A surprise hearing, scheduled at the last minute by the January 6 committee, turned into a spectacle that shocked even those who thought they were well acquainted with the circus of the nation’s capital. 

A one-time adviser to the White House chief of staff, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified under oath about what she saw and heard that day. She evoked a president and a White House in crisis, a tableau of chaos without parallel in American history.  

Ms. Hutchinson told the committee and the nation that President Trump knew that some in the crowd that stormed the Capitol was armed, and that he encouraged the loosening of security procedures to “let my people in” to the Capitol because “they’re not here to hurt me.”

The staffer recalled the president saying: “You know, I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me.” Referring to metal detectors as “mags,” the president ordered:  “Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the effing mags away.”  

Ms. Hutchinson evoked how Mr. Trump lunged at the steering wheel of his presidential limousine, known as “the Beast,” in an effort to redirect it toward the Capitol, then being swarmed by protesters. Mr. Trump told a Secret Service agent, Robert Engel, “I’m the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now.” 

Mr. Engel fended off Mr. Trump’s attempts to drive, which were aimed at his “clavicle,” and refused to take the president to the Capitol on the grounds that it was not safe. 

According to Ms. Hutchinson, Mr. Trump, after hearing the masses chant, “Hang Mike Pence,” responded that the vice president “deserved it” and that the crowd “wasn’t doing anything wrong.” She also relates that the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told White House counsel, Pat Cippolone, in reference to the president’s attitude toward the violence, that “he doesn’t want to do anything, Pat.”  

Ms. Hutchinson was unsparing in testimony about her boss, Mr. Meadows, who later asked for a presidential pardon, as did a legal adviser, Rudy Giuliani. She also related that when Mr. Meadows was informed that the assembled crowd was armed with “knives, guns, bear spray, body armor, spears, and flagpoles,” he “almost had a lack of reaction.” 

On January 2, 2021, Ms. Hutchinson said that Mr. Meadows told her that “things might get real, real bad on January 6.” He was not the only one with concerns, as Mr. Cippolone advised against a plan to have Mr. Trump travel to the Capitol because if he did, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”   

The details Ms. Hutchinson described riveted the committee and the country. When Mr. Trump heard that Attorney General William Barr was not going to support his claims of election fraud, Ms. Hutchinson testified, the commander in chief threw his lunch against a White House wall. Ketchup dripped down.  

Ms. Hutchinson also testified that on January 5, the day before the riot, the president spoke to General Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and a political operative, Roger Stone. The committee played a taped interview of General Flynn being asked whether he believed in “the peaceful transition of power in the United States of America.” The general took his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Reflecting on her experiences in the final days of the Trump administration, Ms. Hutchinson labeled the president’s behavior “un-American” and related how she felt “disgusted” as she watched “the Capitol building being defaced over a lie.”

Ms. Hutchinson offered a taxonomy of three groups in the White House on that day. The first, in whose ranks she included the president’s daughter, Ivanka, as well as Mr. Cippolone, urged the president to take action to stop the rioting. The second was more “neutral,” and the third wanted to “deflect” blame and accuse Antifa of catalyzing the violence. Mr. Meadows, she said, moved from the third to the second group as the day wore on.  

At the conclusion of the hearing, Representative Elizabeth Cheney detailed efforts by allies of Mr. Trump to intimidate the committee’s witnesses. One of those witnesses told the committee, “What they said to me is, as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who[m] I need to protect, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World.”

The witness was warned that “Trump does read transcripts.” He also apparently watches hearings, as the president responded to Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony on his Truth Social platform by remarking in part, “I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and ‘leaker’).”