Jan. 6 Witness Anthony Ornato Is at the Center of a Battle Over Credibility

Anthony M. Ornato had left his position because the Secret Service agent in command of President Donald J. Trump’s protecting element in late 2019 when the tradition of inner strife that Mr. Trump fostered all through his time period left the president’s high advisers frantically trying to find a candidate to fill a key position: deputy White Home chief of employees for operations.

The title doesn’t absolutely seize the importance of the job, which entails guaranteeing the continuity of presidency and overseeing the logistics of the president’s actions exterior the White Home, safety and the navy workplace. Intent on guaranteeing it went to somebody certified and with few choices accessible, the individual leaving the position, Dan Walsh, and Lindsay Reynolds, the chief of employees to Melania Trump, the primary woman, rapidly settled on Mr. Ornato, who was well-known to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Ornato didn’t need the job, in line with three former White Home officers. By that time he was fortunately working at Secret Service headquarters. Like many brokers, he had served earlier administrations throughout get together strains, first defending President George W. Bush’s daughter Barbara and later engaged on President Barack Obama’s element. And in any case, it will be extremely uncommon for an official from an avowedly apolitical company to take a high-ranking job contained in the White Home.

However when Mr. Trump referred to as to inform him he was placing him within the job, he believed he had no selection however to take it, in line with these officers. For the rest of Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Ornato was on the coronary heart of the West Wing, occupying an workplace steps down the corridor from the Oval Workplace and adjoining to the workplace of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.

Now, Mr. Ornato is on the heart of a dispute over occasions in the course of the riot on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He’s each a witness to key developments and a determine in what’s both a official battle over credibility or, within the view of some critics, an try and muddy the devastating account of the actions of Mr. Trump and his aides supplied to the Home Jan. 6 committee this week by Cassidy Hutchinson, one other former White Home aide.

In her public testimony, Ms. Hutchinson mentioned she realized from Mr. Ornato of a shocking scene behind the presidential car on Jan. 6, quickly after a speech by Mr. Trump on the Ellipse exterior the White Home ended.

She testified that Mr. Ornato instructed her that Mr. Trump tried to power the Secret Service to drive him to the Capitol to hitch his supporters. In her recounting, Mr. Ornato mentioned Mr. Trump tried to seize the steering wheel of the armored car.

Ms. Hutchinson additionally mentioned Mr. Ornato instructed her the president “lunged” at his lead Secret Service agent, Robert Engel. Mr. Engel, Ms. Hutchinson testified, was current as Mr. Ornato associated the story to her and didn’t appropriate Mr. Ornato’s account.

Secret Service officers have mentioned Mr. Ornato, Mr. Engel and the motive force of the car are ready to testify that such an incident didn’t occur. (The committee already had interviewed Mr. Ornato and Mr. Engel, earlier than Ms. Hutchinson’s look this week.)

The officers don’t dispute that Mr. Trump angrily demanded to be taken to the Capitol. On the day of the riot, Trump administration officers instructed The New York Instances that the president was in a fury whereas he was on the rally.

One Secret Service official, asking that his identify not be used to explain the potential testimony, acknowledged a dialog occurred with Ms. Hutchinson however mentioned it performed out otherwise than she described.

Officers with the Jan. 6 committee have sought to bolster Ms. Hutchinson’s credibility, saying they discovered inconsistencies in Mr. Ornato’s testimony, though they didn’t launch the transcripts in query. A former colleague, Alyssa Farah Griffin, accused him on Twitter of mendacity about an encounter that they had in the course of the 2020 protests in Lafayette Sq. exterior the White Home. Consultant Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the committee, wrote on the social media site, “There appears to be a serious thread right here… Tony Ornato likes to lie.”

However Keith Kellogg, the previous nationwide safety adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, vouched for Mr. Ornato publicly, as did different former officers.

“I believe the man’s a straight shooter,” mentioned John F. Kelly, the previous White Home chief of employees who has publicly damaged with Mr. Trump, and who labored with Mr. Ornato when he was the particular agent in command of Mr. Trump’s element. “There was by no means a second thought in my thoughts that, wherever we went, the work the Secret Service wanted to do was achieved and achieved very well.”

A former senior official within the Trump administration recalled Mr. Trump demanding to be allowed to attend a serious public occasion with a day’s discover, and Mr. Ornato bluntly informing him that such a transfer was not potential.

Within the first few years of the Trump presidency, two former senior officers mentioned, Mr. Ornato would periodically flag for the chief of employees or considered one of his trusted aides what was generally known as “limo discuss,” the sort of directives or pronouncements that Mr. Trump would make that he both anticipated individuals to behave on or which Mr. Ornato thought the chief ought to concentrate on.

As the present assistant director of the Workplace of Coaching on the Secret Service, Mr. Ornato relies at Secret Service headquarters, though these near the company mentioned he typically made journeys to the coaching facility in rural Maryland to talk with potential brokers. He has held numerous management positions within the company, together with within the New York discipline workplace.

Whereas there, he was answerable for all protecting operations, together with the distinguished project of guaranteeing officers have been protected on the U.N. Basic Meeting.

A local of a city exterior New Haven, Conn., Mr. Ornato’s household owned a tavern within the metropolis that was a generational hang-out for native law enforcement officials and firefighters. He labored within the New Haven Secret Service workplace in 2000 as Mr. Bush was working for president. When Mr. Bush received, Mr. Ornato joined his daughter’s protecting element. He stayed on underneath Mr. Obama, and was promoted a handful of occasions.

Individuals who labored with Mr. Ornato within the Trump White Home mentioned that they had by no means seen him speaking about his political beliefs, even when the previous president sought his views, as Mr. Trump was vulnerable to do with nearly everybody round him.

However some officers have been uncomfortable with the choice to call a member of the Secret Service, which has lengthy tried to take care of the picture of nonpartisanship, to deputy chief of employees of operations on the White Home.

“By no means, ever heard of it,” mentioned Rand Beers, a former appearing secretary of homeland safety within the Obama administration. “Though the Secret Service detailees could be concerned in some fairly delicate issues, fairly embarrassing issues, they protect their picture in that folks don’t typically consider them as being political by their silence.”

“All I can say,” he mentioned, “is that’s terribly uncommon.”

Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.