Back on June 28th, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly to the House January 6th Select Committee hearing that on the day of she was told Donald threw a massive tantrum immediately after his speech and nearly assaulted a Secret Service agent in the presidential Chevy Suburban when told they couldn’t safely get him to the Capitol, with Hutchinson saying “The president said something to the effect of I’m the f’ing president, take me up to the Capitol now, to which [Agent Bobby Engel] responded, sir, we have to go back to the West Wing. The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel… Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel. And when [Secret Service agent/Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato] had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.”
Pretty much immediately after the testimony Ornato and Engel got word out they were willing to testify to the Committee and dispute Hutchinson’s version of events, even though the two had already testified, apparently having omitted the episode because they hadn’t been asked directly about it. Their alleged willingness to dispute the testimony was treated by fanboys as just as good as them going under oath and testifying that it didn’t happen, which the MAGA hatters had moved the goalposts from after “debunking” the story using a diagram of the wrong presidential vehicle.
Yet now two weeks have gone by and not a word from the two known Trump loyalists who, even if the committee would stay quiet on them having since testified again and refuted Hutchinson’s account, had no problem getting the word out to the media that they were ready and willing to go under oath again. So we’re left with three possibilities: (A) they haven’t testified again yet but will soon before the next hearing, (B) they won’t actually testify again and were full of shit, or (C) they already have and didn’t actually dispute the aide’s secondhand Trump tantrum story.
It’s likely the whole gambit to “debunk” Hutchinson under oath has already failed as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone reportedly “did not contradict” any of her testimony last week, and that within the Secret Service itself the story had been circulating since at least early 2021, coming from a third agent in the Suburban during the short trip, the still-publicly unknown driver.