By Steve Neavling
Former President Trump on Wednesday admitted he asked Secret Service agents to take him to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but denied that he lunged at security detail for refusing to let him go.
Trump made the acknowledgment at a campaign rally in Waukesha, Wis., The New York Times reports.
“I sat in the back,” Trump said, giving his version of events. “And you know what I did say? I said, ‘I’d like to go down there because I see a lot of people walking down.’ They said, ‘Sir, it’s better if you don’t.’ I said, ‘Well, I’d like to.’”
According to Trump, an agent responded, “It’s better if you don’t.”
“All right, whatever you guys think is fine,” Trump said. “That was the whole tone of the conversation.”
Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 are central to the special counsel’s criminal case against the former president.
During a committee hearing in 2022, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, claimed Trump tried to grab the steering wheel in an armored SUV and lunged toward agents when told he could not go.
Trump previously said he wished he had marched to the Capitol with his supporters on Jan. 6, but his Secret Service detail prevented him from going.
“Secret Service said I couldn’t go,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post in April 2022. “I would have gone there in a minute.”
