Former President Trump on Wednesday confirmed he told Secret Service agents he wanted to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while he mocked the claim that he lunged at officers in his vehicle when they refused.
Trump, speaking to supporters in Wisconsin, complained at length about his legal cases when he began attacking lawmakers who probed the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.
“Remember the person that said I attacked a Secret Service agent in the front of the car? It’s not my deal. I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Trump told supporters in Waukesha. “Remember that? And these are tough guys. You know these Secret Service guys, I hate to admit it, they’re slightly younger than me. Just slightly.”
Trump continued to mock the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who told the congressional panel investigating that day she had heard from others that Trump “lunged” for the steering wheel following his speech near the White House in an apparent effort to veer toward the Capitol.
“This is crazy stuff. I sat in the back, and you know what I did say, I said ‘I’d like to go down there because I see a lot of people walking down,’” Trump said Wednesday. “They said, ‘Sir, it’s better if you don’t.’ I said, ‘Well, I’d like to … whatever you guys think.’ That was the whole one of the conversation. These people are crazy.”
Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election results, have been central to President Biden’s campaign for reelection, and they have been at the core of federal charges against Trump in Washington.
Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony before the now-disbanded Jan. 6 committee in 2022 raised new questions about Trump’s actions and his efforts to join supporters marching toward the Capitol.
The driver of Trump’s car on Jan. 6 disputed the testimony that Trump tried to take control of the car.
“[President Trump] never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all,” the unnamed driver told the committee’s investigators, according to a report from House Republicans released earlier this year.
A copy reviewed by The New York Times, however, indicates the driver backed Hutchinson’s details about Trump’s insistence on joining supporters at the Capitol, making the demand to the driver as well as Bobby Engel, the head of former President Trump’s security detail on Jan. 6.
“The president was insistent on going to the Capitol,” recounted the driver, whose name was not disclosed.