Secret Service denial of Hutchinson story fuels attacks from both sides

The Secret Service is doubling down on its denial of an alleged altercation between former President Trump and his security detail on Jan. 6 of last year, providing a rare defense of Trump’s actions that day amid mounting evidence that he tried to orchestrate a coup from the White House.

The extraordinary anecdote of a clash in the presidential SUV — recounted last week in public testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson — has received outsized attention in the days since then.

The narrative has sparked a quick denial from the agents involved, prompted Trump loyalists to attack Hutchinson’s broader credibility and frustrated Trump critics who want to focus on the bigger picture, not least of all Trump’s desire to join hundreds of supporters in marching on the Capitol to contest his election defeat.

Through backchannels, the Secret Service has confirmed Trump’s eagerness to join the protesters at the Capitol, a number of whom would go on to storm the building in a violent effort to block Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory.

“There’s a lot of what Ms. Hutchinson said that is true. Certainly [Trump] wanted to go to the Capitol, that much we know. He said that publicly, he reiterated that inside the car,” a source close to the Secret Service told The Hill on Tuesday. 

But the agency has also pushed back on Hutchinson’s account that Trump lunged for the SUV’s steering wheel, and then toward the neck of Secret Service agent Robert Engel, after being told he was going back to the Oval Office — and not to the Capitol — following his defiant speech on the Ellipse.