overall impact that this hearing might have given the grip the former President Trump had but also the sort of window we saw into the White House and his thinking?
Williams: I think it was important in a number of instances. And the most important thing was the mindset of the president on January 6, in particularly, right? Because we heard from someone who is in the room, who’s, you know, present in the White House, who was part of the team there about how he views this.
And what he -- what he worried about was the size of the crowd. He didn’t care that they seemed to have weapons. He said to the Secret Service, take down the magnetometers. They’re not here to hurt me. And then he wanted to go to the Capitol himself and lead this crowd that he knew was armed in some cases with weapons in order to try to disrupt the transfer of power.
And while we may not exactly what lunging -- he didn’t do in the Secret Service vehicle, what the Secret Service has confirmed, even as Jackie rightly points out they are anonymously denying that aspect of it, what they had confirmed is he did get angry on them and tried to get them to take him to the Capitol and they refused to do it.
So, this mindset I think kind of dispels some of the defense that the president had been mounting in recent weeks or his allies had, that, you know, his state of mind wasn’t such that you could say he knew that he was going to unleash a violent crowd. She has provided testimony that suggests the opposite, that he knew the crowd was potentially violent, that he knew -- and he encouraged it and he wanted to join them up there.
I think that’s the thing. You’ve heard a lot of lawyers say this week, conservatives, that is -- you know, to use the words of former Ken Starr prosecutor said, a smoking gun.
Alcindor: And talk about smoking gun and sort of just the significance of this hearing, former President Trump was out attacking Cassidy Hutchinson in real time, on Truth Social, which is social media platform.
Tia, you, of course, had been to all the hearings. You were also trapped with a group of lawmakers during the Capitol riot. What’s your take on the impact of these hearings and the significance of it given that you, of course, are talking to lawmakers about it as well?
Mitchell: Yeah. I think the impact of the hearings are to lay out not just what happened, but they are trying to connect the dots, that the violence on January 6 was fed into by Trump and his allies in that they knew that what happened, that deadly riot, was a possibility based on their rhetoric. And so, the committee has laid that out and talked about the pressure campaign on officials and talked about the people who were at home feeding into the misinformation and disinformation felt compelled by the former president to come to Washington on January 6.
And again, the committee is only kind of fact-finding, and they’re going to -- they are presenting a case, but what they’re hoping is that the result is charges by entities that do have the power to bring charges against former President Trump or his allies, and that is what remains to be seen.
Alcindor: Including in Georgia, possibly.
Mitchell: Yes, in Georgia, we have district attorney in Fulton County, where Atlanta is based, who has convened a special grand jury and there are, you know --
Alcindor: And the charges that could happen.
Mitchell: A lot of speculation.
Alcindor: Which is a lot.
And, Jackie, I want to go to you. The committee also talked about trying to get new witnesses but also that there might be sort of witness tampering going on. What more do you know about that given your reporting?
Alemany: Yeah, Yamiche. That decision by Liz Cheney to end yesterday’s -- sorry, Tuesday, I don’t even know what day it is.
Alcindor: No, I understand.
Alemany: Was very deliberate by the committee. They put up those two messages that were communicated to Cassidy Hutchinson from those in Trump’s allies to try to intimidate her from ultimately cooperating with the committee and being truthful and disclosing the details that she provided. And in doing that, I think what we are actually seeing is that intimidation campaign continues and also signify that others who do come forward should know that the committee sort of almost in a way has their back and is prepared to potentially prosecute those who continue to try to discourage those from coming forward.
And I think what’s really interesting, actually, is that this is all representative of a pattern we have seen really over the 4 years of the Trump White House and that has continued past the Trump presidency, and it has ultimately allowed the former president to keep this tight grip over his supporters and prevent a lot of them from coming forward to the committee and helping with the investigation.
Alcindor: And it’s remarkable that while that was going on, Bennie Thompson was making an appeal to other witnesses saying if you suddenly remember something or if you want to come forward, he said, please remember that you won’t previously haven’t, or if you have discovered some courage, I’m reading, you had hidden away somewhere, you should come before the committee. So, a lot to talk about there.
