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    Testimony Paints Mark Meadows as Unwilling to Act as Jan. 6 Unfolded

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    Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mr. Meadows, the White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, described him as scrolling through his phone as rioters approached the Capitol.It was about 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021. Mark Meadows sat on a couch in his West Wing office, alone, scrolling through his cellphone. Across Washington from the White House, supporters of President Donald J. Trump were approaching the Capitol, protesting the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory.“Are you watching the TV, chief?” Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mr. Meadows, the White House chief of staff, recalled asking him. “The rioters are getting really close. Have you talked to the president?”No, Mr. Meadows replied, his eyes fixed on his phone. Mr. Trump, he went on, “wants to be alone right now.”Ms. Hutchinson’s account of a chief of staff who was at best disengaged and at worst overwhelmed by the events around him was a key part of her public appearance on Tuesday at a hastily scheduled hearing by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, and what led to it.Another aide to Mr. Meadows, Ben Williamson, provided a different assessment, saying in testimony to the House committee that Mr. Meadows was responsive when Mr. Williamson said there was a problem. “Any suggestion he didn’t care is ludicrous,” Mr. Williamson said in a statement on Wednesday.Lawyers for Ms. Hutchinson said on Wednesday that she stood by her testimony. Yet even without Ms. Hutchinson’s recollections, a number of Mr. Meadows’s former colleagues and people who were interacting with him as the riot unfolded painted a portrait of an ineffective chief of staff as a violent scene developed at the Capitol.When he hired Mr. Meadows in March 2020, Mr. Trump gleefully told allies that he had found his James A. Baker III, a White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan and the person many successors have tried to emulate as the gold standard for running a West Wing.Yet within months, as the coronavirus pandemic raged and the economy that Mr. Trump prided himself on cratered, Mr. Meadows became known among many of his colleagues as someone who spoke out of both sides of his mouth. He encouraged Mr. Trump’s disgust with calling for increased mandates for masks, mocked the scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, according to former colleagues, waged petty fights internally with aides he believed were not following his authority.But instead of playing the role of gatekeeper and bringing order to a chaotic West Wing, Mr. Meadows was often criticized by associates as terrified of Mr. Trump’s temper and eager to please him.After the election, Mr. Meadows played a key role in encouraging House Republicans to look at ways to subvert Mr. Biden’s victory.Mr. Meadows called or texted Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, 18 times to arrange a call with Mr. Trump, and he made a trip to the state to look at the inspection of voting machines up close. He was in frequent contact with Trump supporters urging him to fight the outcome, including Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.Over the course of his tenure, Mr. Meadows helped create a rift between Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, according to a handful of former White House officials, by inserting himself into tasks that the vice president would historically perform. Among other things, Mr. Meadows injected himself into a trip to the Capitol with Amy Coney Barrett when she was a Supreme Court nominee, a visit Mr. Pence had been expected to play a prominent role in leading, a former White House aide recalled.“I think that Mark would often say to me that he was working to try and get the president to concede and accept the results of the election,” Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s former chief of staff, told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” recently.“And at the same time, it was clear he was bringing in lots of other people into the White House that were feeding the president different conspiracy theories,” Mr. Short said. “I think that Mark was telling different audiences all sorts of different stories.”On election night, as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, wanted to encourage the president to declare victory long before all the votes had been counted, Mr. Meadows and three other aides rejected the idea as stupid. But within days, Mr. Meadows began exchanging messages with his former House colleagues.“I love it,” Mr. Meadows replied to a suggestion from Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, on Nov. 5, 2020, about a plan to push legislatures in key states that Mr. Trump had lost to appoint so-called alternate electors to send to Congress.Within weeks of that text exchange, Mr. Meadows reassured Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, that, despite his repeated public statements that the election was stolen from him, Mr. Trump would eventually concede the election.Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mr. Meadows, gave an account of a chief of staff who was at best disengaged and at worst overwhelmed by the events of Jan. 6.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAt the same time, Mr. Meadows continued to allow people into the White House who were encouraging Mr. Trump to take actions that could undermine the results of the election. And he forwarded conspiracy theories about the election to senior administration officials to check out.Yet on Dec. 18, 2020, Mr. Meadows was among the Trump advisers who opposed a band of outside Trump supporters — including Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser — who urged Mr. Trump to authorize the government seizure of voting machines to search for election fraud.Finally, Mr. Meadows continued to look to Jan. 6, 2021, as the last option for Mr. Trump. Yet as the events of that day unfolded, his colleagues said at the time, Mr. Meadows seemed completely overwhelmed, at times to the point of paralysis. He reached out to Ivanka Trump to come downstairs from her office to try to implore her father to ask the rioters to stop, which she did, but it took hours for her to succeed in getting him to do so.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Liz Cheney Calls Trump ‘a Domestic Threat That We Have Never Faced Before’

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      Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican and vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, described former President Donald J. Trump in stark terms on Wednesday night as a threat to the republic who had “gone to war with the rule of law.”“At this moment, we are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before — and that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic,” Ms. Cheney said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where her address was met with a sustained standing ovation.“He is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man,” she said, continuing, “Even after all we’ve seen, they’re enabling his lies.”Ms. Cheney spoke at a moment when Mr. Trump is potentially on the verge of announcing a presidential campaign for 2024, according to his advisers, raising the prospect of a front-running candidate in early polls who is also facing active civil and criminal investigations. Mr. Trump has also continued to repeat lies about his 2020 election loss, maintaining that the contest was “stolen” from him.“As the full picture is coming into view with the Jan. 6 committee, it has become clear that the efforts Donald Trump oversaw and engaged in were even more chilling and more threatening than we could have imagined,” Ms. Cheney said.Republicans, she said at another point, “have to choose,” because they “cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution.”It was a striking commentary from the daughter of a Republican former vice president, Dick Cheney, against the current leader of the Republican Party, even as he is out of office. Ms. Cheney had been a supporter of Mr. Trump’s until shortly after the 2020 election, when she criticized him for his baseless fraud allegations.In May 2021, she said she regretted voting for him the previous year.Ms. Cheney, who was forced out of her leadership post as the No. 3 Republican in the House last year as she repeatedly excoriated Mr. Trump for the events of Jan. 6, has become a fairly isolated presence within a party that remains heavily in thrall of the former president.She is seen as a potential presidential candidate in the 2024 election, in which she could try to plant a flag showing how the party has morphed from the one her father helped lead into one reshaped by Trumpism.Ms. Cheney began her speech by talking about undemocratic countries around the world and nations that are adversaries of the United States, including Russia and China. From there, she talked about Mr. Trump.She praised Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last White House chief of staff, for her public testimony in Congress a day earlier.“Her bravery and patriotism were awesome to behold,” Ms. Cheney said.Ms. Cheney is facing a Trump-backed primary challenger for her Wyoming congressional seat in August, and the race is widely seen as an uphill battle for her. More

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      Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House Counsel

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      Mr. Cipollone, who repeatedly fought extreme plans to overturn the election, had resisted publicly testifying to the panel.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena Wednesday for the testimony of Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel to President Donald J. Trump who repeatedly fought back against extreme plans to overturn the 2020 election, after he resisted testifying publicly.In a statement accompanying the subpoena, the leaders of the committee said they were seeking Mr. Cipollone’s deposition testimony because investigators needed to “hear from him on the record, as other former White House counsels have done in other congressional investigations.”The committee said it was seeking information about Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his involvement in plans to submit false slates of electors to Congress and interfere with the Justice Department.The subpoena of a White House counsel, a rare step for a congressional committee, sent a clear signal of the aggressive tactics the panel is willing to use to try to force cooperation of even the White House’s former top lawyer, who most likely could invoke attorney-client privilege in response to many questions. But the testimony of Mr. Cipollone — who participated in key conversations on Jan. 6 and throughout Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, and is known to have doubted the legality of many of those plans — could prove consequential.The committee has at times used the leverage a subpoena creates to force witnesses to negotiate a deal for their cooperation. Discussions about the scope of a possible appearance are expected to begin soon.“Any concerns Mr. Cipollone has about the institutional prerogatives of the office he previously held are clearly outweighed by the need for his testimony,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said in a statement.A lawyer familiar with Mr. Cipollone’s deliberations, who was not authorized to speak for the record, said that the subpoena was needed before the former White House counsel could consider transcribed testimony before the committee, and that Mr. Cipollone would now evaluate matters of privilege as appropriate.Photos of Mr. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy, on screen during one of the Jan. 6 commitee’s hearings. Both men met with the panel in April, but they were not under oath.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesIn April, Mr. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy, met separately with the panel, two people familiar with the sessions said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the meetings.At the time, the two men were not under oath, and their interviews were not transcribed. Since then, Mr. Cipollone has resisted testifying publicly, despite calls from the committee for him to do so.“Our committee is certain that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here. But we think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally,” Ms. Cheney announced from the dais at a hearing last week. “He should appear before this committee, and we are working to secure his testimony.”At a hearing on Tuesday, the committee heard testimony from a former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, who described Mr. Cipollone’s pivotal role during the events of Jan. 6.“Mark, we need to do something more,” Ms. Hutchinson said she heard Mr. Cipollone tell Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, on Jan. 6 as Mr. Trump’s supporters entered the Capitol. “They’re literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung.”Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      ‘Why We Did It’ Is a Dark Ride on the ‘Republican Road to Hell’

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      The former political operative Tim Miller writes about why most of the Republican establishment learned to stop worrying and line up behind President Trump.WHY WE DID ITA Travelogue From the Republican Road to HellBy Tim Miller259 pages. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $26.99.Too often, when straining to put some daylight between themselves and the Trump administration, regretful Republicans have reached for elaborate excuses and high-toned rhetoric. The former political operative Tim Miller knows better than to try.The most honorable parts of “Why We Did It,” Miller’s darkly funny (if also profoundly dispiriting) post-mortem/mea culpa, are the ones that dispense with pious pretense. Miller, a millennial who started working in Republican politics when he was 16, depicts himself as someone who was so preoccupied with “the Game” that for years he gave little thought to the degraded culture that his bare-knuckle tactics helped perpetuate. He liked the excitement, the money, the mischief. There was a “bizarre type of fame” that came with “D.C. celebrification,” he writes. He got addicted to the “horse race.” He was in it to win.His fixation on victory was so consuming that it could often override his personal interests. “Why We Did It” recalls a moment when Miller panicked after John McCain made a stray comment in 2006 that was barely, just barely, pro-gay marriage. (McCain later clarified that he was only talking about private ceremonies; he did “not believe that gay marriages should be legal.”) Miller was planning to work on McCain’s presidential campaign. Miller is also gay. He was upset that McCain might hurt his chances with Republican voters, rather than excited at the prospect of working for someone who didn’t “want to deny me the ability to have a totally chill, off-the-books, man-man ceremony.” Miller says it’s precisely this warped response — his own “championship-level compartmentalization” — that makes him especially suited to understanding why most of the Republican establishment learned to stop worrying and line up behind Trump. The episode with McCain was just the beginning. Miller later went on to do P.R. work for social conservatives who virulently opposed same-sex marriage. “As a gay man who contorted himself into defending homophobes,” he writes, “I am more than capable of inhabiting the mind of the enabler.”The first half of the book describes Miller’s political coming-of-age — from closeted young Republican who grew up in a devout Catholic family to a spokesman for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign to one of the loudest Never Trumpers during the 2016 election. The second half of “Why We Did It” is a taxonomy of the kind of Republicans who went MAGA, based on Miller’s conversations with them and his firsthand knowledge of what makes the most opportunistic D.C. creatures tick.In between the two halves is an awkward chapter titled “Inertia,” in which Miller owns up to going from denouncing Trump before he was elected to working for Scott Pruitt, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator. (“It was a trying time and I was desperate.”) Miller later got a contract for media-monitoring services from the E.P.A. (“icky,” he concedes). Oh, and Miller also conducted opposition research for Facebook that happened to dovetail with conspiracy theories, casting the liberal financier and philanthropist George Soros as the shadowy force behind an anti-Facebook movement. (Miller insists that this newspaper’s reporting on what happened was “overheated.”)Tim Miller, the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell.”Sophie Berard Photography“I was favor-trading with people who were causing real-world harm so I could get a pat on the head from some client who wanted self-serving scuttlebutt fed to the rubes,” he writes of his career. But as a self-described P.R. flack, Miller knows how to spin such ugly straw into shiny gold. Who better to identify why his fellow Republicans got sucked under than someone who kept getting pulled back in?The hardcore Trumpists who loved their candidate from the beginning don’t interest Miller. His subjects include colleagues who worked with him nearly a decade ago on the Growth and Opportunity Project, known as the Republican “autopsy,” organized after Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in 2012. The report called for moderation, for outreach, for immigration reform. But one by one, the people working on the project went from abhorring Trump to embracing him.There was “the Striver,” Elise Stefanik, the Harvard-educated representative from upstate New York who “was doing what was required to get the next buzz,” Miller writes. There was “the Little Mix,” Reince Priebus, who liked “feeling important” and tried “to stay in everyone’s good graces while the world around him unraveled.” Miller calls Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer “the Nerd-Revenging Team Player” who gamely thought that obtaining some status in the White House might make up for some “negative charisma.” There was a coterie of “Cartel-Cashing, Team-Playing, Tribalist Trolls,” always on the lookout for the next gravy train.Some of these former colleagues will talk to Miller; others won’t. “Why We Did It” begins and ends with the story of his friendship with the Republican fund-raiser Caroline Wren, a fellow “socially liberal millennial,” who worked with Miller on McCain’s 2008 campaign but more recently made a star turn as a Trump adviser subpoenaed by the panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Wren’s motivations don’t turn out to be particularly complex; she herself admits that her politics have always had less to do with the finer details of governing than the more cultish aspects of personality. “She had come to worship John McCain,” Miller writes, and she was soon “obsessed with Sarah Palin.” When pushed to explain what drew her to Trump, whose policies she says repulsed her, Wren rails against smug progressives driving around in their Priuses and forcing everyone to drink out of paper straws. She felt intensely annoyed by their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. She liked Trump because of what she calls his “scorch-the-earth mode.”This “animus,” Miller says, seems to have been the necessary condition for converting his “reluctant peers” into Trump supporters. I recommend reading “Why We Did It” alongside “It Was All a Lie” (2020), by Stuart Stevens, another “what happened” book by a former Republican operative. Stevens comes across as thoughtful, deliberative, reflective; Miller comes across as clever, a little bit mean, extremely profane. Stevens captures how the Republican Party spent decades cultivating grievances that it didn’t plan to do anything about, while Miller captures the consequent emotional valence, with its “unseriousness and cruelty.” Both books are absorbing; neither is particularly hopeful.“AHHHHHHH,” an exasperated Miller writes, remembering how he stayed in politics because of his own thirst for fame and fortune. For all the reluctant Trump supporters’ torturous rationales, maybe the reasons for why they did it don’t get much more complicated than that. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Explores Links Between Trump Allies and Extremist Groups

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      Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide, testified that the former president directed his chief of staff to reach out to Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, who had ties to the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.In their relationships with President Donald J. Trump in recent years, Roger J. Stone Jr., his longtime political adviser, and Michael T. Flynn, who was briefly his national security adviser, have followed a similar trajectory.Both were either convicted of or pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. Both were pardoned by Mr. Trump after the 2020 presidential election. And both supported Mr. Trump in his relentless, multilayered efforts to reverse its outcome and remain in power.The two were, in a sense, together again on Tuesday, when both were mentioned within an instant of one another at the House select committee hearing by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff. Ms. Hutchinson told the panel that on Jan. 5, 2021, a day before the Capitol was stormed, Mr. Trump had directed Mr. Meadows to reach out to Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn.Ms. Hutchinson acknowledged that she did not know what her boss may have said to the men. But her testimony was the first time it was revealed that Mr. Trump, on the eve of the Capitol attack, had opened a channel of communication with a pair of allies who had not only worked on his behalf for weeks challenging the results of the election, but who also had extensive ties to extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were soon to be at the forefront of the violence.The question of whether there was communication or coordination between the far-right groups that helped storm the Capitol and Mr. Trump and his aides and allies is among the most important facing the Jan. 6 investigators.Barring a criminal prosecution — or something else that could force the details of the calls into the public sphere — it could be tough to be figure out exactly what Mr. Meadows discussed with Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn.Since late last year, Mr. Meadows has refused to comply with a committee subpoena that seeks his testimony about the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 — a move that risked his indictment on contempt of Congress charges. As for Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn, both repeatedly exercised their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination during their own interviews with the committee.Mr. Flynn’s interview was especially remarkable, according to a recording of it played at the hearing on Tuesday. A former three-star general who still collects a military pension, Mr. Flynn pleaded the Fifth Amendment even when he was asked if he believed the violence at the Capitol was wrong, and whether he supported the lawful transfer of presidential power.Ms. Hutchinson also told the panel that she recalled hearing about the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers while the planning was taking place for Mr. Trump’s public event near the White House on Jan. 6 — a time, she explained, when the former president’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, had been around.It is possible that Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn will receive more attention when the panel reconvenes for its next public hearing in July. That is when Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, has said he intends to lead a presentation that will focus on the roles far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the 1st Amendment Praetorian played in the Capitol attack. Mr. Raskin has also promised to explore the connections between those groups and the people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to President Donald J. Trump, has repeatedly denied that he had any role in the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan.6.Al Drago for The New York TimesBoth Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn fit that description, having maintained extensive ties to far-right groups in the postelection period. Much of the contact came at pro-Trump rallies in Washington when the men were guarded by members of the groups, who served as their bodyguards.For over a year, Mr. Stone has repeatedly denied that he had any role in the violence that erupted at the Capitol. Shortly after Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, he denied in a post on social media that Mr. Meadows had called him on the day before the attack.Mr. Flynn’s lawyer has failed to respond to numerous requests for comments about the role his client played in the events of Jan. 6 and the weeks leading up to it.As early as Dec. 12, 2020, the 1st Amendment Praetorian protected Mr. Flynn when he appeared as a speaker at a pro-Trump march in Washington. Joining the group as security at the event were members of the Oath Keepers, including the organization’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, who has since been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack.The 1st Amendment Praetorian also helped Mr. Flynn’s onetime lawyer, Sidney Powell, gather open source intelligence about allegations of election fraud that was ultimately funneled into a series of conspiracy-laden lawsuits she filed challenging the voting results, according to the group’s leader, Robert Patrick Lewis.Mr. Lewis, by his own account, played a minor role in another, even more brazen, attempt to overturn the election. He has claimed that, on Dec. 18, 2020, he drove Mr. Flynn and Ms. Powell to the White House for an Oval Office meeting at which they sought to persuade Mr. Trump to use his national security apparatus to seize voting machines around the country in his bid to stay in power.On Jan. 6 itself, according to audio recordings obtained by The New York Times, a few members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian protected Mr. Flynn again. Around the same time, according to court papers filed in a recent defamation case, a member of the group, Philip Luelsdorff, was briefly present in the so-called war room at the Willard Hotel where pro-Trump lawyers, including Mr. Giuliani and John Eastman, had set up shop to plan the objections to the certification of the Electoral College vote count.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Key Questions Cassidy Hutchinson’s Jan. 6 Testimony Raises

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      The former White House aide’s appearance before the House Jan. 6 committee raised a host of issues sure to be topics of further inquiry.For two hours, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, laid out a devastating account on Tuesday of former President Donald J. Trump’s actions and state of mind on Jan. 6, 2021, and in the days leading up to it.Her testimony to the House select committee and a national television audience raised a series of questions that are sure to be the focus of continued inquiry by the committee, federal prosecutors and others seeking to flesh out Mr. Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss and remain in power.Here are some of the key issues presented by her testimony.What does this mean for a possible criminal prosecution?Ms. Hutchinson told the panel that moments before Mr. Trump went onstage to deliver his speech on the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, he was informed that people in the crowd were armed with a variety of weapons.By her account, he responded by urging that security measures be taken down to allow his supporters to fill in the area around the stage. And she testified that Mr. Trump said he was in no danger because the crowd was supportive of him and that the people there could go on to march to the Capitol.Legal experts said the testimony provided more evidence to support a possible criminal prosecution, as it suggested that Mr. Trump was aware of the potential for violence but went on to urge his supporters to head to the Capitol. During the speech, Mr. Trump encouraged the crowd to “fight like hell” and march to where Congress was certifying the Electoral College results — even promising that he would join them.The Justice Department has said nothing explicit about any investigative focus on Mr. Trump. But lawyers have pointed to a number of potential charges against him, including obstructing Congress, conspiracy and incitement.For months, the Justice Department has been documenting in court papers how rioters charged in the attack have claimed they were following Mr. Trump’s orders when they descended on and breached the Capitol. Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony could place Mr. Trump into a conspiratorial relationship with members of the mob, lawyers said, suggesting that he pushed them into action even though he was aware that they presented an immediate threat.How the Justice Department will proceed is perhaps the biggest question of all.What happened in the presidential vehicle?No piece of Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony electrified the hearing room like her detailed description of a story she said she was told about Mr. Trump demanding to be taken to the Capitol in his armored vehicle when his speech at the Ellipse ended.Ms. Hutchinson recalled being told by Anthony Ornato, a deputy White House chief of staff, that after Mr. Trump’s security detail told him he could not go to the Capitol, the president “lunged” for the steering wheel and then struck or grabbed his lead agent, Robert Engel. Mr. Trump was not in the armored limousine known as “the Beast,” as Ms. Hutchinson implied, but in an S.U.V. that presidents sometimes ride in.Secret Service officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that both Mr. Engel and Mr. Ornato would dispute that Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of the car or that Mr. Engel was struck. They said the two men would not dispute that Mr. Trump wanted to be driven to the Capitol as the angry pro-Trump protesters, some of them armed, headed in that direction and Congress was gathered to ratify that he had lost the election and that Joseph R. Biden Jr. would be the next president.Both Mr. Engel and Mr. Ornato have appeared in private before the committee. It is not clear when they will appear again to answer questions about Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony. It is also unclear when the committee first heard the story about Mr. Trump’s actions in the vehicle from Ms. Hutchinson.Ms. Hutchinson made clear in her public testimony that she did not have direct knowledge of the incident, and it remains unclear what, if anything, the committee did to corroborate it. Still, Mr. Trump’s allies are now pointing to it as a misstep by the committee and using it to undermine the credibility of her testimony.Did Trump allies try to intimidate witnesses?For months, the committee has suggested that Mr. Trump or those close to him might have attempted to influence potential witnesses. Its members have suggested, for instance, that Mr. Trump may have influenced the refusal of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, to cooperate with the investigation.On Tuesday, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman, displayed what she said were two examples of unnamed people associated with Mr. Trump attempting to influence witnesses. One witness was told to “protect” certain individuals to “stay in good graces in Trump World.” In the other example, a witness was encouraged to remain “loyal.”“Most people know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns,” Ms. Cheney said. “We will be discussing these issues as a committee and carefully considering our next steps.”It is not clear whether the committee referred the incidents to the Justice Department for investigation or possible prosecution. According to Punchbowl News, Ms. Hutchinson was one of the people who received such a warning. Her lawyer did not respond to a message seeking comment.Mr. Trump and his advisers have come under scrutiny in previous situations for reportedly trying to influence witnesses. In 2017, a lawyer for Mr. Trump in the investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Russian officials in 2016 dangled the prospect of pardons to two people under investigation, Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort. And in 2018, Mr. Trump’s public statements related to Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer who was under investigation by federal prosecutors, were looked at as possible acts of obstruction of justice.How did Trump and his aides react to the violence?Network PoolOne of the biggest issues is what exactly Mr. Trump was doing for the 187 minutes of the attack and what exactly the White House was doing to combat it. According to Ms. Hutchinson, the answer was: not much.On the day of the attack, Mr. Trump rebuffed efforts by his aides and family members, including his daughter Ivanka, to put out a statement telling the mob to stand down. Instead, he posted to Twitter attacking Mr. Pence.“Mark, we need to do something more,” Ms. Hutchinson said she heard the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, tell Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, as he rushed into her office after Mr. Trump’s supporters began entering the Capitol. “They’re literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung.”“You heard him, Pat,” she said Mr. Meadows responded, referring to Mr. Trump. “He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Trump’s Endorsement Record Midway Through Primary Season

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      With Tuesday’s primaries in Illinois and a handful of other states behind us, we are now more than halfway through this year’s midterm primary season. More than 30 states have hosted nominating contests already — including some of the most crucial ones, like those in Pennsylvania and Georgia.Former President Donald J. Trump has endorsed more than 200 candidates across the country, many of whom ran unopposed or faced little-known, poorly funded opponents.For some — like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — Mr. Trump’s endorsement was crucial to securing victory. But in Georgia, several of his candidates were resoundingly defeated, and he had mixed success in states like South Carolina and North Carolina.There are a lot of races still ahead of us. But here’s a look at Mr. Trump’s endorsement record so far in some of the most closely watched primaries.In Georgia, several losses, and one victoryGov. Brian Kemp easily defeated former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate, in the Republican primary for governor. Mr. Kemp was a Trump target after he refused to overturn the president’s re-election loss there in 2020. He will face the Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams, whom he narrowly defeated four years ago.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused Mr. Trump’s demand that he “find” additional votes after his 2020 loss, defeated a Trump-backed challenger, Representative Jody Hice, in the Republican primary.Representative Jody Hice, who was a candidate for secretary of state in Georgia, at a campaign event in Atlanta.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAttorney General Chris Carr defeated John Gordon, a Trump-backed opponent, with more than 73 percent of the vote.In the Republican primary for an open seat in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, the Trump-backed candidate, Jake Evans, qualified for the June 21 runoff, though he was a distant second to the top vote-getter, Rich McCormick.The former professional football star Herschel Walker, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, dominated the Republican primary for Senate. He will face Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and prolific fund-raiser, in the general election.Understand the June 28 Primary ElectionsVoters in eight states weighed in on key contests as Democrats attempted to elevate far-right Republicans to face this fall.Takeaways: Democratic influence on Republican races paid off in some places, but not others. Here’s what we learned.Winners and Losers: See a list of the most notable results.Illinois: Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator, won the G.O.P. nomination for governor — with help from Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat.New York: Gov. Kathy Hochul’s runaway primary victory sets the stage for what could be a grueling contest against her Republican opponent, Representative Lee Zeldin.Colorado: Tina Peters, an indicted county clerk backing election conspiracy theories, lost her bid for the G.O.P. nomination in the race for secretary of state.Victories in PennsylvaniaAfter a close race that prompted a recount, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Mr. Trump’s choice, won the state’s critical Republican Senate primary, narrowly defeating David McCormick.Doug Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who has propagated myriad false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for governor. Mr. Trump endorsed him just a few days before the May 17 primary.Two wins and a loss in North CarolinaRepresentative Ted Budd, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, won the Republican nomination for Senate, and Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, was catapulted to victory in his Republican primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.But Representative Madison Cawthorn crumbled under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders. He was ousted in his May 17 primary, a stinging rejection of a Trump-endorsed candidate. Voters chose Chuck Edwards, a state senator.A split in South Carolina House racesRepresentative Tom Rice, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was ousted by his Trump-backed challenger, State Representative Russell Fry, in the Republican primary in the Seventh Congressional District.But Representative Nancy Mace defeated her Trump-backed challenger, the former state lawmaker Katie Arrington, in the First Congressional District primary. Ms. Mace had said that Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack, but she did not vote to impeach him. She had support from Nikki Haley and Mick Mulvaney, who both held office in the state before working in the Trump administration.Election deniers win in NevadaIn the Republican Senate primary, Adam Laxalt won the nomination and will face the incumbent, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats this fall. Mr. Laxalt, a former attorney general, was endorsed by Mr. Trump and had helped lead his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Nevada.Joseph Lombardo, the Las Vegas sheriff who was backed by Mr. Trump, won the Republican nomination for governor and will face the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Steve Sisolak.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More

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      Illinois Governor’s Race Shows G.O.P.’s Lurch to Right (With Nudge From Left)

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      Republican voters in Illinois nominated a conservative hard-liner for governor on Tuesday, lifting State Senator Darren Bailey out from a bruising and costly primary that saw spending from three dueling billionaires — including the current Democratic governor, who spent tens of millions of dollars to meddle in the Republican contest.Mr. Bailey defeated Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora, the moderate Black mayor of the state’s second-biggest city, in a race that captured the ongoing power struggle inside the Republican Party. On one side were the old-guard fiscal conservatives who bankrolled Mr. Irvin. On the other side was an ascendant G.O.P. wing that wants to take a more combative approach to politics inspired by former President Donald J. Trump.Kenneth Griffin, a Chicago-based Republican and hedge-fund founder, plunged $50 million into Mr. Irvin’s campaign in an effort to find a moderate Republican who could compete against Democrats in a blue state. But his preferred candidate came under attack not just from Mr. Bailey and other Republicans, but also from the Democratic Governors Association and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a fellow billionaire and a Democrat. And Mr. Bailey had his own billionaire: Richard Uihlein, a top financier on the right.Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois at a deli in Chicago on Tuesday.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe Illinois race is the most expensive example yet of a high-risk 2022 Democratic strategy of injecting money into Republican primaries to help more extreme G.O.P. candidates in the hopes that Democrats will face weaker general-election opponents.Democrats welcomed Mr. Bailey to the general election by tagging the opponent they had helped engineer as a “MAGA extremist.”“Bailey is far too conservative for Illinois,” said Noam Lee, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association.Mr. Bailey called Chicago a “hellhole” during one primary debate, was once removed from a legislative session for refusing to wear a mask and has said he opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Mr. Trump endorsed him over the weekend.Democrats also spent money to shape three Republican primaries in Colorado on Tuesday for Senate, governor and the House — and lost in all three.Worried that an eroding national political climate could endanger Senator Michael Bennet, Democrats spent heavily to intervene in the Republican primary. They helped lift up State Representative Ron Hanks, a far-right Republican who marched at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to fend off energetic challenges from two fellow Democrats, while the four-way G.O.P. contest has been playing in part like a referendum on Donald J. Trump.Where the Candidates Stand: Ahead of the primaries for governor on June 28, our political reporters questioned the seven candidates on crime, taxes, abortion and more.Maloney vs. Nadler: New congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats — including New York City’s last remaining Jewish congressman — on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.But the effort failed as a more moderate businessman, Joe O’Dea, won on Tuesday. His campaign celebrated by handing out faux newspapers to supporters at his victory party with the banner headline “O’DEA DEFEATS SCHUMER.”In his victory speech in Denver, Mr. O’Dea pledged to be “like a Republican Joe Manchin” and lampooned the failed intervention by Democrats as “everything that the American people hate about politics.”“It is pure cynicism and deceit,” he said.Illinois and Colorado were two of seven states holding primaries or runoffs on Tuesday, the first races since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week and thrust abortion back to the center of the American political debate.Governor Kathy Hochul speaks to supporters after winning the Democratic nomination Tuesday night.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesIn New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul won the Democratic nomination for her first full term after succeeding Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who resigned under pressure over sexual misconduct. In Oklahoma, voters were sorting through a host of Republicans for a rare open Senate seat. And in Mississippi, one House Republican was defeated in a runoff and another survived a right-wing challenger. There were also contests in Utah and South Carolina, including for Senate.Democrats had also attempted to meddle in the Republican primary for governor of Colorado, where an outside group spent money linking Greg Lopez, a former mayor of Parker, to Mr. Trump in a backhanded attempt to elevate him over Heidi Ganahl, a University of Colorado regent.But Ms. Ganahl prevailed and will face Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat who became the first openly gay man elected to a governorship in 2018 and is seeking re-election.Democrats had also spent in Colorado’s open Eighth District to aid another far-right candidate. The seat is expected to be competitive in the fall.In another closely watched Colorado race, Tina Peters, a Mesa County clerk who has been charged with seven felonies related to allegations that she tampered with voting machines to try to prove the 2020 presidential election was rigged, lost her bid for the Republican nomination to oversee elections as secretary of state.Ms. Peters has pleaded not guilty, and the indictment made her something of a hero to the election-denial movement spurred by Mr. Trump. But that was not enough for her to defeat Pam Anderson, a former Jefferson County clerk.On Tuesday, one voter, Sienna Wells, a 31-year-old software developer and registered independent who lives in Mesa County, cast her ballot in the Republican primary to oppose Ms. Peters, calling her “delusional.”“She says she wants free and fair elections and stuff like that, but if she gets in, she’ll be the one performing fraud,” Ms. Wells said. “It’s awful.”Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who is running for Colorado secretary of state, spoke at an event in Grand Junction in June.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesIn Illinois, an aggressive remapping by Democrats in the once-a-decade redistricting process created a half-dozen competitive House primaries, including two that pitted incumbents of the same party against each other. The races were the latest battlefields for the two parties’ ideological factions.In the Chicago suburbs, Representative Sean Casten defeated Representative Marie Newman after both Democrats were drawn into the same district. Ms. Newman had defeated a moderate Democratic incumbent to win her seat just two years ago. But she has since come under investigation for promising a job to an opponent to get him to exit her race.The victory for Mr. Casten came two weeks after he suffered a personal tragedy: the death of his 17-year-old daughter.In a sprawling and contorted new district that wraps around Springfield, Ill., two Republican incumbents, Representatives Rodney Davis and Mary Miller, were at odds. The contest has involved more than $11.5 million in outside spending. Mr. Davis is an ally of Republican leaders and has benefited from PAC spending linked to Mr. Griffin, the Republican billionaire, and the crypto industry. Ms. Miller was supported by spending from the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group.Representative Mary Miller greeted supporters at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Mendon, Ill.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesMs. Miller won. Her success was a victory for Mr. Trump, who endorsed her months ago in a contest that was seen as the greatest test of his personal influence on Tuesday. Ms. Miller made headlines at a rally with Mr. Trump last weekend, when she hailed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe as a “victory for white life.” An aide said she had misread a prepared line about the “right to life.”In Chicago, Representative Danny K. Davis, a veteran 80-year-old Black Democrat, confronted a robust primary challenge from Kina Collins, a 31-year-old gun safety activist, in one of the nation’s most solidly Democratic seats.. Representative Michael Guest at a campaign event in Magee, Miss., in June.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressIn Mississippi, Representative Michael Guest held off a primary challenge in the Third District from Michael Cassidy, a Navy veteran.Mr. Guest had drawn attacks as one of the three dozen Republicans who voted to authorize an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, even though such a commission was never formed. Instead, a Democrat-led House committee is now investigating.But after Mr. Cassidy narrowly outpaced Mr. Guest in the first round of voting, a super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican minority leader, spent more than $500,000 attacking Mr. Cassidy in the final two weeks before the runoff.In Mississippi’s Fourth District, Representative Steven Palazzo was defeated by Sheriff Mike Ezell of Jackson County on Tuesday. Mr. Palazzo, seeking a seventh term, had earned only 31 percent of the vote in the first round and was seen as vulnerable after a congressional ethics investigation accused him in 2021 of misspending campaign funds and other transgressions.In Oklahoma, the early resignation of Senator James M. Inhofe, a Republican who will retire in January, created a rare open seat in the solidly Republican state and drew an expansive primary field.Representative Markwayne Mullin advanced to the runoff and the second spot was still too close to call late Tuesday. T.W. Shannon, the former speaker of the Oklahoma House, Luke Holland, who served as Mr. Inhofe’s chief of staff, and State Senator Nathan Dahm were competing for the second runoff spot. Scott Pruitt, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was on track for a weak fifth-place finish.In Utah, Senator Mike Lee, the Republican incumbent, defeated two primary challengers. In a state that is a conservative stronghold, Democrats decided not to put forward a nominee and instead endorsed Evan McMullin, an independent who made a long-shot bid for president in 2016 by appealing to anti-Trump Republicans.Ryan Biller More

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      Tina Peters Loses the G.O.P. Primary for Colorado Secretary of State

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      Tina Peters, a county clerk who has been charged with seven felonies related to a scheme to surreptitiously copy sensitive voting data, lost her bid for the Republican nomination for Colorado secretary of state on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.She was defeated by Pam Anderson, a longtime local election official who served as a clerk and recorder for Jefferson County and as president of the statewide county clerks’ association. Late Tuesday, Ms. Peters was also trailing Mike O’Donnell, a former nonprofit executive who has promoted numerous falsehoods about the 2020 presidential contest. Ms. Peters is part of a movement of Trump-inspired Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s legitimacy and are running to be the top election official in their states, including Jim Marchant in Nevada, Audrey Trujillo in New Mexico and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.Ms. Anderson, by contrast, has vocally opposed misinformation about the 2020 election and has a page on her campaign website dedicated to debunking conspiracy theories about voting machines and the role of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, in funding elections.She has, however, pushed to expand auditing processes performed by local election officials in Colorado.In Colorado, a former swing state that has leaned toward Democrats in recent years, Ms. Anderson faces what is likely to be an uphill battle against Jena Griswold, the current secretary of state and a Democrat.Ms. Peters’s arraignment on 10 criminal charges, including seven felonies, is set for early August. She has pleaded not guilty.A former flight attendant who ran a construction company with her ex-husband, Ms. Peters was elected in 2018 as the clerk and recorder in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold amid the red-rocked canyons of western Colorado.After the 2020 presidential election, Ms. Peters grew suspicious of the national results, and attended a local event where a presentation was delivered by a high school teacher from Ohio known for spreading false election conspiracy theories.By May 2021, according to court documents, Ms. Peters was helping orchestrate an operation to copy voting machine data before and after a software update process known as a trusted build, in an attempt to prove that the machines were faulty.After her office ordered security cameras shut off in a secured area holding voting machines, court records say, Ms. Peters helped Conan Hayes, a former professional surfer who had worked with Mr. Trump’s legal team as it challenged the 2020 results, sneak into the trusted build process under a false identity.In early August, passwords to the Mesa County election equipment appeared on a QAnon figure’s Telegram channel and then on a right-wing website, leading to an investigation by the Colorado secretary of state that quickly garnered national attention.Ms. Peters’s newfound celebrity on the right soon led to appearances across the conservative media ecosystem, including on the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast.This February, Ms. Peters announced her bid for secretary of state.In March, she was indicted on 10 criminal counts related to the effort to copy voting equipment software, including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft and first-degree official misconduct. More