Rep. Adam Kinzinger says Secret Service agent disputing Hutchinson testimony ‘likes to lie’

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who sits on the House Select Committee to investigate January 6th, said this week that a Secret Service agent who is reportedly denying the testimony Cassidy Hutchinson gave this week “likes to lie.”

The Secret Service agent, Tony Ornato, is allegedly prepared to testify against Hutchinson’s second-hand account of an incident on January 6th in which former president Donald Trump lunged at Ornato and another agent in an attempt to get them to drive the presidential vehicle to the Capitol building instead of to the White House.

Ornato claims he never told Hutchinson of the altercation with Trump and her story is false. Hutchinson’s attorneys have said she stands by her testimony. 

Kinzinger’s Tweet about Ornato included a link to another Tweet by former White House advisor under Trump, Alyssa Farah Griffin. She claims Ornato has lied about her in the past.

“Tony Ornato lied about me too,” she wrote. “During the protests at Lafayette sq in 2020, I told Mark Meadows & Ornato they needed to warn press staged there before clearing the square. Meadows replied: ‘we aren’t doing that.’ Tony later lied & said the exchange never happened. He knows it did.”

Kinzinger wrote of Ornato, “There seems to be a major thread here… Tony Ornato likes to lie.”

A second Secret Service agent who was present in the vehicle with Trump on January 6th, Robert Engel, was in the room when Ornato told Hutchinson of the altercation with the former president. Hutchinson said in her testimony that Engel did not dispute any of the claims Ornato was making that day.

A Secret Service spokesman said this week the Secret Service has not been asked to provide testimony regarding the subject, but that the agency plans to cooperate with the investigation. “We were not asked to reappear before the Committee in response to yesterday’s new information and we plan on formally responding on the record. We have and will continue to make any member of the Secret Service available,” the spokesman said.