The Secret Service agent’s testimony has been disclosed for the first time.
The Secret Service agent who was driving the SUV with President Donald Trump inside on Jan. 6, 2021, refuted the claim that President Trump attempted to grab the wheel of the vehicle, according to a U.S. House of Representatives report issued on March 11.
The agent, who is not being identified by name by lawmakers, told a House panel that he “did not see him reach.”
President Trump “never grabbed the steering wheel,” the agent said, according to a transcript reviewed by The Epoch Times. “I didn’t see him lunge to try to get into the front seat at all.”
The testimony was given to the Democrat-dominated select committee convened to investigate Jan. 6 in the previous Congress, but the transcript was not released by the committee.
Quotes from the testimony were included in a new interim report by House Republicans, who are probing the work that committee did.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, testified to the panel in her fourth interview, in 2022, that she was told by Anthony Ornato, another Secret Service agent, that he was informed by a fellow agent that President Trump grabbed for the wheel.
“Tony said something to the effect of, ‘did you hear what [expletive] happened?’” Ms. Hutchinson testified on June 20, 2022. Mr. Ornato then “retold the story,” she said. According to that story, when President Trump entered the presidential state car, known as the Beast, after his speech at the Ellipse, he said he wanted to travel to the Capitol.
She said President Trump became upset when he was told he would be taken back to the White House and “he lunged forward into what I believe … would be called the cab of the presidential limo and went to grab at the steering wheel.” When an agent said, “We’re going back to the White House” and “that’s final,” President Trump “was extremely angry at that response and used his free hand, to my understanding, to then lunge at Bobby Engel,” Ms. Hutchinson claimed, attributing the story to Mr. Ornato.
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Initial Finding Report on Failure and Politicization of the January 6th Select Committee and the Activities on and leading up to January 6, 2021 PDF
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