Trump Said He Didn't Want Americans to Know 'We Lost': Cassidy Hutchinson

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified that Donald Trump said he didn't want Americans to know that he lost the 2020 election and that he urged Meadows to "figure it out" to prevent the results from "embarrassing" him.

In a new video played during Thursday's public hearing held by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Hutchinson said at one point she asked Meadows, "Does the president really think that he lost?"

Meadows replied that Trump had told him "a lot of the time" that he knew he lost the election but that "he wants to keep fighting."

"[Trump] knows it's over. He knows he lost. But we're going to keep trying. There are some good options out there still," Meadows told Hutchinson.

Asked what had happened after the Supreme Court declined to take up his election case, Hutchinson described seeing Trump as being "fired up" and "just raging" when he found out about the decision.

According to Hutchinson, the former president "said something to the effect of 'I don't want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don't want people to know that we lost.'" She said she was present during the conversation.

On December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed in Texas that challenged the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that Trump saw as "his last chance at success in the courts," according to Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican.

Kinzinger showed an email sent from a Secret Service agent on that day that read "Just FYI. POTUS is pissed—breaking news—Supreme Court denied his lawsuit. He is livid now...."

In another clip played on Thursday, Hutchinson said Meadows told her that Trump didn't want to do anything during the Capitol riot because "he doesn't think they're doing anything wrong." Her testimony was corroborated by testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

Hutchinson became a prominent witness for the House panel over the summer after she detailed Trump's plans to go to the Capitol until the last minute on January 6—allegedly going so far as lunging for the steering wheel in the presidential limo—and said that the former president had been alerted of potential violence that day, although Trump said, "I don't f**king care that they have weapons" because "they're not here to hurt me."

She also testified that Cipollone told her former boss during the riot that "something needs to be done, or people are going to die and the blood's gonna be on your f**king hands."

Update 10/13/22, 3:35 p.m. ET: This story was updated with additional information.