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(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. Liz Cheney told This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview that she has full faith and confidence in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the 26-year-old former Trump White House aide who delivered explosive testimony about the Capitol riot during a highly publicized hearing this week.
“As you know, there’s an active campaign underway to destroy her credibility. Do you have any doubt at all in anything that she said to you?” Karl asked Cheney.
“I am absolutely confident in her credibility. I’m confident in her testimony,” Cheney told Karl in a wide-ranging interview set to air in full on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
“I think that what Cassidy Hutchinson did was an unbelievable example of bravery and of courage and patriotism in the face of real pressure,” said Cheney, who is vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee.
The witness, Hutchinson, a former top adviser to then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, spent some two hours divulging extraordinary details about what she said went on behind the scenes leading up to, during and after the attack.
Hutchinson sat for multiple closed-door transcribed interviews with the committee during its year-long inquiry but on Tuesday, she spoke publicly for the first time during the committee’s sixth publicized hearing.
She described in detail how she was told about Trump’s desire to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6 after he spoke at a rally near the White House — and how Trump became furious when he was told it wasn’t safe or advisable for him to be there.
Republicans loyal to Trump, including Trump himself, immediately sought to discredit her testimony.
Trump on Tuesday dismissed Hutchinson’s testimony, posting on social media that “I hardly know who this person … is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and ‘leaker’).”
“She is bad news!” he added.
“We have real confidence as a committee that she testified honestly, and in her credibility, and I think the world saw that — she testified under oath, and her credibility is there for the world to judge,” Cheney said in her interview with Karl.
“She’s an incredibly brave young woman,” Cheney added. “The committee is not going to stand by and watch her character be assassinated by anonymous sources and by men who are claiming executive privilege.”
On Wednesday, Hutchinson’s lawyers released a new statement amid pushback on her testimony.
“Ms. Hutchinson stands by all of the testimony she provided yesterday, under oath, to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” Hutchinson’s counsel, Jody Hunt and William Jordan, said in the statement to ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s former White House counsel Pat Cipollone was subpoenaed Wednesday for a deposition by the House’s Jan. 6 committee.
“The Select Committee’s investigation has revealed evidence that Mr. Cipollone repeatedly raised legal and other concerns about President Trump’s activities on January 6th and in the days that preceded,” the committee’s chair and vice-chair, Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson and Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, said in a statement.
Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin met with committee investigators for an informal interview in April.
Cipollone had been considering some form of cooperation with the committee, under certain restrictions, ABC News previously reported.
The new subpoena comes one day after Cipollone was repeatedly mentioned during the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Hutchinson told the committee during a Tuesday hearing that on the morning of Jan. 6, Cipollone was adamant that Trump shouldn’t accompany his supporters to the Capitol after addressing them at the Ellipse near the White House earlier that day.
“We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,” she recalled Cipollone telling her at the time.
A lawyer familiar with Cipollone’s deliberations told ABC News in response to the committee’s announcement: “Of course a subpoena was necessary before the former White House counsel could even consider transcribed testimony before the committee.”
“Now that a subpoena has been issued, it’ll be evaluated as to matters of privilege that might be appropriate,” the lawyer said.
The committee had written in a letter to Cipollone along with his subpoena that they “continued to obtain evidence about which you are uniquely positioned to testify; however, you have declined to cooperate with us further.”
Cipollone was one of the few aides who was with then-President Trump in the West Wing on Jan. 6. ABC News has reported that in the days following the attack on the Capitol, he advised Trump that Trump could potentially face civil liability in connection with his role encouraging supporters to march on the Capitol.
Sources have said there would be a number of circumstances that could serve to complicate any eventual appearance by Cipollone — including the issue of who questions him and for how long; whether there are any ongoing issues of privilege; and whether Trump would approve of his appearance.
Cipollone also made clear that his testimony would be restricted to the effort undertaken by former top Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to use the powers of the DOJ to further Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential race, sources familiar with the deliberations have said.
Both Cipollone and Philbin, his deputy, were part of a Jan. 3, 2021, Oval Office meeting where Trump insisted on replacing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Clark, a Trump loyalist who had vowed to use the Department of Justice to investigate the election.
Cipollone and Philbin made it clear to Trump that they would resign if Clark were installed, according to a Senate committee report released last year that detailed instances where Trump and his allies sought to use the DOJ to overturn the election.
(ALBANY, N.Y.) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday detailed what is in gun safety legislation she will propose during a special state legislative session scheduled for Thursday.Hochul is set to propose a slew of ideas in response to last week’s Supreme Court decision to strike down a state law that had limited the concealed carry of handguns in public to people who had “proper cause.”
“There’s more to do, this is a nationwide crisis. Too many lives are being lost here in New York, but I will not rest, as the governor of this state, until we have done everything in our power to end this gun epidemic once and for all,” Hochul said.
The legislation will define a number of “sensitive locations” where people will not be allowed to carry concealed guns, Hochul said.
Those locations include: federal, state, local government buildings; health and medical facilities; places where children gather like daycares, parks, zoos and playgrounds; public transportation like subways and buses; polling places; and educational institutions, Hochul said.
If the proposed bill is signed into law, all private businesses will be classified as “no open carry” areas by default, unless business owners post signage indicating that people are allowed to carry concealed weapons, Hochul said.
Hochul’s proposed legislation will also strengthen the list of disqualifying criteria, banning those with a history of dangerous behavior from being able to get a permit.
The laws will also add a vehicle requirement to existing safe storage laws, requiring gun owners to lock up their guns when they are traveling to cut down on gun thefts from cars.
Gun owners with children in their homes aged 18 or younger will have to get safe storage for their guns, keeping them locked up.
The laws will improve information sharing for state police background checks, Hochul said.
Gun owners will also be required to get over 15 hours of in-person training to receive a concealed carry permit, Hochul said.
Hochul said the laws will require a background check for all purchases of ammunition for guns that need a permit. Gun owners will have to show their permit at the time of purchase.
The special legislative session comes over a month after a gunman killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in an allegedly racially motivated attack.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee Tuesday added a new layer of political consequences for Donald Trump after she detailed a defiant president she said wanted to lead supporters from his rally on the Ellipse to the Capitol even after being warned they were armed.
There are political ramifications as well for several vulnerable members of Congress, notably five of the 35 GOP members of the House of Representatives who voted in May 2021 in favor of a bipartisan commission to probe what surrounded the attack on U.S. Capitol and who faced a primary or runoff contest Tuesday night.
Of the group of five, four survived, with one loss.
Of the total group, 16 of the 35 have advanced from their early contests, three have lost, while nine others resigned or retired.
Inconsistent results in these primaries show Republican voters’ political fealty is unclear: Are they steadfastly loyal to Trump or are they satisfied with elements of Trumpism paired with more home-grown politics? The answer to that question is a sword of Damocles for many of these candidates — having to assess whether breaking party ranks will come back to bite them.
It’s critical to note that support of a bipartisan probe has not equated to full-throated endorsement of the current House bipartisan Jan. 6 committee.
In fact, one of the commission supporters, Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, who won Tuesday night, recently called the public hearings a “dangerous, political stunt,” similar to what Trump himself has said. (Such line-toeing rhetoric can be a firewall against attacks from a Trump-endorsed challenger — or accusations of being a RINO (Republican In Name Only).
Similar tactics likely aided Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., fend off a challenge from Navy pilot Michael Cassidy in his runoff election as well as Utah’s Rep. Blake Moore, who claimed his vote was to back the commission investigating Capitol security decisions made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Sometimes, even not criticizing the Jan. 6 committee didn’t hurt. Rep. John Curtis, of Utah, said of Hutchinson’s testimony: “It was an extremely credible witness, but you always want to hear from other side.”
At the time of his vote on the commission, Curtis, who won his primary Tuesday night, called the original measure to create one “imperfect.”
Not all firewalls were as strong, though, as was the case with Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis who was bested by Trump-backed Rep. Mary Miller, who attacked Davis for stabbing “Trump in the back by voting for the sham January 6th commission.” Ironically enough, Davis congratulated Trump and Miller in his concession speech.
These Republicans losing their races Tuesday may not be entirely sad news for Democrats, regardless if they’ve nationally stood with any anti-Trump sentiment on principle.
Several deep-pocketed left-wing donors, with the help of national groups, have bolstered election-denying right-wing candidates, seemingly in the hope of a more decisive general election victory against an easier-to-beat foe come November.
In Illinois’ gubernatorial race, for example, incumbent Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic Governors Association spent $30 million in ads attacking moderate Republican challenger Richard Irvin, in turn raising the profile of Trump-endorsed candidate state Sen. Darren Bailey.
The Democrats’ ploy worked out in their favor — Bailey bested Irvin in the primary. But such political puppeteering is dangerous and can easily backfire with an electorate that is seeing historically high numbers of Republican voter registrants coupled with historically low approval numbers for President Joe Biden across a flurry of sectors.
Consequences are just as stark across the aisle.
The 80% survival rate of these Republicans is an early smoke signal in GOP races with even higher political stakes: the August primaries of Washington House Reps. Dan Newhouse and Jaime Hererra Beutler, alongside Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer, and Wyoming Liz Cheney – four of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, the most senior member of the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing, said he will officially step down from the bench at noon on Thursday, and the court announced he will then swear in his former law clerk — Ketanji Brown Jackson — to take his place on the bench, becoming the nation’s first Black female justice.
“It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law,” Breyer wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden dated Wednesday.
Breyer’s retirement fulfills the wish of Democrats who lobbied for his exit to make way for Biden’s first nominee to the court.
Jackson will take both her oaths at noon — Chief Justice John Roberts administering the Constitutional Oath and Justice Breyer delivering the Judicial Oath. Her presence will mark the first time four women will be on the Supreme Court at the same time.
Progressive activists had imposed unprecedented public pressure on Breyer, who was nominated in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, to retire. Breyer was first appointed to the federal bench in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, going on to serve 13 years as an appellate judge until Clinton elevated him to replace Justice Harry Blackmun on the Supreme Court in 1994. The Senate confirmed him 87-9.
Last term, Breyer authored major opinions upholding the Affordable Care Act, affirming free speech rights of students off-campus and resolving a multi-billion dollar copyright dispute between two titans of American technology, Google and Oracle.
His retirement relatively early in the Biden presidency, while Democrats retain a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate, helped to ensure his seat would be filled with someone who shares his judicial philosophy.
Breyer has described differences among the justices as contrasts in “philosophical outlook” rather than differences of politics and chaffed at the labeling of justices as “liberal” or “conservative.”
“Politics to me is who’s got the votes. Are you Republican or Democrat? I don’t find any of that here,” he told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl in 2015.
While he never enjoyed the rock-star status held by Ginsburg, Breyer has long been revered and celebrated as a consensus-seeker and happy warrior throughout his 27 years on the court. He has also been one of the few justices to be a regular attendee at State of the Union addresses before a joint session of Congress.
Asked in 2017 how he would like to be remembered, Breyer told an interviewer: “You play the hand you’re dealt. You’re dealt one. And you do the best with what you have. If people say yes, he did, he tried, he did his best and was a decent person, good.”
Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill Breyer’s seat
Jackson, 51, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, will fill Justice Breyer’s seat, and become the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s highest court. With Jackson’s ascension to the bench, for the first time, white men will not represent the majority of justices on the Supreme Court.
President Joe Biden formally announced Jackson’s nomination earlier this year and fulfilled a campaign promise made ahead of the South Carolina primary when he relied heavily on support from the state’s Black voters and Rep. Jim Clyburn.
“For too long our government, our courts haven’t looked like America,” Biden said in February from the White House. “And I believe it is time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications.”
Jackson, who will also be the nation’s first former public defender to sit on the high court, served as a clerk for Breyer from 1999 to 2000 and called it “extremely humbling to be considered” for his seat.
“I know that I could never fill his shoes, but if confirmed, I would hope to carry on his spirit,” she said.
Three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney — joined Senate Democrats in voting to confirm Jackson in April, marking a solid, bipartisan win for the Biden White House.
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, the most senior member of the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing, said he will officially step down from the bench at noon on Thursday, relinquishing his duties as a justice and clearing the way for the swearing-in of the nation’s first Black female justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law,” Breyer wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden dated Wednesday.
Breyer’s retirement fulfills the wish of Democrats who lobbied for his exit to make way for Biden’s first nominee to the court.
Progressive activists had imposed unprecedented public pressure on Breyer, who was nominated in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, to retire. Breyer was first appointed to the federal bench in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, going on to serve 13 years as an appellate judge until Clinton elevated him to replace Justice Harry Blackmun on the Supreme Court in 1994. The Senate confirmed him 87-9.
Last term, Breyer authored major opinions upholding the Affordable Care Act, affirming free speech rights of students off-campus and resolving a multi-billion dollar copyright dispute between two titans of American technology, Google and Oracle.
His retirement relatively early in the Biden presidency, while Democrats retain a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate, helped to ensure his seat would be filled with someone who shares his judicial philosophy.
Breyer has described differences among the justices as contrasts in “philosophical outlook” rather than differences of politics and chaffed at the labeling of justices as “liberal” or “conservative.”
“Politics to me is who’s got the votes. Are you Republican or Democrat? I don’t find any of that here,” he told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl in 2015.
While he never enjoyed the rock-star status held by Ginsburg, Breyer has long been revered and celebrated as a consensus-seeker and happy warrior throughout his 27 years on the court. He has also been one of the few justices to be a regular attendee at State of the Union addresses before a joint session of Congress.
Asked in 2017 how he would like to be remembered, Breyer told an interviewer: “You play the hand you’re dealt. You’re dealt one. And you do the best with what you have. If people say yes, he did, he tried, he did his best and was a decent person, good.”
Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill Breyer’s seat
Jackson, 51, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, will fill Justice Breyer’s seat, and become the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s highest court. With Jackson’s ascension to the bench, for the first time, white men will not represent the majority on the Supreme Court.
President Joe Biden formally announced Jackson’s nomination earlier this year and fulfilled a campaign promise made ahead of the South Carolina primary when he relied heavily on support from the state’s Black voters and Rep. Jim Clyburn.
“For too long our government, our courts haven’t looked like America,” Biden said in February from the White House. “And I believe it is time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications.”
Jackson, who will also be the nation’s first former public defender to sit on the high court, served as a clerk for Breyer from 1999 to 2000 and called it “extremely humbling to be considered” for his seat.
“I know that I could never fill his shoes, but if confirmed, I would hope to carry on his spirit,” she said.
Three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney — joined Senate Democrats in voting to confirm Jackson in April, marking a solid, bipartisan win for the Biden White House.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann is claiming that a handwritten note regarding a potential statement for then-President Donald Trump to release during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was written by him during a meeting at the White House that afternoon, and not by White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
At Tuesday’s Jan. 6 committee hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney displayed a handwritten note which Hutchinson testified she wrote after Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows handed her a note card and pen to take his dictation.
Sources familiar with the matter said that Herschmann had previously told the committee that he had penned the note.
“The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” a spokesperson for Herschmann told ABC News Tuesday evening.
“All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann,” the spokesperson said.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Hutchinson, testifying about the note, said, “That’s a note that I wrote at the direction of the chief of staff on Jan. 6, likely around 3 o’clock.”
“And it’s written on the chief of staff note card, but that’s your handwriting, Ms. Hutchinson?” Rep. Cheney asked.
“That’s my handwriting,” Hutchinson replied.
Hutchinson, a former top aide to Meadows, said that Meadows handed her the note card and a pen and started dictating a potential statement for Trump to release amid the Capitol riot.
Hutchinson also said that Herschmann had suggested changing the statement and to “put ‘without legal authority.'”
In response to Herschmann’s claim, a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee said, “The committee has done its diligence on this and found Ms. Hutchinson’s account of this matter credible. While we understand that she and Mr. Herschmann may have differing recollections of who wrote the note, what’s ultimately important is that both White House officials believed that the President should have immediately instructed his supporters to leave the Capitol building.”
“The note memorialized this,” the committee spokesperson said. “But Mr. Trump did not take that action at the time.”
The Jan. 6 committee has repeatedly relied on Herschmann’s candid and sometimes vulgar testimony throughout the hearings in June, including when the former White House lawyer testified that he shot down former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark’s plan to overturn the 2020 election.
Herschmann, a former Trump White House lawyer, also defended former President Trump during Trump’s first impeachment trial and worked in the West Wing as a senior adviser.
An attorney for Hutchinson did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News, nor did Meadows.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Jan. 6 committee’s surprise hearing on Tuesday featured highly-anticipated and explosive testimony from someone who was inside the White House both as the Capitol attack unfolded and in the days before.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top adviser to then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, spent some two hours divulging details about what went on behind-the-scenes leading up to, during and after the attack.
Committee members and even some former Trump staffers hailed the 25-year-old for showing the courage to deliver her testimony publicly. Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said members felt it important to offer her “firsthand” accounts “immediately.”
“It hasn’t always been easy to get that information, because the same people who drove the former president’s pressure campaign to overturn the election are now trying to cover up the truth about Jan. 6,” Thompson said. “But thanks to the courage of certain individuals, the truth won’t be buried. The American people won’t be left in the dark.”
With Hutchinson’s testimony, Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., argued that Trump and Meadows were well aware of the potential for violence at the Capitol last year yet ultimately dismissed the warnings. Trump even demanded to be taken to the Capitol alongside his supporters, Hutchinson said, despite concerns of legality and security from his team.
Here are some key takeaways from Hutchinson’s testimony:
Trump’s chief of staff knew Jan. 6 might get ‘real, real bad’
Kicking off her revelatory account before the committee, Hutchinson said that Meadows had warned her on Jan. 2, 2021, that “things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6.”
She said Meadows made the remarks to Hutchinson after meeting with Rudy Giuliani, who was at that point a central figure in Trump’s campaign to overturn the election. After the meeting, Giuliani talked enthusiastically to Hutchinson about plans to go to the Capitol, she said.
“It’s going to be great,” Giuliani said to her, Hutchinson said. “The president’s going to be there. He’s going to look powerful.”
When she walked into Meadows’ office to relay what Giuliani told her, she said Meadows responded with the remark about how “bad” the situation may be on Jan. 6.
“That evening was the first moment that I remember feeling scared and nervous for what could happen on Jan. 6,” she told the panel.
Hutchinson testified that Meadows generally knew about the potential for violence on Jan. 6 but failed to act. Both Meadows and Giuliani expressed an interest in seeking pardons over the events of Jan. 6, Hutchinson testified. Giuliani on Tuesday denied asking for a pardon. Meadows has not commented on Hutchinson’s testimony.
White House lawyers worried about criminal charges
Several White House staffers expressed concerns about the legality of what Trump intended to do on Jan. 6, Hutchinson told the committee. Specific crimes they were concerned about, she said, included defrauding the electoral count or obstructing justice.
One point of contention was Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, Hutchinson said. She recalled Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann urging speechwriters to avoid “foolish” language that Trump requested be included, such as the phrases “fight for me” and “we’re going to march to the Capitol.”
On the morning of Jan. 6, Hutchinson said White House counsel Pat Cipollone was adamant that Trump shouldn’t accompany his supporters to the Capitol.
“We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,” she recalled Cipollone telling her at the time.
Trump knew his supporters were armed
With the committee displaying texts from Jan. 6 as visual aids, Hutchinson recalled how Trump was “furious” with the crowd size of his rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and with advisers who didn’t want to let in individuals who had weapons. Those weapons included pistols, rifles, bear spray and flagpoles with spears attached to them, officials warned, according to Hutchinson.
Trump, she said, wanted the metal detectors to be taken away.
“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—— care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f—— mags away. Let my people in,” she recalled. “They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the f—— mags away.”
Cheney said Hutchinson’s testimony established that Trump “was aware that a number of individuals in the crowd had weapons and were wearing body armor” when he spoke at the rally and urged them to then march to the Capitol.
She asked Americans to “reflect on that for a moment”
An ‘irate’ Trump grabbed the wheel inside presidential SUV
In one of the hearing’s most shocking moments, Hutchinson recalled hearing how Trump turned “irate” as he was driven away from the Ellipse after being told by his security that he could not go to the Capitol to meet supporters.
Hutchinson was not in the SUV at the time but said she heard the account from Tony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official, when everyone was back at the White House. Also in the room was Bobby Engel, the head of Trump’s security detail, Hutchinson said
“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,'” she continued. “The president reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm and 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 toward Bobby Engel and when Mr. Ornato recounted this story to me, he motioned toward his clavicles,” she said.
In a statement later Tuesday, the Secret Service reiterated that it had been cooperating and intended to continue to cooperate with the House committee, “including by responding on the record” to Hutchinson’s testimony.
Two sources familiar confirmed to ABC News that Trump had indeed requested to go to Capitol on Jan. 6 and that the Secret Service refused due to security concerns. One of those sources said that the former president did return to his vehicle after his speech at the Ellipse and asked Engel if he could go to the Capitol, with Engel responding, essentially, that it was unwise.
In another alleged incident of Trump having an outburst, Hutchinson told the committee Tuesday that he threw his lunch at the wall in the White House dining room after learning about then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s interview with the Associated Press in which Barr made it clear the Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread fraud in the election. It wasn’t the first time Trump threw a dish or tablecloth in anger, Hutchinson said.
Meadows wanted to go to the ‘war room’ on Jan. 5
Hutchinson testified that the White House was aware of a “war room” assembled in the Willard Hotel in Washington on the night of Jan. 5.
Hutchinson said Trump asked Meadows to speak by phone with Roger Stone, a longtime Trump aide, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn the day before the rally, and that Meadows asked her to look into setting up Secret Service for him to go to the nerve center of the “Stop the Steal” movement that night.
She said she expressed to Meadows she didn’t think was a “smart idea” or “something appropriate for the White House chief of staff to attend or be involved in,” coming days after she overheard Guiliani mentioning “Oath Keepers” and “Proud Boys,” she testified earlier.
Eventually, Meadows dropped the request and said he would dial into a meeting, Hutchinson recalled.
Stone, for his part, said through his attorney that he and Meadows did not talk. “Unequivocally stated, Mr. Stone did not speak to or otherwise communicate with Mr. Meadows on January 5th or 6th. Additionally, Mr. Stone did not receive a call from Mr. Meadows on either day,” Grant Smith exclusively told ABC News.
Flynn, who Trump pardoned in December 2020 for lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador, previously appeared before the committee and repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In a clip played by the committee, Cheney asked Flynn if he “believed in the peaceful transition of power.”
“The Fifth,” Flynn replied.
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Ali Dukakis, Katherine Faulders, Ben Siegel and Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As Tuesday’s primaries get underway, the influence of big money, the “big lie” and some Democratic groups have meddled in some of the races.
Primaries in several states, including Colorado, Illinois and New York, will also be held against the backdrop of the latest — surprise — Jan. 6 hearing in the House.
Republican candidates remain divided on Donald Trump’s evidence-free election denialism across Colorado’s congressional and statewide GOP nominating contests, which are further complicated by Democratic efforts to boost the seemingly more right-wing candidates — assuming those choices would then backfire in the general election.
Two GOP politicians are on the ballot in the Republican Senate primary hoping to unseat Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet. Businessman Joe O’Dea, the moderate in the race, has focused his campaign on public safety and economic reform.
In stark contrast, Ron Hanks has centered his campaign around the “big lie,” baselessly disputing the last presidential race. Hanks attended Trump’s infamous Jan. 6 rally in Washington ahead of the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.
In this GOP Senate primary, some Democrats have directed their money toward supporting Hanks, the election denier in the race. Democratic Colorado, a super PAC, has run ads highlighting Hanks’ conservative values; and ProgressNow Colorado has simultaneously campaigned against O’Dea. Their thinking — as yet unproven — is that Hanks will ultimately be less appealing to much of the electorate even if the conservative base embraces him.
Meanwhile four Republican candidates are vying for the nomination in Colorado’s newly minted 8th Congressional District. Whoever wins will face off against Democratic Nominee Rep. Yadira Caraveo. This highly competitive election could help decide who controls Congress in 2022, where Democrats hope to preserve their fragile majority.
The candidates in that race include state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, Thornton Mayor Jan Kulmann, Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine and political newcomer Tyler Allcorn.
While there is no front-runner in this four-way primary, Lori Saine, the most conservative candidate on the ballot, may likely prove the easiest for Democrats to beat, given past trends.
The House Majority PAC has run ads featuring Saine. Though the ad does not deliberately promote her, it characterizes her as a “conservative warrior” with strong popular Republican stances. A political action committee backing Democratic candidates has also run ads against Saine’s opponent Kirkmeyer.
For the governor’s race, two candidates are facing off in Colorado’s Republican primary to unseat Democratic incumbent Jared Polis: Heidi Ganahl, the establishment favorite, and Greg Lopez, an outspoken election denier who has emphasized that, if elected, he would pardon Tina Peters, an accused election worker there. (She has said she is innocent.)
The Democratic Governors Association sponsored ads raising Lopez’s profile, emphasizing his staunch conservative stances on issues like abortion access and gay marriage.
Against the backdrop of Trump’s election lies, Democrats play a risky game — potentially advancing election deniers further in the race for elected office.
In New York, the Democratic primary for governor features a three-way race between a favored incumbent who has yet to serve a full term and two challengers on her left and right.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is considered a front-runner after she stepped into the position (and became New York’s first female governor) in 2021, following Andrew Cuomo’s resignation.
Her two primary opponents are Rep. Tom Suozzi and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
Four candidates are fighting for the nomination in the New York GOP gubernatorial primary: Rep Lee Zeldin, Rob Astorino, Andrew Giuliani (son of Rudy Giuliani) and Harry Wilson.
Zeldin was first elected to the House in 2014 after serving in the state Senate; he is a member of the House Financial Services and House Foreign Affairs committees. Zeldin also voted in 2021 to sustain objections to certifying the 2020 election results even after the Jan. 6 attack.
The younger Giuliani’s dad is a former New York City mayor and adviser and attorney for former President Trump. Andrew Guiliani recently had to join a gubernatorial debate from a separate studio, instead of appearing alongside the other candidates, because he refused to provide proof of being vaccinated against COVID-19.
Astorino is a consultant and former county executive of Westchester County while Wilson is a businessman who emphasizes his working-class roots. Notably, Wilson supports abortion rights, according to Politico, which could appeal to liberal-leaning voters in a general election in light of the reenergized national conversation around abortion after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
In Illinois, the governor’s race is becoming a heated battle between billionaires as candidates enter the last leg of the primary.
Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker — whose family controls the Hyatt Hotel enterprise — is running for reelection. A billionaire in his own right, Pritzker is expected to succeed in his party’s primary.
Two Republicans are fighting for the chance to go head-to-head with Pritzker in the general election.
Richard Irvin was the first Black mayor of one of Chicago’s largest suburbs, Aurora. Irvin and his campaign have heavily focused on crime and taxes, while the former mayor has avoided mentioning other pressing issues such as abortion.
Pritzker’s nemesis — Billionaire Ken Griffin of Citadel, a hedge fund and financial services company — has helped fund Irvin’s campaign: According to the Illinois State Board of Elections website, Griffin has donated $50 million. Griffin also poured millions in 2018 against Pritzker during his first run for governor of Illinois.
Pritzker and the DGA have spent millions trying to ensure that Irvin is not the GOP nominee in the race.
Another candidate is Republican state Sen. Darren Bailey, who received an endorsement from Trump on Saturday during the former president’s rally in Illinois.
Bailey fought against COVID-19 restrictions, is against abortion access and is an avid supporter of the Second Amendment and Trump.
Bailey has also garnered support from billionaire Richard Uihlein — a mega GOP donor who has thrown millions behind Bailey’s run for governor. According to the Illinois State Board of Elections website, Uihlein has donated $9 million to Bailey’s campaign.
The Illinois primary will also display some of the most heated battles involving incumbent candidates drawn into the same congressional district.
GOP Reps. Mary Miller and Rodney Davis will face off against each other in Tuesday’s primary.
Davis voted to certify the 2020 election and supported a proposal for a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission. On the other hand, Miller voted against certifying the 2020 election results.
Trump endorsed Miller in the race earlier this year and held a rally for her last weekend where Miller spoke on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, saying that it was a “historic victory for white life.”
“President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday,” Miller said.
A spokesperson for Miller told the Associated Press the line was a “mix up of words.”
Davis tweeted to criticize Miller, saying her initial comments were part of a “disturbing pattern of behavior she’s displayed since coming to Congress.”
In January 2021, Miller had quoted Adolf Hitler during a rally in Washington. She said then: “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.'”
Davis has also outraised Miller, $3.4 million to $1.4 million. In addition, the Club For Growth has supported Miller during her reelection.
Over in Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, incumbent Reps. Marie Newman and Sean Casten will face off against one another.
As a member of the progressive caucus, Newman is facing an ethics probe into whether or not she bribed someone into not running for office. She has denied wrongdoing.
(WASHINGTON) — Startling testimony on Tuesday from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson before the House committee investigating Jan. 6 drew shock from Donald Trump’s orbit as well as support for Hutchinson’s character — and a rebuke from the former president himself.
Hutchinson, who worked as a top aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, was the only witness at a surprise hearing on Tuesday. She testified for nearly two hours about Trump’s frame of mind surrounding the 2020 election he lost as well as the events before, during and after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.
Speaking before the House committee under oath, Hutchinson recalled how she had been told that Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent on Jan. 6 when he was told he could not go to the Capitol with a supportive mob after his speech at the Ellipse near the White House. She also testified that, in a separate incident, Trump threw his lunch at the wall after then-Attorney General Bill Barr gave an interview saying there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election — and it wasn’t the only instance of Trump breaking plates or tossing tables over, she said.
Hutchinson told the panel that Trump wanted to ease security for his Jan. 6 speech despite being told that people looking to attend the rally were armed. “They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson, who testified that he went on to downplay accounts that the mob at the Capitol called for then-Vice President Mike Pence to be hung.
Tuesday’s hearing was capped off with warnings from Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., a Trump critic and vice chair of the committee, warning that some witnesses had been intimidated by the former president’s allies.
But it was Hutchinson’s testimony that drew the strongest reaction, with the former president trying to dismiss her as a lowly and disingenuous staffer whom he did not know. Others who worked in the White House with Hutchinson and Trump, however, publicly defended her.
Trump wrote on Truth, his social media site, that he had “heard very negative things” about Hutchinson during her time in his administration and called her a “phony” and a “leaker.”
But aides and former members of Trump’s administration expressed surprise at her testimony, saying it could be further damaging to the twice-impeached former president.
“This is bad,” one aide still close to Trump told ABC News.
Mick Mulvaney, Meadows’s predecessor as chief of staff, echoed that.
“This is explosive stuff. If Cassidy is making this up, they will need to say that. If she isn’t they will have to corroborate. I know her. I don’t think she is lying,” he tweeted.
“That is a very, very bad day for Trump,” Mulvaney added once the hearing finished.
And while Hutchinson’s testimony sparked claims online of lying or hearsay among Trump loyalists — and the Republican Party’s official social media accounts — those who worked in the White House alongside her vouched for her values and her background.
“Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson’s role or her access in the West Wing either doesn’t understand how the Trump WH worked or is attempting to discredit her because they’re scared of how damning this testimony is,” tweeted former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, who resigned after Jan. 6. “For those complaining of ‘hearsay,’ I imagine the Jan. 6 committee would welcome any of those involved to deny these allegations under oath.”
Tuesday was the latest in a series of public hearings the House committee plans to hold through at least July, focusing on such topics as Trump’s pressure on the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election results and the violent events of the insurrection itself.
The panel’s work come as Trump openly teases a third presidential run, in 2024. While polling shows the public broadly disapproves of Trump’s conduct related to Jan. 6, surveys also show him as the front-runner among the conservative base in a potential 2024 GOP primary field.
