Jan. 6 Panel: Witnesses Turning Up With Evidence Against Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — More witnesses are coming forward with new details on the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot following former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s devastating testimony last week against former President Donald Trump, says a member of a House committee investigating the insurrection.

The panel already has subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who investigators remain hopeful will appear Wednesday for a deposition, and said it would also welcome follow-up details from Secret Service members with Trump that day.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., cited Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump wanted to join an angry mob of his supporters who marched on Jan. 6, 2021, to the Capitol, where they rioted, as particularly valuable in “inspiring” more people to step forward as the committee gets set for at least two public hearings this month.

“Every day we get new people that come forward and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t think maybe this piece of the story that I knew was important,’” he said Sunday. “There will be way more information and stay tuned.”

The committee has been intensifying its yearlong investigation into the Jan. 6 attack and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The next hearings will aim to show how Trump illegally directed a violent mob toward the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then failed to take quick action to stop the attack once it began.

Over the weekend, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the committee’s vice chair, made clear that criminal referrals to the Justice Department, including against the Republican former president, could follow.

Kinzinger, in a television interview, declined to disclose the new information he referred to and did not say who had provided it. He said nothing had changed the committee’s confidence in her credibility.

“There’s information I can’t say yet,” he said. “We certainly would say that Cassidy Hutchinson has testified under oath, we find her credible, and anybody that wants to cast disparagements on that, who were firsthand present, should also testify under oath and not through anonymous sources.”

Cheney said in an interview aired Sunday that the committee was still considering whether to issue recommendations to the Justice Department, indicating “there could be more than one criminal referral.”