Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Trump pressured officials in SUV, transcript says
On Tuesday, a previously undisclosed transcript of the House Jan. 6 Select Committee’s interview with an unnamed Secret Service officer who drove the presidential SUV provided new information about President Donald Trump’s actions that day. It was obtained by The Associated Press.
In the newly obtained transcript, the driver confirms: “The president was insistent on going to the Capitol.”
The driver said that Trump and security official Bobby Engel got in the car after the rally, and Trump started asking Engel about going to the Capitol. When Engel suggested they couldn’t do that, Trump kept pushing.
“Certainly his voice was raised,” the driver testified, “but it did not seem to me like he was irate, certainly not — certainly didn’t seem as irritated or as agitated as he had on the way to the Ellipse.”
The driver said, “The thing that sticks out most was he kept asking why we couldn’t go?”
But the driver said he did not see the altercation that White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described.
“He never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all,” the driver testified.