WASHINGTON — The Home Jan. 6 committee will meet Friday with a Secret Service agent who was within the lead automotive of former President Donald Trump’s motorcade on the day of the riot, three sources conversant in the matter stated.
The committee additionally has plans to fulfill within the close to future with the driving force of the SUV that Trump rode in on Jan. 6, 2021, the sources instructed NBC Information.
The 2 interviews may make clear the bombshell testimony that Cassidy Hutchinson, a former high aide to then-White Home chief of employees Mark Meadows, delivered earlier than the committee throughout a public listening to this summer season.
The lead automotive was in entrance of Trump’s presidential car on the day of the assault, in keeping with CNN, which first reported the Friday assembly with the agent.
Anthony Guglielmi, the highest spokesperson for the Secret Service, testified earlier this week earlier than committee investigators in regards to the testimony that Hutchinson shared beneath oath.
She stated after his rally on Jan. 6, Trump tried to seize the steering wheel inside an armored SUV and lunged towards his safety element when he discovered that he wouldn’t be taken to the Capitol, the place a mob of his supporters had been gathering.
Hutchinson stated Tony Ornato, the White Home deputy chief of employees for operations, instructed her in regards to the incident. She additionally stated Bobby Engel, who led Trump’s safety element, had not disputed Ornato’s account. Ornato and Engel each testified earlier than the committee previous to Hutchinson’s testimony.
Hutchinson’s testimony got here beneath scrutiny after sources stated two witnesses had been ready to testify beneath oath that the incident by no means occurred.
These interviews are a part of the committee’s depositions with a number of key Secret Service figures, together with the pinnacle of former Vice President Mike Pence’s element, Tim Giebels; the present company spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi; former Secret Service Agent John Gutsmiedl; in addition to a number of members of the small print assigned to the motorcade carrying Trump to and from the White Home on the day of the assault.
The committee subpoenaed the Secret Service for communications in July, shortly after it was revealed that almost all textual content messages despatched by brokers through. their official cellphones on Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, had been deleted as a part of a pre-planned cellphone improve.
Based on two sources conversant in the matter, the Secret Service offered congressional investigators with greater than 1 million digital communications despatched by brokers within the lead-up to and in the course of the revolt on the Capitol, NBC Information reported in October.
Whereas the communications don’t embrace textual content messages, they do embrace emails and different digital messages, a Secret Service spokesperson stated. The communications might make clear lingering questions, together with contact brokers might have had with rioters, their efforts to guard then-Vice President Mike Pence and what occurred inside Trump’s automotive when he allegedly ordered Secret Service brokers to take him to the Capitol.
