WASHINGTON -- More evidence is emerging in the House's Jan. 6 investigation that lends support to recent testimony that President Donald Trump wanted to join a mob that marched to the Capitol where they rioted, a committee member said Sunday.
"There will be way more information and stay tuned," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.
The committee has been intensifying its yearlong investigation into the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the committee's vice chair, is making clear that criminal referrals to the Justice Department, including against Trump, could follow.
At least two more hearings are scheduled this month that aim to show how Trump illegally directed a violent mob toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, and then failed to take quick action to stop the attack once it began.
The committee also has been reviewing new documentary film footage of Trump's final months in office, including interviews with Trump and members of his family.
Kinzinger, in a television interview, declined to disclose the new information he referred to and did not say who had provided it. He said many more details emerged after last week's testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and that nothing had changed the committee's confidence in her credibility.
"There's information I can't say yet," he said. "We certainly would say that Cassidy Hutchinson has testified under oath, we find her credible, and anybody that wants to cast disparagements on that, who were firsthand present, should also testify under oath and not through anonymous sources."
In a separate interview, another committee member, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said: "We are following additional leads. I think those leads will lead to new testimony."
In Hutchinson's appearance before the committee last week, she painted a picture of Trump as an angry, defiant president who was trying to let armed supporters avoid security screenings at a rally on the morning of Jan. 6 to protest his 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
Legal experts have said Hutchinson's testimony is potentially problematic for Trump as federal prosecutors investigate potential criminal wrongdoing.
Hutchinson also recounted a conversation with Tony Ornato, Trump's deputy chief of staff for operations, who, she testified, said Trump later grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol after the rally.
That account was quickly disputed, however. Bobby Engel, the Secret Service agent who was driving Trump, and Ornato are willing to testify under oath that no agent was assaulted and Trump never lunged for the steering wheel, a person familiar with the matter said. The person would not discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Asked whether Trump should be prosecuted over his role in the attack, Cheney said, "Ultimately, the Justice Department will decide that. I think we may well as a committee have a view on that." Asked whether a criminal referral from the committee is possible, Cheney said yes.
"There could be more than one criminal referral," Cheney said. She said the committee will decide later in the process whether to proceed.
"If you just think about it from the perspective of what kind of man knows that a mob is armed and sends the mob to attack the Capitol and further incites that mob when his own vice president is under threat, when the Congress is under threat," she continued, "it's very chilling and I think certainly we will, you know, continue to present to the American people what we found."
"I have greater concern about what it would mean if people weren't held accountable for what's happened here," Cheney said when asked if she was worried about the prospect of prosecuting an ex-president.
In recent days, the committee has subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and has been seeking more information from Ornato and Engel, who were previously interviewed by investigators.
Committee members hope Cipollone will come forward.
"He clearly has information about concerns about criminal violations, concerns about the president going to the Capitol that day, concerns about the chief of staff having blood on his hands if they didn't do more to stop that violent attack on the Capitol," Schiff said. "It's hard to imagine someone more at the center of things."
The committee has also been working on setting up an interview with Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She was asked to speak to the committee after disclosures of her communications with Trump's team in the run-up and day of the riot at the Capitol.
Kinzinger appeared on CNN's "State of the Union," Schiff was on CBS's "Face the Nation" and Cheney appeared on ABC's "This Week."
NEW POLL RESULTS
About half of Americans believe Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, a new poll shows.
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 48% of U.S. adults say the Republican former president should be charged with a crime for his role, while 31% say he should not be charged. An additional 20% say they don't know enough to have an opinion. Fifty-eight percent say Trump bears a great deal or quite a bit of responsibility for what happened that day.
The poll was conducted after five public hearings by the House committee investigating Jan. 6, but it was taken before Tuesday's hearing featuring Hutchinson. Her explosive testimony provided the most compelling evidence yet that the former president could be linked to a federal crime, experts say.
Views on Trump's criminal liability break down predictably along party lines, with 86% of Democrats but only 10% of Republicans saying Trump should be charged with a crime. Among Republicans, 68% say he should not be charged and 21% say they don't know. Still, the fact that nearly half the country believes he should be prosecuted is a remarkable position for the former president, pointing to the difficulties he could face if he makes another run at the White House in 2024.
For Ella Metze, a South Carolina Democrat, Trump's culpability has been clear from the beginning, when he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol on the morning of Jan. 6 and "fight like hell."
"It was meant to provoke violence because he kept encouraging them," the 86-year-old told reporters. "As it happened, I watched it all and I just thought why doesn't somebody stop this? Why doesn't he stop this?"
Chris Schloemer, a Texas independent, agreed Trump holds responsibility for egging on the crowd with his claims of election fraud. But the 61-year-old doesn't lay the blame solely on Trump.
Schloemer feels Republicans in Congress have a hand in what happened that day, too: "I feel like people were afraid of Donald Trump, especially Republican politicians, and so they wouldn't rein him in, and I think that just emboldened him."
While views of Trump's role have not changed since December, Americans are somewhat more likely now than they were then to say Republicans in Congress were significantly responsible for the events of Jan. 6.
Forty-six percent say that now, up slightly from 41% in December. An additional 21% say GOP lawmakers had some responsibility and 30% say they were not responsible. The change in the share saying Republicans in Congress have a large amount of responsibility was driven mostly by Democrats and independents.
Ulysses Bryant, a Democrat from Florida, said while he always believed Trump and the rioters should be charged with a crime, he hadn't known of the involvement of congressional Republicans until he began to follow the hearings.
Close to 6 in 10 Americans -- 56% -- say they followed news about the congressional hearings. A smaller but still sizeable share -- 42% -- say they watched or listened.
Seventy-five percent of Democrats and 42% of Republicans say they followed news about the hearings. More Democrats than Republicans also say they tuned in, 58% to 27%. The first of the public hearings, which began in early June, received high ratings for TV viewership, though subsequent hearings have received more modest ratings.
Kathlyn Keller, a retired investment banker from San Francisco, is one of the GOP voters who has tuned into the hearings and still believes Trump holds no responsibility for the events of that day.
The 83-year-old thinks the only people who should be charged are those who brought weapons to the Capitol, or anyone who got into the building and caused damage inside. Trump "absolutely shouldn't be charged with anything," she told reporters.
Information for this article was contributed by Farnoush Amiri, Nuha Dolby and Hope Yen of The Associated Press and Shant Shahrigian of New York Daily News (TNS).
FILE - Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, speaks with members of the press after a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, June 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
FILE - Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., speaks as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, June 28, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testifies about how former President Donald Trump reacted in his vehicle after being told he was not able to go to the Capitol from the Ellipse on Jan. 6, as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to reveal its findings of a year-long investigation, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, June 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)