More witnesses say they were aware of Donald Trump getting into a “heated” argument with his presidential security detail during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot after they refused to drive him to the U.S. Capitol, the House select committee revealed at Thursday’s prime-time hearing.
in recorded testimony the committee aired Thursday, retired D.C. Police Sgt. Mark Robinson detailed what he learned while sitting in the lead vehicle of the presidential motorcade that day alongside a Secret Service agent.
“The only discussion I received was that the president was upset and was adamant about going to the Capitol, and there was a heated discussion about that,” he said of information he got while sitting in the other car. It was also described to him as a “heated argument,” he said.
Robinson said that in the approximately 100 times he’s served in the presidential motorcade, he’d never before heard of a president contradicting his Secret Service agents.
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), a member of the committee presiding over Thursday’s hearing, said that in addition to testimony from Robinson, they have “evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry exchange in the presidential SUV.”
That exchange was first brought to light publicly by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top White House aide, during her testimony at a House select committee hearing last month. She’d said she’d been told Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel of the SUV and that he lunged toward a Secret Service agent after they refused to take him to the riot at the Capitol.
Two Secret Service agents later told CNN that stories about Trump’s alleged meltdown in the SUV have circulated among the agents for the past year.