Former aide at today's pop-up hearing says Trump knew rally-goers had weapons, told them to march to Capitol

The unexpected Jan. 6 House select committee hearing today, which interrupted a two-week break, focuses not on new Trump documentary footage, as speculated yesterday, but on testimony by former aide to Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson.

Within the first hour, we learned that former one-term president Trump had allowed his armed fans to bring their weapons into his rally on Jan. 6th because without them, the space looked too empty — a photo-op disaster (at least that's one reason she gives).

"He was angry that we weren't letting people through the mags with weapons," she said in a previously recorded hearing interview presented today. "I overheard the president say … 'I don't care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags [magnetometers] away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.'" Yep, let them march to the Capitol, armed. (See first video, below.)

Hutchinson also said many discussions about Trump's speech "rhetoric" were discussed, such as the lines, "Fight for me," and "Fight for the movement." (See second video.) White House council "were urging the speech writers to not include that language for legal concerns and also for the optics of what it could portray the president of wanting to do that day."