Jan. 6 hearing witness: Irate Trump grabbed wheel, demanded to go to Capitol
Cassidy Hutchinson said Trump was warned about potential violence, crimes.
The House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol attack heard stunning testimony on Tuesday from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
She told the committee and an international TV audience that then-President Donald Trump was warned about potential violence and crimes, that he wanted supporters with weapons let into his Jan. 6 rally, and that she was told he then demanded his security detail take him to the Capitol, going so far as to grab the wheel of the presidential SUV.
This was the sixth hearing this month investigating what the committee says was the conspiracy by Trump and his allies to overturn the election.
Here is how the hearing unfolded:
Surprise hearing signals committee's urgency
The House select committee will convene Tuesday afternoon for a surprise public hearing, signaling apparent urgency among members to reveal further findings from their year-long inquiry.
The hearing, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ET, will see the committee "present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony," the group said in a news release Monday.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top adviser to Donald Trump's last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is expected to testify, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. Punchbowl News first reported her appearance.
Hutchinson is expected to put a voice to many of the internal White House interactions involving the events of Jan. 6 and offer significant insight into Meadows' actions and interactions with Trump.
Witness: Trump didn't want to respond as attack on Capitol unfolded
In videotaped testimony, Hutchinson said she recalled seeing Meadows in his office at the White House, flipping through his phone as Trump supporters marched to the Capitol, and then violently breaching it.
"I said, 'The rioters are getting really close. Have you talked to the president?'" she testified. "Meadows said, 'No. He wants to be alone right now.'"
"I felt like I was watching," she continued in videotaped testimony, "a bad car accident that was about to happen. You can't stop it but you want to do something. I remember thinking in that moment that Mark needs to snap out of this."
She said she recalled White House counsel Pat Cipollone "barreling" towards Meadows's office, and saying something to the effect of, "''Mark, something needs to be done, or people are going to die and blood is going to be on your effing hands.'"
She said she later overheard Cipollone and Meadows talking about the "Hang Mike Pence" chants at the Capitol.
"You heard it Pat -- he thinks Mike deserves it. He thinks they aren't doing anything wrong," Meadows said to Cipollone when the White House lawyer said they needed to respond, according to Hutchinson.
-ABC News' Benjamin Siegel