THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

In scathing testimony before the House committee investigating the attacks on Capitol Hill, a former aide to then-President Donald Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, portrayed Trump as an enraged commander in chief in the weeks surrounding the riot.

A furious Trump lunged at his own Secret Service agent, threw plates and refused to help his vice president as throngs of angry rioters chanted "hang Mike Pence," Meadows' former aide Cassidy Hutchinson told lawmakers in more than two hours of testimony Tuesday recalling what she heard and saw in the days and weeks surrounding the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

"I was disgusted," Hutchinson said of Trump's behavior on Jan. 6, particularly after he tweeted an attack on Mike Pence as the then-vice president was fleeing rioters who'd called for his execution. "It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie." [...]

Among her recollections, part of a succession of shocking details from inside the White House:

Trump was informed that members of the crowd during the "Stop the Steal" rally by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, carried weapons. He asked the Secret Service to dismantle metal detectors to let them into the Ellipse so his audience looked larger. Those rallygoers would later march to the Capitol and mount a violent siege aimed at disrupting Congress' certification of Trump's loss.

Trump lunged at the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle after he was informed that the Secret Service would not permit him to travel to the Capitol following his speech at that Ellipse rally.

Trump told aides that he agreed with those who had stormed the Capitol and thought they were right to call for Pence's hanging.

Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani sought pardons from the then-president for their actions related to challenging the election.

Hutchinson shared her sworn narrative as federal prosecutors appear to be closing in on several of Trump's top lieutenants in his effort to stay in power. FBI agents last week seized the cell phone of attorney John Eastman, who devised a Jan. 6 strategy to pressure Pence to overturn the election; they also searched the Lorton, Va., residence of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official whom Trump nearly appointed acting attorney general to aid his election subversion push.

Perhaps as notable as Hutchinson's testimony was the absence of much substantive pushback from Republicans to her account of worry at the White House about a president determined to get to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

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