‘Rust’ assistant director backs Baldwin on gun’s fatal firing

The assistant director for “Rust” is backing Alec Baldwin’s claim that the Academy Award winner didn’t pull the trigger in a shooting on the movie’s set that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

“Dave has told me since the very first day I met him that Alec did not pull that trigger,” Lisa Torraco, an attorney for “Rust” assistant director Dave Halls, told “Good Morning America” on Thursday.

The remarks appear to support statements that Baldwin made in preview clips released by ABC ahead of George Stephanopoulos’s interview with the performer about the fatal shooting.

“The trigger wasn’t pulled. I never pulled the trigger,” Baldwin told Stephanopoulos in the clip from “Alec Baldwin Unscripted,” which is set to air later Thursday.

“I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them. Never,” Baldwin, 63, said.

EXCLUSIVE: Alec Baldwin. The first interview since the fatal accident on the set of the movie ‘Rust’.

The emotional @ABC News Special with @GStephanopoulos breaks tomorrow night at 8/7c on ABC – streaming later that evening on @Hulu. pic.twitter.com/q7QD1vesUX

— 20/20 (@ABC2020) December 1, 2021

Authorities say Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza was wounded when Baldwin fired a gun holding a “suspected live round” while working on a scene for the Western film on its New Mexico set.

“The entire time Baldwin had his finger outside the trigger guard parallel to the barrel,” Torraco said Thursday, of statements Halls made to her. “And that he told me, since day one, he thought it was a misfire.”

No one has been charged in the October shooting, but Santa Fe County District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies has said, “All options are on the table at this point.”