Alleged Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) has claimed that one of the Secret Service agents, who may testify before the Jan. 6 Committee to dispute to anti-Trump testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, “likes to lie.”
Two Secret Service agents, Tony Ornato and Robert Engel, have said they are prepared to testify before Congress about claims made about President Donald Trump during the hearings.
Former Trump White House aide Hutchinson testified that Trump tried to grab the steering wheel from Secret Service agents while he was being driven away from the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
However, Hutchinson admitted that she wasn’t present in the vehicle at the time of the allegations and was merely relaying gossip she’d heard from other aides.
Ornato and Engel have reportedly requested to testify under oath that Trump did not lunge at a steering wheel or assault them in an attempt to go to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot.
The widely-mocked new allegations were made on Tuesday by Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
A series of social media posts accumulated this week in which left-wing opponents of Ornato have accused him of failing to tell the truth in the past.
“Tony Ornato sure seems to deny conversations he’s apparently had,” claimed Olivia Troye, the anti-Trump former White House Homeland Security advisor under Mike Pence.
“First this one with Keith Kellogg in ‘I Alone Can Fix It’ [and] now he’s denying the story he told Cassidy Hutchinson.
“Those of us who worked w/ Tony know where his loyalties lie.
“He should testify under oath.”
There seems to be a major thread here… Tony Ornato likes to lie. https://t.co/0c2itYqf5J
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) June 30, 2022
“Tony Ornato lied about me too,” said CNN’s Alyssa Farah Griffin.
“During the protests at Lafayette Sq. in 2020, I told Mark Meadows [and] Ornato they needed to warn press staged there before clearing the square.
“Meadows replied: ‘We aren’t doing that.’”
She added, “Tony later lied [and] said the exchange never happened. He knows it did.”
The whirlwind of left-wing attacks on Ornato’s trustworthiness caught the attention of Kinzinger.
Kinzinger publicly commented that the social posts, from outspoken Trump critics, suggest that Ornato lies often.
“There seems to be a major thread here… Tony Ornato likes to lie,” Kinzinger wrote.
Rep. Liz Cheney declined to comment on the possibility of Secret Service members testifying in front of the Jan. 6 committee after two agents disputed claims about Trump’s behavior during the riots.
When pressed on whether the Secret Service members would speak on growing narrative discrepancies in witness testimonies, Cheney demurred.
“The committee has spoken to both Mr. Ornato and Mr. Engel, and we welcome additional testimony, under oath, from both of them, and from anybody else in the Secret Service who has information about any of these issues,” Cheney told ABC News.
