CHASING THE TAIL OF MANY TALES
July 21, 2022 -Durt Fibo
Since Cassidy Hutchinson –former White House aide and assistant to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the Trump administration– testified on June 28 at the public hearings of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, news reporters and Committee staff have been flummoxed by a number of differing stories regarding the Secret Service.
The original –and entire– claim that the Secret Service was prepared to refute Hutchinson’s testimony was a single tweet written June 29 by Nick Adams, an Australian-born Fox commentator who calls himself an author for having scribbled the 2020 book “Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization.” Adams’ revelation said: “Secret Service has now officially debunked Cassidy Hutchinson’s slanderous claims against President Trump and the fake news media is still running with the story. Will the fact checkers correct the record?” Unfortunately for Adams, any fact checker would find that the complete Secret Sevice response to the Hutchingson hubub read: “The United States Secret Service has been cooperating with the Select Committee since its inception in spring 2021, and will continue to do so, including by responding on the record to the Committee regarding the new allegations surfaced in today’s testimony.”
A key man who appears throughout the doings of the Secret Service, Tony Ornato had previously maintained non-partisan professionalism, protecting President George W. Bush’s daughter Barbara then moving on to President Barack Obama’s security, before finally becoming Secret Service agent in charge of President Donald J. Trump’s protective detail. Near the end of 2019, while White House and Cabinet members came and went as quickly as in a cut-throat TV show, Trump picked Ornato to be his Deputy White House chief of staff for operations. Although he accepted the White House appointment, Ornato retained his place in the publicly apolitical Secret Service; Rand Beers, a former acting secretary of homeland security under Obama marveled: “All I can say is that is extraordinarily unusual.”
By July 15, it was revealed that the Jan 6 Committee had subpoenaed the Secret Service after being offered conflicting stories from the agency and being offered a large sink-hole in place of the full set of communications between agents on the day of the Capitol attack. As of Tuesday, July 19, the Secret Service has turned over only ONE text message conversation. Rep. Zoe Lofgren told MSNBC on Tuesday that “we got one text message” but “it is clear to me, that is a text message that may have been captured through another branch of government.”(!) The conversation was related to a request from then-U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan for assistance on Jan. 6, 2021.
And this might indicate why only one communication has been seen: As related by the Washington Post’s White House Bureau Chief Philip Rucker and National Investigative Reporter Carol Leonnig, after Vice President Pence was evacuated from the Capitol to an underground area, he balked at the sight of his waiting armored limousine and twice refused to get into the vehicle. Tim Giebels, Pence’s lead security agent, was strangely insistent, but so was Pence, who said: “If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.” Simultaneously, at the White House, Pence’s national security advisor Keith Kellogg ran into Tony Ornato, who told him that Pence’s detail was planning to move the vice president to Joint Base Andrews. Kellogg replied: “You can’t do that, Tony. Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance.”