Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff, testified that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and when his Secret Service escort told him they were taking him to the White House, he tried to grab the driver and wheel.
This was immediately disputed by Tony Ornato, who Politico describes (here) as “a Secret Service official who served a year as a political appointee in Trump’s White House.”
Hutchinson didn’t witness this herself. She testified Ornato told her about it. He’s her source of this information, so if he says it’s not true, his denial raises serious questions about whether it happened the way she described. But the fact Ornato was a Trump political appointee raises red flags about the truthfulness of his denial.
So does the fact Ornato was involved in trying to remove Pence from the Capitol, which would’ve prevented him from completing the certification of the election, see story here.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a member of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, was blunt about it. He said, “Tony Ornato likes to lie.” So maybe he should be hooked up to a lie detector?
Ornato had already been interviewed by the committee, in January of this year, and committee members came away then shaking their heads over inconsistencies and inaccuracies in his statements then (see story linked above). And the Secret Service itself is already under fire for lapses on Jan. 6 (see story here).
“Hutchinson said Ornato had described the vehicle incident in a huddle with her and the head of Trump’s detail, Robert Engel, after the rally,” Politico reports, and “Engel, she said, did not contradict any aspect of Ornato’s story at the time. But within hours of her public testimony, reports emerged suggesting that Ornato and Engel were both willing to appear under oath and contradict Hutchinson’s account.” They’re entitled to do so.
But tell me there’s no video inside the presidential limo. Even Uber drivers have video. (There’s already video taken from outside the limo posted; view it here.) This shouldn’t be that difficult to resolve.
Update (7/1/22): It didn’t take long for corroboration of Hutchinson’s testimony to surface in the press. Gossip circulating within the Secret Service over the past year supports there was an “angry confrontation” and presidential “lunge over the seat” in the limo when agents refused to take Trump to the Capitol. See story here.