WASHINGTON (AP) — More evidence is emerging within the House’s Jan. 6 investigation that lends support to recent testimony that President Donald Trump wanted to hitch an offended mob that marched to the Capitol where they rioted, a committee member said Sunday.
“There can be far more information and stay tuned,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Sick.
The committee has been intensifying its yearlong investigation into the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the committee’s vice chair, is making clear that criminal referrals to the Justice Department, including against Trump, could follow.
No less than two more hearings are scheduled this month that aim to indicate how Trump illegally directed a violent mob toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, after which didn’t take quick motion to stop the attack once it began.
The committee also has been reviewing latest documentary film footage of Trump’s final months in office, including interviews with Trump and members of his family.
Kinzinger, in a television interview, declined to reveal the brand new information he referred to and didn’t say who had provided it. He said many more details emerged after last week’s testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and that nothing had modified the committee’s confidence in her credibility.
“There’s information I can’t say yet,” he said. “We definitely would say that Cassidy Hutchinson has testified under oath, we discover her credible, and anybody that wishes to forged disparagements on that, who were firsthand present, must also testify under oath and never through anonymous sources.”
Kinzinger also said Sunday that more witnesses have come forward since Hutchinson gave her testimony.
“This happens on daily basis,” Kinzinger told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Day by day we get latest people who come forward and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t think perhaps this piece of the story that I knew was essential.’”
Adam Kinzinger tells CNN that since Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, latest witnesses have come forward to the January 6 committee pic.twitter.com/P0jDV45H5j
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 3, 2022
In a separate interview, one other committee member, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said: “We’re following additional leads. I feel those leads will result in latest testimony.”
In Hutchinson’s appearance before the committee last week, Hutchinson painted an image of Trump as an offended, defiant president who was attempting to let armed supporters avoid security screenings at a rally on the morning of Jan. 6 to protest his 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
Legal experts have said Cassidy’s testimony is potentially problematic for Trump as federal prosecutors investigate potential criminal wrongdoing.
“There might be multiple criminal referral,” said Cheney in an interview that aired Sunday. She said the committee will determine later in the method whether to proceed.
Cassidy also recounted a conversation with Tony Ornato, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations, who, she testified, said Trump later grabbed on the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol after the rally.
That account was quickly disputed, nevertheless. Bobby Engel, the Secret Service agent who was driving Trump, and Ornato are willing to testify under oath that no agent was assaulted and Trump never lunged for the steering wheel, an individual acquainted with the matter said. The person wouldn’t discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In recent days, the committee has subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and has been searching for more information from Ornato and Engel, who were previously interviewed by investigators.
Committee members hope Cipollone will come forward.
“He clearly has details about concerns about criminal violations, concerns concerning the president going to the Capitol that day, concerns concerning the chief of staff having blood on his hands in the event that they didn’t do more to stop that violent attack on the Capitol,” Schiff said. “It’s hard to assume someone more at the middle of things.”
The committee has also been working on establishing an interview with Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She was asked to talk to the committee after disclosures of her communications with Trump’s team within the run-up and day of the revolt on the Capitol.
Kinzinger appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Schiff was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Cheney appeared on ABC’s “This Week.”
For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
