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Transcript: All In with Chris Hayes, 6/28/22

Guests:

Summary

The January 6 Committee holds its sixth live hearing. The January 6 Committee details warnings about the potential for violence on January 6. Hutchinson testified that Trump got in a physical altercation with a Secret Service agent after January 6 rally. Hutchinson testified that Trump was aware that individuals at the January 6 rally had weapons and were wearing body armor. Hutchinson testified that Trump wanted the armed crowd to march to the Capitol building.

Transcript

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: A surprise hearing from the January 6 Committee. One extraordinary witness tells the story from inside the White House.

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON, FORMER ASSISTANT TO CHIEF OF STAFF MARK MEADOWS: He didn`t look up from his phone and said something to the effect of there`s a lot going on, Cass. Things might get real, real bad on January 6.

MADDOW: The top aide to the White House Chief of Staff on the violence they knew was coming and did nothing to stop.

HUTCHINSON: I overheard the President say something to the effect of I don`t think that they have weapons. They`re not here to hurt me.

I remember Pat saying something to the effect of Mark, we need to do something more. They`re literally calling for the Vice President to be effing-hung. And Mark had responded something to the effect of, you heard of Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn`t think they`re doing anything wrong.

MADDOW: The stunning details of an out-of-control president who wanted to join the mob.

HUTCHINSON: The president said something to the effect of I`m the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now. The President reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engle, 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.

MADDOW: The President of the United States, his chief of staff, his closest advisors, preparing for the violence and men trying to save themselves.

HUTCHINSON: I recall hearing the word Oath Keeper and hearing the word Proud Boys closer to the planning of the January 6 rally when Mr. Giuliani would be around.

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Did White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ever indicate that he was interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to January 6?

HUTCHINSON: Mr. Meadows did seek that pardon. Yes, ma`am.

MADDOW: Tonight, one of the members of the January 6 investigation, Congresswoman Elaine Luria. Plus, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O`Donnell, Ari Melber, Nicolle Wallace, Symone Sanders all here for our special primetime recap of today`s hearing from the January 6 investigation.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MADDOW: Good evening, I`m Rachel Maddow here at the MSNBC mothership in New York City with some of my beloved colleagues. Lawrence O`Donnell is here. Ari Melber is here, the great Joy Reid, Chris Hayes. We`re going to be joined by other colleagues tonight, including Simone Sanders. Nicolle Wallace will be with us later on this evening.

We are all here together tonight for this special primetime recap of the hearing of the January 6 investigation that happened today in Washington. As it was for the Watergate hearings in 1973, the bulk of these hearings from the January 6 investigators are being held during the work day. And that means that millions of Americans who may want to see these historic hearings can`t do so live just because of the time of day that we`re on.

So, taking a cue from the Watergate era, just as our TV news ancestors did before us during Watergate, we here at MSNBC have committed that every night there is one of these daytime hearings, we will recap the day`s events in primetime, so you will not have missed a thing.

And, you know, frankly, today`s hearing was shocking and dramatic enough that even if you were able to watch it live, we`d understand it if you want it recapped anyway. I watched every second of the hearing and I watched it pausing every five seconds to write stuff down and make notes. And all I wanted to do when I finished seeing it was see it again. So, even if it`s just to assure yourself oh my god, did that really happen? Yes, that really happened. We are here for you tonight.

Today at the hearing, there was but a single witness, the first Trump White House official to testify at one of these live hearings, a Trump administration White House staffer named Cassidy Hutchinson. She had an office inside the West Wing. She was a special assistant to President Trump and an advisor to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. She worked very closely with Mark Meadows on a day-to-day basis.

At the outset of the hearing, interestingly, the investigation`s Chairman Congressman Bennie Thompson, displayed a little map showing how the West Wing is laid out to show both how small overall the West Wing is and also how Cassidy Hutchinson`s desk was physically right in the middle of the action that she described during her testimony today.

It ended up being an unexpectedly helpful sort of piece of orientation. And that was a recurring theme today. That idea of physical proximity, understanding the geography and the geometry of where people were and how physical spaces were laid out, that ended up being a recurring helpful theme in today`s hearing, in today`s testimony.

There was a key point today in understanding that today`s witness had her desk just outside the office of the White House Chief of Staff and literally a few feet from the Oval Office and the Oval Office dining room, which we would soon learn is why she could overhear commotion in that room when the President threw his lunch plate against the wall and splattered the room with ketchup. It`s also why she was later able to hear discussions from that same room about the President`s supporters screaming about their desire to hang Vice President Mike Pence and what President Trump thought about that idea.

That physical geometry getting a sense of space itself was also key to understanding that on the morning of January 6, large crowds of Trump supporters could see the President`s rally, could hear the President`s speech, not just from the Ellipse itself where the rally was formally staged, but from outside it as well, from vantage points, for example, near the Washington Monument where there were large crowds of Trump supporters and were conveniently those folks didn`t need to go through metal detectors or have any weapons confiscated.

That sense of physical space, physical geometry, the physical relationship between things and people, it also ended up today being crucial to understanding how it might be that the President allegedly engaged in a physical altercation with the head of his secret security -- Secret Service detail. The President reportedly lunging at the man`s neck with one hand after the President had tried to grab the steering wheel of the vehicle he was riding in with the other.

So, unexpectedly, a physical sense of space inside that car, inside the West Wing, and apparently armed to the teeth on the National Mall. Those were all revelations today for which we needed to sort of physically put ourselves in the space in order to get it. But let`s just start.

And I will tell you, today is another one of those days, another one of those hearings where the testimony was dramatic enough, the witness was cogent enough, the evidence was tightly presented enough that you don`t necessarily need much explanation or guidance from us. The tape of what happened today mostly speaks for itself.

But still, we`ve divided it into some of the main sort of half-dozen points that were made today at the hearing. And we`re going to start with the most serious allegation that was made today, the most serious revelation from this White House senior staff -- this White House staffer, the revelation that President Trump knew there were many people who were armed in the crowd in Washington DC on January 6. He was briefed on that. He knew it. He talked about it. And he saw that as maybe a feature not a bug, maybe a good thing.

According to Cassidy Hutchinson`s astonishing testimony today, President Trump explicitly insisted that the metal detectors be taken down at his rally on the Ellipse, not just to facilitate moving people (AUDIO GAP) into the rally space, not just to thereby make the crowds seem a little larger, but explicitly so the crowd would not have their weapons taken away by the Secret Service.

And therefore, the armed crowd would be able to move directly to the Capitol after the president`s rally was over. Cassidy Hutchinson testified today under oath that the President said repeatedly the crowd was not there to hurt him. So, he didn`t mind that they were armed. He didn`t care that they were armed. And he knew they`d go from that venue to the U.S. Capitol armed.

So, we`ll start here with the testimony about weapons that were being discovered among the crowd of Trump supporters who had come to Washington at his behest and then the President`s demands for the armed crowd to be allowed to keep their weapons and take them to the Capitol. Just as a refresher, you will hear the name Mark Meadows referenced here. Again, he was Trump`s White House Chief of Staff. You`ll also hear a more unfamiliar name, the name Tony Ornado or Tony. Tony Ornato was Trump`s deputy White House Chief of Staff. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHENEY: You also told us about reports of violence and weapons that the Secret Service were receiving on the night of January 5th and throughout the day on January 6th. Is that correct?

HUTCHINSON: That`s correct.

LIZ CHENEY: There are reports that police in Washington, DC had arrested several people with firearms or ammunition following a separate pro-Trump rally in Freedom Plaza on the evening of January 5th. Are those some of the reports that you recall hearing about?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: They are.

LIZ CHENEY: Of course, the world now knows that the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th had many different types of weapons. When a President speaks, the Secret Service typically requires those attending to pass through metal detectors known as magnetometers, or mags for short. The Select Committee has learned that people who willingly entered the enclosed area for President Trump`s speech were screened so they could attend the rally at the Ellipse.

They had weapons and other items that were confiscated: pepper spray, knives, brass knuckles, tasers, body armor, gas masks, batons, blunt weapons. And those were just from the people who chose to go through the security for the President`s event on the Ellipse, not the several thousand members of the crowd who refused to go through the mags and watched from the lawn near the Washington Monument.

The Select Committee has learned about reports from outside the magnetometers, and has obtained police radio transmissions identifying individuals with firearms, including AR-15s, near the Ellipse on the morning of January 6th. Let`s listen.

[20:10:32]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN: There`s an individual who is in a tree. It`s going to be a white male, about six feet tall, thin build, brown cowboy boots. He`s got jeans and a blue jean jacket, and underneath the hoodie jacket the complainants both saw stock of an AR-15. He`s going to be with a group of individuals, about five to eight -- five to eight other individuals.

Two of the individuals in that group at the base of the tree near the porta-potties were wearing green fatigues, green olive dress house fatigues. About 5`8", 5`9", skinny white males, brown cowboy boots. They had Glock style pistols in their waistband.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got three men walking down the street in fatigues. One`s carrying a AR-15. Copy at 14th and Independence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: AR-15s at 14th and Independence. Ms. Hutchinson, in prior testimony you described for us a meeting in the White House around 10:00 a.m. in the morning of January 6th involving Chief of Staff Meadows and Tony Ornato. Were you in that meeting?

HUTCHINSON: I was.

LIZ CHENEY: Let`s listen to your testimony about that meeting and then we`ll have some questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN: I think the last time we talked you mentioned that some of the weapons that people had at the rally included flagpoles, oversized sticks or flagpoles, bear spray. Is there anything else that you recall hearing about that the people who had gathered on the ellipse had?

HUTCHINSON: I recall Tony and I having a conversation with Mark probably around 10:00 a.m., 10:15 a.m. where I remember Tony mentioning knives, guns in the form of pistols and rifles, bear spray, body armor, spears, and flagpoles. Spears were one item, flagpoles were one item. But then Tony had related to me something to the effect of and these effing people are fastening spears onto the ends of flagpoles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: Ms. Hutchinson, here`s a clip of your testimony regarding Mr. Meadows` response to learning that the rally attendees were armed that day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was Mark`s reaction -- Mr. Meadows` reaction to this list of weapons that people had in the crowd?

HUTCHINSON: When Tony and I went in to talk to Mark that morning, Mark was sitting on his couch and on his phone which was something typical. And I remember Tony just got right into it. He was like, sorry, I just want to let you know and informed him, like, this is how many people we have outside the mags right now. These are the weapons that we`re going to have. It`s possible he listed more weapons off that I just don`t recall. And gave him a brief but -- and concise explanation, but also fairly thorough.

And I remember distinctly Mark not looking up from his phone, right? I remember Tony finishing his explanation and it taking a few seconds for Mark to say his name. I almost said, Mark, did you hear him? And then Mark chimed in. It was like, all right, anything else? Still looking down at his phone. And Tony looked at me and I looked at Tony and he -- Tony said no, sir. Do you have any questions? He`s like, what are you hearing? And I looked at Tony and I was like, sir he just told you about what was happening down at the rallies.

And he was like yes, yes. I know. And then he looked up and said have you talked to the President? And Tony said yes, sir. He`s aware. And he said all right, good.

CHENEY: He asked Tony if Tony had informed the President.

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: Yes.

CHENEY: And Tony said yes, he had.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: So, Miss Hutchinson, is it your understanding that Mr. Ornato told the President about weapons at the rally on the morning of January 6th?

HUTCHINSON: That`s what Mr. Ornato relayed to me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MADDOW: So, pistols, rifles, knives, bear spray, tasers, body armor, spears, and flagpoles as two different items. Plus, a third item, spears mounted on the end of flagpoles. Brass knuckles, batons, gas masks. The Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House says he has briefed the President on this on the fact that this is -- what is -- what they`re turning up among the crowd of his supporters that have come to Washington DC. The President is aware. He briefs the President on this. He briefs Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff on this as well, although Mr. Meadows appears to have no reaction whatsoever.

[20:15:17]

And then, knowing that, we get this just astonishing claim about the president and what he wanted from that armed crowd, what he demanded the Secret Service do concerning the weapons that were being found among the crowd. He wanted the crowd to keep its weapons, and then march armed to the Capitol.

Just a reminder here, they use the word mags a lot here in this testimony. By that, they mean -- they mean magnetometers. I`m talking about metal detectors.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHENEY: Did you go to the rally in the presidential motorcade?

HUTCHINSON: I was there, yes, in the motorcade.

CHENEY: And were you backstage with the President and other members of his staff and family?

HUTCHINSON: I was.

LIZ CHENEY: And you told us, Ms. Hutchinson, about particular comments that you heard while you were in the tent area.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUTCHINSON: When we were in the offstage announce area tent behind the stage he was very concerned about the shot, meaning the photograph that we would get, because the rally space wasn`t full. One of the reasons which I`ve previously stated was because he wanted it to be full and for people to not feel excluded because they had come far to watch him at the rally.

And he felt the mags were at fault for not letting everybody in. But another leading reason and likely the primary reason is because he wanted it full and he was angry that we weren`t letting people through the mags with weapons, what the Secret Service deemed as weapons and are weapons.

But when we were in the offstage announce tent, I was part of a conversation -- I was in -- I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the President say something to the effect of, you know, I - - I don`t effing care that they have weapons. They`re not here to hurt me. Take that effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the effing mags away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: Just to be clear, Ms. Hutchinson, is it your understanding that the President wanted to take the mags away and said that the armed individuals were not there to hurt him?

The issue wasn`t with the amount of space available in the official rally area only, but instead that people did not want to have to go through the mags. Let`s listen to a portion of what you told us about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUTCHINSON: In this particular instance, it wasn`t the capacity of our space. It was the mags and the people that didn`t want to come through. And that`s what Tony had been trying to relay to him that morning. You know, it`s not the issues that we encounter on the campaign. We have enough space, Sir. They don`t want to come in right now.

They have weapons that they don`t want confiscated by the Secret Service. And they`re fine on the mall. They can see you on the mall and they`re -- they want to march straight to the Capitol from the mall.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: The President apparently wanted all attendees inside the official rally space and repeatedly said, "They`re not here to hurt me."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: And just to be clear, so he was told again in that conversation -- or was he told again in that conversation that people couldn`t come through the mags because they had weapons?

HUTCHINSON: Correct.

CHENEY: And that people -- and he -- his response was to say they can march to the Capitol from -- is it from the Ellipse?

HUTCHINSON: Something to the effect of take the effing mags away. They`re not here to hurt me. Let them in. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol after the rallies are over. They can march from -- they can march from the ellipse. Take the effing mags away. Then they can march to the Capitol.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ CHENEY: Ms. Hutchinson, what we saw when those clips were playing were photos provided by the National Archives showing the President in the offstage tent before his speech on the Ellipse. You were in some of those photos as well. And I just want to confirm that that is when you heard the President say the people with weapons weren`t there to hurt him and that he wanted the Secret Service to remove the magnetometers.

HUTCHINSON: That`s correct. In the photos that you displayed we were standing towards the front of the tent with the TVs really close to where he would walk out to go on to the stage. The -- these conversations happened two to three minutes before he took the stage that morning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MADDOW: So, just before he took the stage, and in his speech told people to march to the Capitol. He said he wanted the metal detectors taken down. He had been told that people in the crowd have weapons that they do not want confiscated by the Secret Service. He said I don`t care If they have weapons. They`re not here to hurt me. Take the effing metal detectors away. Let them in. They can march to the Capitol from here.

As I said, there were a lot of revelations in today`s hearing. As we do this primetime recap of what happened, it`s just worth making sure we absorb that first. And I think most shocking revelation today, Lawrence O`Donnell.

[20:20:25]

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Rachel, we have spent a minute last night wildly guessing what today was going to be about. I don`t think I came close. Cassidy Hutchinson told her college newspaper just a few years ago, I have set a personal goal to pursue a path of civic significance. She needs a new goal for the next 80 years of her life, because she`s achieved goal one in a way that no witness in the history of congressional testimony has achieved.

This is material unknown within the realm of the presidency prior to today. It`s known within the behavior of Donald Trump. So, I have to be counted as someone who is not surprised that the guy who was accused by his first wife of raping her within the marriage who`s been credibly accused by E. Jean Carroll of rape who boasted on the Access Hollywood tape about the way he behaves. The idea that he`d throw, you know, hamburger that`s -- that doesn`t even come up to that level.

And the idea that he would take glee in what was happening on this day, but to have it delivered in under oath, testimony by an ear witness, by an eye- witness of exactly what was going on, brings all of this to a new level. It changes the history of the presidency permanently now and forever. We have an understanding that is -- that is beyond dispute of what this was.

And the -- and the idea that Donald Trump on January 6, was the most confident president since Abraham Lincoln in the presence of weapons, confident that those weapons were not for him. The question becomes legally, was that a guess, or the talk about Proud Boys that we heard from Cassidy Hutchinson was something communicated to Donald Trump through Rudy Giuliani, through Roger Stone, from the Proud Boys, from the gangsters who were going to do going to go to war that day that there will be weapons, and they -- we know where and how to use them.

MADDOW: We also got just the revelation just purely about the weapons, the variety of weapons and the number of weapons that were confiscated. That itself or even regardless of Trump (INAUDIBLE).

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: As somebody who lives in -- in the DMV, this area, please understand the other kinds of mags, right, the magazines that are in a pistol, highly illegal in the district. Like, remember, Enrique Tarrio who is the head of the Proud Boys got arrested not for having weapons but for having mags, for having magazines for weapons. That`s why he physically was not there on January 6. He was told by the FBI, get out of town.

So, let`s just remember it is so illegal to have weapons in the district. It is impossible, it`s -- this is not Ohio. If you`re in Cleveland, and when we were all in Cleveland, there were people walking up and down the street with AR-15. It`s an open carry state. You can walk around with an AR 15 in Ohio. It`s highly illegal in DC.

So, the idea that people were pouring into the Ellipse with AR-15s and, you know, whatever else they had, you know tasers and bear spray, and these things are being confiscated --

MADDOW: Brass knuckles.

REID: And we all have been to presidential events. You can`t get near these kinds of events without going through the other kind of mags, magnetometers. So, when you have Donald Trump saying, take down the effing mags, the mags, and let these people in, they`re not here to hurt me. Glenn Kirschner was on my show earlier and said that is the most incriminating thing that we heard today. He knew there were weapons. He knew they weren`t for him. They were illegal just to have period.

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: And there`s also this, the progression of what we know he knew. That -- you know, again, take us all back. We all watched it on TV, OK. We all saw the tweet about Mike Pence. We all watched it on TV. We all knew what he did was dangerous and reckless, abhorrent, completely discrediting could have -- should cast him into the dustbin of history.

What they established in the previous hearing was, well, actually, he knew at that time that they had breached the Capitol. He knew that Pence had been evacuated. So, then it`s like, OK, well, that that does look really bad, that tweet. What has been established now was he knew they were armed.

MADDOW: Yes.

HAYES: And it wasn`t -- again, this comes back to the central understanding that I think people still even people who watch this network have. You saw people contemporaneously, things got out of hand. They got out of hand and he was too stubborn to pull it back he was too in his feelings to pull it back. They didn`t get out of hand. This was the hand he was dealing.

MADDOW: Right.

[20:25:10]

HAYES: This was the point. This was the plan all along it. This was not an accident. This did not go sideways. This went the way that Rudy Giuliani, when he asked Cassidy Hutchinson if she was excited about January 6, the way he thought was going to go except for one thing, they didn`t let him go to the Capitol.

MADDOW: Right.

HAYES: And that`s the only thing that didn`t go the way he wanted to plan.

MADDOW: Exactly.

ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: I mean, Rachel, prosecutions are not actually about crime. There`s plenty of unsolved crimes, because plenty of crimes aren`t prosecuted. Prosecutions are about evidence. So, here we are June 28, 2022. It`s a -- it`s a sad day for the United States no matter what happens from here, because today is the day that there is for the first time public under oath evidence from a Trump loyalists linking him to the armed violence of the sixth.

As we`ve all just said here, eyewitness testimony, let the armed people in. So, he knew they were armed. Why? Because they were targeting other politicians, not weapons for self-defense, even with the ordinances of the city, but because they were targeting other people. That is the criminal intent to hurt others. And he intended to join what he knew to be an armed March at the Capitol and that intention, he acted on to the point of clashing with an agent to a degree that if any other civilian or government official did that, you would be stopped, removed from the motorcade, arrested on the spot. But when the protectee --

HAYES: Yes.

MELBER: -- is the danger, that is the constitutional crisis territory. So, it`s a sad day because whatever goes forward from now, all the options are sad. Dealing with this in an accountable way is difficult for the country. Ignoring it, as many experts have argued, could be worse. But either way, he`s been linked to the violence by his own aide.

MADDOW: The violence included. And not just -- again, not violence that got out of hand, but violence that was planned by people who came to arm for that purpose. All right, we`re going to continue in just a moment with this recap of today`s honestly shocking hearing from the January 6 investigation. Beyond this light little matter of the president ordering that an armed crowd be allowed to keep their weapons as they marched on the U.S. Capitol, on that minor detail, I think the second major revelation in this pretty shocking hearing today was about what Ari was just describing, the President wanting in on it himself. The drama of that and the potential implications of that are next. Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUTCHINSON: Mr. Cipollone said something to the effect of, please make sure we don`t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We`re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[20:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: Do you remember Mr. Giuliani meeting with Mr. Meadows on January 2, 2021?

HUTCHINSON: I do. He met with Mr. Meadows in the evening of January 2, 2021.

CHENEY: And we understand that you walked Mr. Giuliani out of the White House that night. And he talks to you about January 6 let you remember him saying.

HUTCHINSON: As Mr. Giuliani and I were walking to his vehicles that evening, he looked at me and said something to the effect of, Cass, are you excited for the sixth? It`s going to be a great day. I remember looking at him and saying Rudy, could you explain what`s happening on the sixth? He has -- he has responded something to the effect of we`re going to the Capitol. It`s going to be great. The President is going to be there. He`s going to look powerful. He`s going to going to be with the members. He`s going to be with the senators. Talk to the chief about it. Talk to the chief about it. He knows about it.

CHENEY: And did you go back then up to the West Wing and tell Mr. Meadows about your conversation with Mr. Giuliani?

HUTCHINSON: I did. After Mr. Giuliani had left the campus that evening, I went back up to our office and I found Mr. Meadows in his office on the couch. He was scrolling through his phone. I remember leaning against the doorway and saying, I just had an interesting conversation with Rudy, Mark. It sounds like we`re going to go to the Capitol.

He didn`t look up from his phone and said something to the effect of, there`s a lot going on, Cass, but I don`t know. Things might get real, real bad on January 6th.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Things might get real, real bad on January 6. There`s a lot going on. So said the White House chief of staff. That was four days before January 6. Before today`s hearing from the January 6 investigation, I`m not sure we understood -- I should say, I`m not sure I understood, the significance of the various reporting and various accounts we`d had about former President Trump wanting personally to go march on Congress, wanting personally to go march on the Capitol building with the mob of his supporters.

But that is in fact what Rudy Giuliani was crowing about that aspect of the plan. That`s what he raised to Cassidy Hutchinson, four days before January 6, this idea that Trump himself would go to the Capitol. That is what Cassidy Hutchinson was so alarmed by it and came back and talked to her boss, the White House Chief of Staff, again, four days in advance of the attack. Mark, it sounds like we`re going to go to the Capitol. That`s what prompted the White House Chief of Staff to say things may get real, real bad.

Why did Trump want to go to the Capitol and what were the implications of that? Today we learned that worry that Trump would go to the Capitol either as an officially scheduled presidential thing or as a last minute off-the- record surprise, it turns out that it`s something that was widely discussed at the upper echelons of the White House. It is something that the White House Counsel believed in advance would implicate lots of people in the Trump White House and a whole host of serious crimes if it happened.

When the witness talks here about Pat or pat Cipollone, that`s who she`s talking about, the White House Counsel, who is the top lawyer in the White House.

[20:35:27]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HUTCHINSON: Having a private conversation with Pat late in the afternoon of the 3rd or 4th that Pat was concerned it would look like we were obstructing justice or obstructing the Electoral College count. And I apologize for probably not being so very clear with my legal terms here, but that it would look like we were obstructing what was happening on Capitol Hill.

And he was also worried that it would look like we were inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to erupt on the Capitol -- at the Capitol.

HUTCHINSON: On January 3rd, Mr. Cipollone had approached me knowing that Mark had raised the prospect of going up to the Capitol on January 6th. Mr. Cipollone and I had a brief private conversation where he said to me we need to make sure that this doesn`t happen. This would be a legally a terrible idea for us. We`re -- we have serious legal concerns if we go up to the Capitol that day.

And he then urged me to continue relaying that to Mr. Meadows, because it`s my understanding that Mr. Cipollone thought that Mr. Meadows was indeed pushing this, along with the president.

CHENEY: And we understand, Ms. Hutchinson, that you also spoke to Mr. Cipollone on the morning of the 6th as you were about to go to the rally on the Ellipse, and Mr. Cipollone said something to you like make sure the movement to the Capitol does not happen. Is that correct?

HUTCHINSON: That`s correct. I saw Mr. Cipollone right before I walked out onto West Exec that morning, and Mr. Cipollone said something to the effect of please make sure we don`t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We`re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.

LIZ CHENEY: And do you remember which crimes Mr. Cipollone was concerned with?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: In the days leading up to the 6th, we had conversations about potentially obstructing justice or defrauding the electoral count.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MADDOW: The White House counsel said we`d be charged with quote every crime imaginable if the White House staff in any way facilitated Trump himself, going to Congress going up to the Capitol Building to try to stop the count that day, along with that mob of his supporters.

Now, remember, at this point in the hearing, we`ve already learned that Trump not only knew his supporters were armed that day as they headed to the Capitol, he tried to order that they not be disarmed, that all the metal detectors come down so they could have free movement about downtown Washington DC without their weapons being taken away.

And then I think this has been the sticking point for a lot of people on this issue. There is this question of what exactly Trump himself was going to do there if he did go to Congress, if he did go to the Capitol building? I mean, what was he himself going to, you know, break a window and storm, the Congress actually go inside the building? Maybe, apparently, that was one of the options, not just not breaking the window, but him going in was one of the options reportedly discussed in the Trump White House before the day of.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you were talking about a scheduled movement, did anyone say what the president wanted to do when he got here?

HUTCHINSON: No, not that I can specifically remember. I remember -- I remember hearing a few different ideas discussed with -- between Mark and Scott Perry, Mark and Rudy Giuliani. I don`t know which conversations were elevated to the president. I don`t know what he personally wanted to do when he went up to the Capitol that day.

You know, I know that there were discussions about him having another speech outside of the Capitol before going in. I know that there was a conversation about him going into the House chamber at one point.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: He was going to go into the House chamber himself. The president striding into Congress with a mob of his arm supporters to stop the count of the vote. How would that day have ended? And as insane as that sounds, what was the single most insane thing we learned today is that former President Trump not only wanted to do that, he not only wanted to go to the Capitol, he tried it. He physically tried it. Perhaps the strangest and most lurid thing we have ever heard about the personal behavior of a sitting president of the United States.

[20:40:18]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: As we`ve all just heard, in the days leading up to January 6th, on the day of the speech, both before and during and after the rally speech, President Trump was pushing his staff to arrange for him to come up here to the Capitol during the electoral vote count. Let`s turn now to what happened in the president`s vehicle when the Secret Service told him he would not be going to the Capitol after his speech.

First, here is the president`s motorcade leaving the Ellipse after his speech on January 6th. Ms. Hutchinson, when you returned to the White House in the motorcade after the president`s speech, where did you go?

HUTCHINSON: When I returned to the White House, I walked upstairs towards the chief of staff`s office, and I noticed Mr. Ornato lingering outside of the office. Once we had made eye contact, he quickly waved me to go into his office, which was just across the hall from mine. When I went in, he shut the door, and I noticed Bobby Engel, who was the head of Mr. Trump`s security detail, sitting in a chair, just looking somewhat discombobulated and a little lost.

I looked at Tony and he had said, did you effing hear what happened in the beast? I said, no, Tony, I-- I just got back. What happened? Tony proceeded to tell me that when the president got in the beast, he was under the impression from Mr. Meadows that the off-the-record movement to the Capitol was still possible and likely to happen, but that Bobby had more information.

So, once the president had gotten into the vehicle with Bobby, he thought that they were going up to the Capitol. And when Bobby had relayed to him we`re not, we don`t have the assets to do it, it`s not secure, we`re going back to the West Wing, the president had a very strong, a very angry response to that.

Tony described him as being irate. The president said something to the effect of I`m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now, to which Bobby responded, sir, we have to go back to the West Wing. The President reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, 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 towards Bobby Engel. And Mr. -- when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.

CHENEY: And was Mr. Engel in the room as Mr. Ornato told you this story?

HUTCHINSON: He was.

CHENEY: Did Mr. Engel correct or disagree with any part of this story from Mr. Ornato?

HUTCHINSON: Mr. Engel did not correct or disagree with any part of the story.

CHENEY: Did Mr. Engel or Mr. Ornato ever after that tell you that what Mr. Ornato had just said was untrue?

HUTCHINSON: Neither Mr. Ornato nor Mr. Engel told me ever that it was untrue.

MADDOW: Absolutely unprecedented, lurid, bizarre, shocking. I mean, we all turn into Mad Libs trying to cover revelations like this. Let`s bring in our colleague, Nicolle Wallace, host of "DEADLINE WHITEHOUSE." Nicolle, I know that you couldn`t be here on set with us tonight, but I`m desperate to talk to you about this. Thank you for agreeing to be here.

NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: I`m so glad to be here. And look, you guys have covered all the things that had me, you know, picking my jaw up from the desk. But I think this clip you just picked -- played is so important than the conversations and questions you were just asking, what was he going to do when he got there?

I mean, Rudy Giuliani is having Cassidy Hutchinson lobby Mark Meadows to get him to the Capitol answers a lot of questions about the second to the sixth, right? On the second, he also calls Brad Raffensperger. On the third, as we talked about last week, he temporarily installed Mr. Clark as his attorney general. I think we have a whole new batch of questions about Donald Trump`s role in the fake electoral scheme. And I think it`s fair to ask was he going to go up to the Capitol to assume his, in his mind, his delusional mind, his status as the winner. I mean it really ties him to the most publicly known elements of the coop plot under criminal investigation.

[20:45:00]

MADDOW: Nicole, you have quite a lot of White House experience at a number of different levels of staffing. There`s been a bunch of pushback against Cassidy Hutchinson`s testimony today from Trump loyalists. It seems like they know how damaging this testimony is. And they`re attacking her and trying to make it seem like she doesn`t know what she was talking about.

When she described the, you know, the way people interacted inside the West Wing and the way that discussions and arrangements were made about presidential movements and motorcades and that kind of nuts and bolts on logistics of what it is to work in the White House as a staffer at that kind of a level, did it ring true to you or did any of it not ring true?

WALLACE: She is the most credible person perhaps that we`ve heard from. Her ability to quickly distill the distinction between a planned movement of the president, something on a schedule, that the Secret Service goes out and secures weeks days, if it`s a foreign trip months in advance. They fly those huge cargo planes over and they place that motorcade in a location where the President will land. That is one kind of movement.

What she`s describing as an OTR. And in some ways, it ties Trump to the violence in a more serious way than we knew before today. On an OTDR movement for a President of the United States, all the protectee has is the intelligence gathered by Secret Service agents on the scene. So, what they knew -- they weren`t learning what was happening on TV like the rest of us. They knew exactly what was happening on the frontlines of that, what was described as medieval combat between the Capitol Police and Donald Trump`s own supporters.

And, you know, we don`t know why Donald Trump was so confident of who they would hurt and who they would not hurt. I think it`s a whole bunch of new questions about his role in the conspiracy. He was absolutely sure that he would be fine if the mags were taking down. Come in with your AR`s, guys. I think we have a million more questions. This almost begins phase two of the committee`s public hearings.

MADDOW: Nicolle, in terms of what was described between Cassidy Hutchinson and the deputy White House Chief of Staff who was the deputy White House Chief of Staff for operations, talking about security, him saying that he had briefed the President on the presence of weapons among the crowd. He had briefed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Those interrelated communications, it sounds to me from the way that you`re talking about this, like those ring true in terms of the way those sort of lines of communication happen.

But then we also had stuff that was very much outside anything that you would plan for, bursts of presidential temper, the president throwing his lunch plate around, throwing -- pulling tablecloths off of tables, so that stuff went flying and valets having to clean stuff up. Miss Hutchinson describing herself as grabbing a towel and helping clean the ketchup off the wall. I mean, that -- I can`t imagine that there`s any parallel to that in any normal administration, so much as there is one. But what did you make of that having spent time in the White House?

WALLACE: Look, I think there`s a special pain for anyone that has ever worked there under any president to have imagined Donald Trump roaming the place and hate tweeting all day every day. And the dereliction of duty on his watch happened well before January 6 as he left people to suffer during the pandemic. But to know that on top of that he was abusive to his most loyal, most subservient aides, is a new level of, I think, sickening reality of what this committee service to the country really is to reveal not how Donald Trump was to his political adversaries are the people he described as enemies of the people, all the media, but to his most loyal, closest, most subservient aides, he was violent.

And he threatened violence against one man whose job it was to take a bullet for him. It`s a new level of horror of what he was like as our country`s president.

MADDOW: Nicolle Wallace, thank you, my friend. I`m glad you were able to be here with us tonight. I will tell you on that last point that Nicolle was making, the sort of preeminent reporter in the country right now specifically on the issue of the Secret Service is Carol Leonnig at the Washington Post who wrote the definitive most recent book about the White House and its relationship with the Secret Service in this era.

There`s been a lot of controversy, a lot of discussion about Hutchinson`s testimony about that physical altercation between former President Trump and the leader of his secret service detail inside the limousine, inside that armored SUV that we saw the President in, in that motorcade that he apparently wanted to go to the Capitol that did not go to the Capitol.

Some of the questions about that are about the physical logistics as to whether or not the President could reach for the steering wheel. And would he be in the same compartment with the Secret Service? We`re going to be joined by Carol Leonnig a little later on in our recap.

All right, there`s more to come and our primetime recap of the January 6 hearing today. Now that we`ve got the president knowing his supporters are armed, given the order they be allowed to keep their weapons and take them to the Capitol, his physical altercation with the Secret Service trying to force them to let him personally joined the armed mob at the Capitol. Up next, we get what he hoped the armed mob would do with the Capitol once they got in.

[20:50:11]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUTCHINSON: I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed, really, it felt personal. I was really sad. As an American, I was disgusted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[20:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: Ms. Hutchinson, did Rudy Giuliani ever suggest that he was interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to January 6?

HUTCHINSON: He did.

CHENEY: Miss Hutchison, did White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ever indicate that he was interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to January 6.

HUTCHINSON: Mr. Meadows did seek that pardon. Yes, ma`am.

CHENEY: Thank you, Miss Hutchison.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Thank you, Miss Hutchinson. And thanks to you at home for being with us for this primetime recap of today`s January 6 hearing. Today, we did learn for the first time that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani reportedly asked for presidential pardons for themselves, which would of course prevent them from being prosecuted for any crimes they committed around the January 6 effort to overthrow the government.

That was news today. But even beyond that, even beyond Trump trying to prevent the mob of his supporters from being disarmed by the Secret Service before they went to the Capitol after he learned about the number and type of weapons they were carrying, and him demanding to go himself to the Capitol building with the mob, that`s implicating the Trump White House in what the White House Counsel`s office called "every crime imaginable, beyond his chief of staff and top lawyer believing they needed pardons to protect themselves from criminal prosecution after these events. Even after all of that, there were still two big remaining major revelations from the hearing today.

And one of them hinges I mentioned right at the top of this recap on the physical layout of the West Wing, and where today`s witness worked in the West Wing in relation to the Oval Office and in relation to the Office of the Chief of Staff.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON (D-MS): Although, so much of grave importance happens in the West Wing of the White House, it`s a quite a small building. Above me on the screen, you can see a map of the first floor of the West Wing of the White House. On the right, you can see the President`s Oval Office. On the left, the Chief of Staff`s office suite.

Within the Chief of Staff`s office suite as the heart of the West Wing was your desk, which was between the Vice President`s office, Mr. Kushner`s office and the Oval Office. Ms. Hutchinson, is this an accurate depiction of where you were located?

HUTCHINSON: It`s accurate. It`s a lot smaller than it looks.

THOMPSON: Absolutely. Ms. Hutchinson, this is a photo that shows the short distance between your office and the President`s Oval Office. And it only takes five to 10 seconds or so to walk down the hall from your office to the Oval Office. Is that right?

HUTCHINSON: That`s correct.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: So, we get that physical orientation right off the top. Keeping that in mind in terms of what she is physically in the middle of when she is at her desk at her office, here is Cassidy Hutchinson`s description of what happened there inside the actual West Wing inside the Oval Office dining room, in fact, when the pro Trump mob started on January 6 breaking windows, breaking into the Capitol, ransacking offices going through senators desks on the Senate floor, when they started streaming through the halls of the United States Capitol hunting for the Speaker of the House, hunting for the Vice President Mike Pence.

I will say one note. When the witness here talks about Jim, the Jim she`s talking about is Jim Jordan, Republican Congressman, close ally of the Trump White House, one of many Republican members of Congress that day who tried to get the election results rejected in Congress. I should also mention that this is one of several instances in her testimony today where Miss Hutchinson described White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as being essentially inert, as being physically inert, not acting, not speaking, not reacting at all, as he and other White House senior staff were learning of threats of violence, and by the time of this testimony, the actual carrying out of violence by Trump`s supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HUTCHINSON: Around 2:00 to 2:05 -- around 2:00 to 2:05, you know, we were watching the TV and I could see that the rioters were getting closer and closer to the Capitol. Mark still hadn`t popped out of his office or said anything about it. So that`s when I went into his office. I saw that he was sitting on his couch on his cell phone, same as the morning where he was just kind of scrolling and typing. I said, hey, are you watching the TV, Chief? Because his TV was small and I -- you can see it, but I didn`t know if he was really paying attention.

I said, you watching the TV, Chief? He was like, yes. I said, the rioters are getting really close. Have you talked to the President? And he said, no, he wants to be alone right now; still looking at his phone.