Former top White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said Meadows took Giuliani "off-campus to make sure he didn't wander back to the Mansion."
Courtesy of CSPAN
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had to escort former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani from the Oval Office following a chaotic, late-night December 2020 West Wing meeting about the election results, according to new January 6 testimony.
Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide whose explosive testimony stunned Washington last month, shared with the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot a photo she took of Meadows leading Giuliani away from the Oval Office following the turbulent gathering, which was the site of a face-off between Trump's legal allies and White House lawyers over efforts to promote the then-president's baseless claims of election fraud, according to testimony.
The January 6 panel shared the photo alongside real-time text messages Hutchinson was sending from the meeting during its seventh live hearing on Tuesday.
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Hutchinson and others testified that the six-hour December 18, 2020, Oval Office meeting nearly ended in a brawl as tempers flared between Trump counsel Sidney Powell and White House lawyers. Giuliani himself told the panel that he remembered calling the White House attorneys "pussies."
"I'm going to categorically describe it as 'you guys aren't tough enough' or maybe I put it another way, 'maybe you guys are a bunch of pussies,'" Giuliani told the committee, trying to recall what he said. "Excuse the expression, I'm almost certain that word was used."
Former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne were also present at the meeting. White House counsel Pat Cipollone, parts of whose testimony was shared during Tuesday's hearing, also attended in an attempt to run opposition, according to testimony shared with the panel.
As the meeting dragged on, Hutchinson sent a text message to another top aide describing the West Wing as "UNHINGED," according to messages shared by the committee.
She later sent another text message, telling the aide that she took a photo of Meadows every single day.
"Tonight it was him escorting Rudy off-campus to make sure he didn't wander back to the mansion," Hutchinson wrote.
