WASHINGTON — The Jan. 6 committee on Thursday interviewed Bobby Engel, who was the lead Secret Service agent for then-President Donald Trump when the insurrection took place, three sources familiar told NBC News.
Engel could provide key testimony related to information shared by Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. She delivered bombshell testimony before the committee during a public hearing this summer.
Hutchinson testified that she was told Trump tried to grab the steering wheel inside an armored SUV and lunged toward his security detail when he learned that he would not be taken to the Capitol following his rally on Jan. 6.
Hutchinson said Tony Ornato, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, told her about the incident. She also said Engel had not disputed Ornato’s account. Ornato and Engel both testified before the committee prior to Hutchinson’s testimony.
The Jan. 6 panel declined to comment on Engel’s interview. CNN was the first to report the news.
The Secret Service provided congressional investigators with more than 1 million electronic communications sent by agents in the lead-up to and during the insurrection at the Capitol, according to two sources familiar with the matter, NBC News reported in October.
At the beginning of November, committee investigators were scheduled to meet with a Secret Service agent who was in the lead car of Trump’s motorcade on the day of the riot at the Capitol.
Earlier this week, the committee said it was weighing its options after Trump failed to comply with a subpoena calling on him to appear for a closed-door deposition on Monday.
Trump asked a court in Florida to block enforcement of the subpoena, which demanded the former president hand over records of any communications he may have had regarding extremist groups involved in the Jan. 6 riot and any attempts of his in the past year to contact witnesses testifying before the committee. The subpoena also required that he sit for a deposition on Nov. 14, which he did not.
