The House committee investigating January 6 released a trove of evidence as its work wound down this week ahead of the new Congress, documentation including copies of text exchanges that former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson had with Anthony Ornato, another presidential team member, on January 6.
The available texts show Ornato contemporaneously confirming — although not in direct terms — that Trump wanted more people in a specially designated area for his January 6 rally held in D.C. Ornato also indicated that the metal detectors known as magnetometers in use that day in the rally’s security screening process were a point of contention. Hutchinson has separately said that she personally heard Trump pushing for the removal of the magnetometers, no matter the weapons carried by the Trump supporters gathering in D.C. that day. “I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the president say something to the effect of, you know, ‘I don’t f’ing care that they have weapons,'” Hutchinson told panel investigators. “‘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. Let the people in. Take the f’ing mags away”
“He doesn’t get it that the people on the monument side don’t want to come in,” Ornato told Hutchinson in those texts. “They can see from there and don’t have to go through mags.” His comments point to Trump wanting the people lingering outside the rally space to gather closer, and since the status quo involved the magnetometers in use for the security process, any action directly in line with the then-president’s push that Ornato spoke to in these texts would have likely required relaxing the security screenings. For Trump to knowingly accept even the potential of serious weapons among his supporters adds dangerous, physical violence to that of which he was aware. That means the ignorance defense just doesn’t work. It wasn’t recklessness. He was both aware of the documentation showing the legitimacy of his loss — considering how many people pushed it to him — and aware of the potentially legal problems of moving forward with his January 6 ambitions.
Hutchinson and Ornato also discussed ambitions Trump had for going to the Capitol in those texts from the afternoon of January 6, hours before rioters later breached the building. Although the exchange doesn’t directly confirm accounts Hutchinson said Ornato told her of Trump later getting physical in his vehicle while pushing to still go to the Capitol despite security concerns after his speech, the comments do reflect his more general push. It’s not clear what Trump might have done at the Capitol, where he could have ended up showing up as his followers violently assaulted police and hunted top government officials.
And here’s Hutchinson describing contemporaneously her call from McCarthy on Jan. 6 pic.twitter.com/N6n3zs8DDp
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 1, 2023
Featured image: Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons
