Rep. Adam Kinzinger defends Cassidy Hutchinson as a credible witness

Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Sunday that he found former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson credible in her bombshell testimony about Jan. 6, 2021, and that people who want to dispute her account are free to testify.

“Cassidy Hutchinson testified under oath. We find her credible,” Mr. Kinzinger, Illinois Republican, told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Mr. Kinzinger is a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Ms. Hutchinson, 26, had a front-row seat to White House reactions to the Capitol attack and offered testimony that painted then-President Donald Trump in a very poor light. She said the president knew people who gathered at the White House Ellipse, before the march on the Capitol, had weapons.

Notably, she relayed a story that Mr. Trump tried to grab at the steering wheel in his presidential SUV and lunged for a Secret Service agent because they wouldn’t drive him to the Capitol to join his supporters.

Secret Service agent Tony Ornato relayed the story to her, she said, but Secret Service officials say that Mr. Ornato and other agents are ready to deny the account, raising a debate over who is credible.

Mr. Trump has decried the hearings as a one-sided witch hunt designed to blunt his political prospects.

Mr. Kinzinger was coy about corroborating evidence but said Ms. Hutchinson was not in the vehicle and was relaying a story she heard.

“Nobody has argued that the president didn’t want to go to the Capitol,” he said. “Nobody has argued that he didn’t know there were guns.”

Mr. Kinzinger is one of two Republican members on the Jan. 6 panel. The congressman lauded the other GOP member, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, for defending her principles during a recent primary debate as she faces a backlash for bucking Mr. Trump

Mr. Kinzinger called Ms. Cheney’s opponents “a bunch of armpit farters” for repeating Mr. Trump’s fraud claims around the 2020 election.

“She stood in front of her constituents and said, ‘Look, this is where I am on these issues.’ You see her opponents spreading conspiracies,” he said. “The primary system is failing.”