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Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday he wants the deleted Secret Service “tapes far more than the Unselect Committee” and denied that he manhandled an agent after his alleged command to be driven to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was refused.
“I want the Secret Service tapes far more than the Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs in that ridiculous and libelous story of me supposedly choking a big and strong Secret Service Agent around the neck while in the Beast (wrong car!) would be shown to be, as the Secret Service has already confirmed, Fake (and Fraudulent!),” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social.
“Likewise, there was no throwing of food, and I did not want to be surrounded by strangers ’with guns’ during my Peacefully & Patriotically’ speech. Fake News!,” the 45th president said on his social media site.
Trump posted the message after reports said the Secret Service turned over only one text to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general after it had asked for a month’s worth of communications surrounding the time of the Capitol riot.
The House select committee has subpoenaed the Secret Service for the texts as part of its examination of the events leading up to and including Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in an attempt to disrupt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results for Joe Biden.
The DHS’ watchdog said the Secret Service’s text messages had been deleted during a scheduled data migration involving agents’ phones.
Trump also bristled at allegations raised by former Capitol aide Cassidy Hutchinson that the former president grabbed a Secret Service agent’s arm and reached for the steering wheel in the presidential SUV after agents refused to take him to the Capitol to join his supporters.
Trump told the agents, “I’m the f—ing president! Take me up to the Capitol now!,” Hutchinson, a top staffer to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the committee at a hearing last month.
Hutchinson said she was relaying a narrative shared with her by Tony Ornato, the former White House deputy chief of staff for operations.
She said Trump had a “very strong and very angry response” to being told he couldn’t go to the Capitol.
“The president reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm and said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge toward Bobby Engel,” Hutchinson testified, referring to agent Engel.
Hutchinson also testified that Trump tossed his lunch against the wall when then-Attorney General Bill Barr said in an interview in December 2020 that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud in the election.
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