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A drumbeat of revelations from a House committee on Jan. 6 revealed two dueling identities of the Secret Service under former President Donald Trump — brave heroes who blocked the president from a dangerous plan to escort insurgents to the Capitol, and political brokers who were ready to to enable his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 elections.
The new image of the Secret Service — which has endured a decade of controversy from a prostitution scandal and White House security lapses during the Obama years to allegations of politicization under Trump — has cast fresh doubt on the independence and trustworthiness of the storied presidential protective agency.
At one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump was unsuccessfully persuading his agents to drive him to Capitol Hill, where he would join a throng of his supporters furiously descending on the great symbol of democracy. About 45 minutes later on the other side, former Vice President Mike Pence refused his bodyguard’s request to ride in an armored car — concerned, according to testimony, that his patrons would take him away from the Capitol and prevent him from fulfilling his duty to oversees the final counting of Electoral College votes.
‘Take me to the Capitol now’: How close Trump came to joining the rebels
Earlier in the day, according to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Trump complained that Secret Service “magnets” used to check people for guns were preventing armed supporters from entering his Stop Theft rally on the Ellipse.
“Here you have the Service thrown into a day that was a crazy Banana Republic,” said Bill Gage, a former Secret Service counterintelligence agent who protected Presidents George W. Bush and Obama. “My God. What would have happened if the agents had let Trump into the Capitol?”
At the center of the current storm is one key operative — Tony Ornato — who had a highly unusual role in Trump’s orbit. The one-time head of the president’s bodyguard has temporarily left his Secret Service job to serve as the White House’s deputy chief of staff. The political assignment was unprecedented in the Secret Service, as Ornato effectively transitioned from a civil servant to become a key part of Trump’s re-election effort.
Through an agency spokesman, Ornato denied Hutchinson’s hit claims, made under oath Tuesday, that he told her that Trump lunged at the wheel of the Secret Service vehicle transporting the president from his Jan. 6 rally and that he assaulted to the head of his detail, Robert Engel, in a fit of rage that he had not been taken to the Capitol.
Ornato and Engel were questioned by the committee earlier that day, and both confirmed that Trump had asked to be taken to the Capitol and was angry at being told they wouldn’t, according to people familiar with their testimony. Neither was asked about Trump’s alleged physical altercation in the car, according to two people familiar with their testimony.
But the aftershocks of Hutchinson’s emergence continue.
Lawmakers on the committee said Ornato said in his initial testimony that he could not recall other actions and statements by Trump since Jan. 6, which other witnesses described in great detail. Both have told their superiors they would be willing to testify under oath before the committee, and people familiar with the committee’s deliberations said they expect the agents to be subpoenaed soon.
As Ornato and Engel watched Hutchinson testify Tuesday, they immediately disputed to agency officials that Trump lunged at the wheel and Engel, and Ornato insisted he did not tell Hutchinson that, according to two law enforcement officials. The Secret Service prepared a line-by-line public statement this afternoon to counter specific points, the officials said, and also noted that the committee never asked Ornato and Engel about that claim.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified on June 28 that former President Donald Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent on January 6. (Video: Reuters)
But on Tuesday evening, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service’s parent agency, instructed the Service not to issue a public statement and instead offer the agents as witnesses to testify under oath, according to three people familiar with the decision.
DHS officials did not respond Friday to a request for comment.
Ornato and Engel did not respond to requests for comment. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said agents carried out their work in a day amid unprecedented challenges, and yet no state leaders were injured.
“The dedicated and professional men and women of the Secret Service carry out our mission in an outstanding manner with the highest levels of distinction,” Guglielmi said. “This was no exception on January 6, 2021.”
Former Secret Service agents and national security officials have highlighted the even more dire events that could have unfolded on Jan. 6 if Pence’s or Trump’s chiefs of staff had made different choices. They describe the unimaginable scenario in which the president and vice president go head-to-head in the Capitol, two leaders with opposing goals, accompanied by their dueling bodyguards and a chaotic army of Trump protesters. After all, Trump has been pressuring Pence to refuse to agree to the final voter count, and some rioters chanted “Fuck Mike Pence!”
The Attack: The siege of the Capitol on January 6 was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event.
Agents who had sworn to protect the lives of the president and vice president with their own choices in motion that day — refusing a direct order from Trump and going along with the vice president’s wishes. Together, agents’ game-day decisions helped maintain democracy, several former agents said.
“Bobby Engel did the right thing and said, ‘No, sir, this is a dangerous situation, we’re not going to take you to the Capitol,'” said Jim Helminski, a retired Secret Service agent and former head of security for Biden when he was vice president. “If they had [taken him]there would undoubtedly be a potentially dangerous confrontation between the vice president and the president.
“If the president finds Pence and they get into an argument — it’s really scary,” Helminski added. “Does the vice president’s detail now protect the vice president from the president’s detail?”
People briefed on the two executives’ Jan. 6 accounts before a congressional committee said Trump and Pence’s chiefs of staff were making decisions in a myopic vacuum: They were focused solely on the immediate security risks to the national leader they were. tasked to protect , and yet their election facilitated the peaceful transfer of power.
“Our story would have been so changed if things had happened differently,” Gage said. “What if Engel said, ‘We can make this happen for you, Mr. President?’
Yet the Secret Service’s claim to be politically independent — exemplified by the agents’ familiar maxim, “the people elect them, we protect them” — has been put to the test by Trump’s tenure in the White House.
Trump relied on Ornato to carry out plans that many agents complained put them, the public and the president at risk, according to interviews with more than a dozen Secret Service and administration officials and internal records. This included using Secret Service personnel to travel to mass campaign rallies as deadly cases of the coronavirus surged in the summer of 2020, and forcibly clearing peaceful crowds from Lafayette Square in June 2020 so Trump could appear tough on Black Lives Matter protesters for a photo.
On Jan. 6, Trump’s ability to bend Secret Service leadership to his will raised significant doubts among several Trump administration officials about the motives of senior Secret Service agents, according to committee testimony and Washington Post interviews with officials.
With an hour-long speech on the Ellipse that ended shortly after 1 p.m., Trump had incited a mob-like march to the Capitol that he hoped would help him block the certification of Biden’s victory. Before he had finished speaking, a small group of protesters had already begun breaking down the outer barricades of the Capitol and marching up the steps to the halls of Congress.
Pence and his team worried that his own Secret Service agents might block him from his goals. Although an armed mob storms through the windows of the Capitol, the Vice President insists on remaining in the Capitol so that he can complete the work of officially certifying the results of the presidential election. As rioters surged through the hallways, Pence’s commanding officer insisted on taking a reluctant Pence from a hidden office in the Capitol basement. But Pence declined his senior agent’s recommendation to ride in his armored limousine because he feared the agents might chase him out of the building.
Keith Kellogg, a Trump aide who then served as Pence’s national security adviser, had stressed to Ornato that the vice president intended to stay in the Capitol to finish the job, according to the book, “I Can Fix It Myself.” He told Ornato that the Secret Service should not try to forcibly remove Pence from the building.
“I know you guys too well,” Kellogg said. “You’ll fly him to Alaska if you can.” Do not do it.”
Ornato, through a Secret Service spokesman, previously denied that the conversation took place.
If Ornato and Engel testify before the committee on January 6, they could face a wide range of questions not only about Trump’s behavior that day, but more generally about the extent to which it served the interests of the presidency — or the man who was…
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