WASHINGTON – A devastating new testimony from a former White House aide describing a president desperately clinging to power, indifferent to the danger threatening his No. 2 and potentially disrupting congressional witnesses, sparked concerns Tuesday Donald J. Trump’s current and former advisers on the possible legal and political consequences.
However, reactions were far from unanimous and some confidants of the former president said they doubted whether the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff in the White House, held a particularly prominent place in the pantheon of controversies surrounding it. his six years as a national political figure.
A Trump associate, speaking on condition of anonymity, downplayed the impact of Ms. Hutchinson, acknowledging that he painted a picture of Mr. Trump as bewildered on Jan. 6, but said that shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point.
However, some present and former partners of Mr. Trump expressed concern that the entire testimony of Ms. Hutchinson would harm him politically, as he considers a third presidential campaign.
“Things have gone very badly for the former president today,” Mick Mulvaney, a former White House chief of staff, wrote on Twitter. “My guess is that it will get worse from here.”
A current trusted adviser called the testimony “a killer.”
Ms Hutchinson told the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack that Mr. Trump had demanded that aides stop security checks, with metal detectors, at his rally in the Ellipse before the riots, although some gun supporters had already rejected him, in order to make sure that a larger crowd appeared on television shots during his speech. He said Mr. Trump had done so despite knowing that some of the crowd were armed, and explained that his supporters were not there to attack him.
Ms. Hutchinson testified that a Secret Service agent had told her that Mr. Trump had violently attacked — grabbing the steering wheel and throwing himself at another agent’s collarbone — when his protective detail refused to wear it. at the Capitol while protesters walked there. , insisting instead on returning him to the White House.
And, when asked about the chants of Trump supporters that Vice President Mike Pence should be hanged, Ms. Hutchinson testified that his boss, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, had cited Mr. Trump saying “Mike deserves it.”
The current and former assistants of Mr. Trump has been texting each other while the hearing was held, describing a series of revelations that he admitted were potentially harmful, mostly politically, but also, potentially, legally.
Updated
June 28, 2022, 20:20 ET
If Mr. Trump really noticed that people were armed and still encouraged them to walk to the Capitol, some private advisers said, this could reinforce a charge against him related to the incitement.
Others said it was an exculpatory of Mr. Trump who, in his speech, would have urged protesters to march on the Capitol “peacefully.”
A few hours after concluding Mrs. Hutchinson’s testimony, several Trump advisers took advantage of his account that Mr. Trump was trying to grab the wheel of the SUV in which he was driving as the new most explosive accusation against him, and the one they most hoped to discredit.
But several also expressed concern over the committee’s suggestion, at the end of the day’s hearing, that someone close to Mr. Trump has tried to manipulate or intimidate the committee’s witnesses by reminding them that Mr. Trump reads the transcripts of the panel. This interference could be prosecuted.
Key revelations from the January 6 hearings
Mr Mulvaney, who described the hearing as “two amazing hours”, described the warning about manipulating a witness as a “real bomb that was dropped”.
Tuesday’s testimony was just the latest case in which a former aide or Trump administration official raised his right hand and testified under oath about shocking scenes of Mr. Trump’s behavior behind closed doors. And Mr. Trump has long demonstrated a gravity-defying ability to escape the most terrible difficulties and even turn them to his advantage.
His first trial for dismissal, in early 2020, was a fundraising boom for his re-election campaign and sparked a brief increase in public opinion polls. His second dismissal attracted bipartisan support, but ultimately failed, and Mr. Trump quickly consolidated — and has maintained — his position as the most powerful figure in the Republican Party.
Mr. Trump reacted to Tuesday’s hearing by posting a dozen messages on his Social Truth website attacking Ms. Hutchinson and denying her most explosive testimony.
He said he had never complained about the size of the crowd at his Jan. 6 rally, had never claimed Mr. Pence deserved to be hanged, and had never tried to get behind the wheel when Secret Service agents refused to take him to the Capitol.
“Her fake story that I tried to grab the steering wheel of the White House limousine to take her to the Capitol building is sickening and fraudulent, very similar to the selection committee itself,” Trump wrote.
The modus operandi of Mr. Trump has long been making holes in specific elements of an accuser’s story as a way to discredit the broader narrative and insist he is not particularly concerned about the threat posed by an investigation.
This approach was taken on Tuesday, as her aides emphasized the degree to which the most explosive parts of Ms. Witness’s testimony. Hutchinson had relied on the rumors she was conveying to the committee rather than on what she herself had witnessed, and claimed that other elements of her story did not fit her understanding of the facts.