President Donald Trump threw his lunch against a wall in a fit of rage when Attorney General William Barr announced that the Justice Department had not found evidence of widespread election fraud in 2020, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified Tuesday.
Ms. Hutchinson described the scene in the White House dining room after Mr. Trump read a December 2020 Associated Press article in which Mr. Barr dismissed claims of election fraud.
“I noticed that the door was propped open and the valet was inside the dining room changing the table cloth off of the dining room table,” Ms. Hutchinson testified to the House Jan. 6 committee. “He motioned for me to come in, and motioned toward the front of the room near the fireplace mantle and the TV, where I first noticed ketchup dripping down the wall, and there was a shattered porcelain plate on the floor.”
“The valet had articulated [that] the president was extremely angry at the attorney general’s AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall,” she testified.
The valet then told Ms. Hutchinson to steer clear of Mr. Trump as he fumed over the interview. She also told the panel that Mr. Trump had a propensity for anger.
Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican and the vice-chair of the committee, asked if it was the only instance where Mr. Trump had thrown dishes.
“It’s not,” Ms. Hutchinson responded.
“There were several times throughout my tenure with the Chief of Staff [Mark Meadows] that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the table cloth to let all of the contents of the table go onto the floor and likely break or go everywhere,” she said.
Ms. Hutchinson, who had previously been interviewed by the committee behind closed doors, testified in a surprise public hearing Tuesday called at the last minute to present new evidence that the panel collected.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.