07-27-2022, 03:41 PM
Quote:Top Secret Service agents who tried to undermine former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony to the Jan. 6 committee have hired private lawyers and are refusing to cooperate with the investigation, members of the panel said over the weekend. Hutchinson, who worked as a top aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified last month that she was told by deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato that former President Donald Trump was so irate that his security detail would not take him to the Capitol with his supporters on Jan. 6 that he lunged at Secret Service agent Bobby Engel, the head of his detail.Secret Service agents who vowed to derail Hutchinson testimony lawyer up, refuse to testify: panel - Alternet.org
Hutchinson said Ornato, who made the unusual leap from working at the Secret Service to working for Trump before returning as a senior Secret Service official, described the incident with Engel present and he did not dispute it. After her testimony, journalists citing anonymous sources reported that Engel and the driver of Trump's vehicle were "prepared to testify under oath" to dispute Hutchinson's account and that Ornato denied telling Hutchinson that Trump "grabbed the steering wheel or an agent."
- They were prepared to testify under oath until they weren't.
- And of course there is this:
Quote:Last week, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, under which the Secret Service operates, sent a letter to Congress informing them that text messages sent by agents on and before January 6 had been erased. A spokesperson for the Secret Service claimed that this was part of a long-planned “system migration,” but the erasures have now spurred a criminal investigation after investigators could find only a single relevant text message from two dozen agents subject to a congressional subpoena. Further concerns were raised after the Washington Post reported that the DHS inspector general had known about the erased messages since February but had not said anything.The Secret Service’s deleted text message scandal, and the criminal investigation into it, explained - Vox
Afterward, when Pence fled, he refused the requests of agents to get into a car because he didn’t trust them not to drive away and evacuate him from the Capitol. Pence, who thought it was important for the country to proceed with finishing the task Congress started that day, didn’t want to prevent the election’s certification if he couldn’t return to the Capitol that night, as the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported in their book I Alone Can Fix It. Pence told Tim Giebels, the head of his detail, “I’m not getting in the car, Tim. I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.”