Cassidy Hutchinson

The top aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows who testified before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, ...

A person close to Hutchinson has told CNN she previously testified to the committee for at least 20 hours detailing her time in key meetings at the White House as Trump and his allies tried to overturn the election results. CNN also reported that Hutchinson has become increasingly aware of the safety risk speaking in front of the committee poses and has been on alert. She also testified that Meadows was directly warned prior to the insurrection of the possible violence. She traveled on AF1 with Mark for every trip." Meadows made Hutchinson his legislative aide, and she would accompany Meadows to Capitol Hill for his most serious meetings. And even if Trump didn't know her name he most certainly recognized her.

The former top White House aide delivered a series of surprising revelations about behavior by Donald Trump and his inner circle before the Capitol attack.

“There was ketchup dripping down the wall and a shattered porcelain plate on the floor,” Hutchinson testified, noting that aides nearby conveyed the president was “extremely angry” at the Barr interview. “I remember him saying something to the effect of, ‘How much longer does the president have left in his speech?’“ Hutchinson said. McCarthy then asked Hutchinson, as she remembered it: “Why would you lie to me?” Take me up to the Capitol now,’” Hutchinson said. The president said something to the effect of, ‘I am the fucking president. Hutchinson told the committee that she heard from a top presidential security official, Tony Ornato, about an altercation on Jan. 6, as Trump continued pressing to go to the Capitol following his speech to supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse. When Trump was told he would return to the White House instead of going to the Capitol that day, while being driven in the presidential vehicle known as “the Beast,” Hutchinson recalled hearing that he became irate.

An unexpected hearing was announced so the House Jan. 6 committee could present "recently obtained evidence" and hear testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson.

In 2019, she began a role at the to the White House's legislative affairs office, committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney said during Tuesday's hearing. "She also worked on a daily basis with members of the Secret Service who were posted in the White House" Hutchinson recently switched lawyers for the hearing. She attended Christopher Newport University and spoke to the school about her White House internship in 2018. In another interview, she testified about White House meetings with several Republican members of Congress, at which a plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes for Trump in states he lost was discussed, and that the White House counsel's office said such a plan was not legally sound. But I don't know, things might get real, real bad on January 6th.'"

The former White House aide was compared to John Dean, the former counsel to President Richard Nixon, whose public testimony was pivotal in describing his ...

She said she grew increasingly frustrated that Mr. Meadows did not seem to care that the protest was growing out of control. Ms. Hutchinson was at the White House, in the office of legislative affairs, when Mr. Meadows became chief of staff in March 2020. Mr. Trump swiftly condemned Ms. Hutchinson on Tuesday on Truth Social, his social media network, as “a total phony” and “a leaker,” and asserted that he hardly knew her. She began her career in Washington as an intern on Capitol Hill for Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking House Republican. “She worked in the West Wing, several steps down from the Oval Office,” Ms. Cheney said. But other than Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, few have gone under oath to describe his temper and erratic personality to the extent that Ms. Hutchinson did. “She was able to fill in the information from her observations instantly.” “He doesn’t want to do anything, Pat,” Ms. Hutchinson recounted Mr. Meadows as saying. In a brief interview on Tuesday, Mr. Dean said Ms. Hutchinson had met the “standard” of being a significant witness and that she did so quickly. She was 22 years old, a rising college senior who went to work as a summer intern in the Trump White House in 2018. She described her revulsion at Mr. Trump’s attacks on former Vice President Mike Pence, including his Twitter post condemning Mr. Pence while the Capitol riot was taking place. For two stunning hours on live television, Ms. Hutchinson described an unhinged former president who, she said, was warned that his supporters were carrying weapons and expressed no concern because they were not a threat to him.

A top aide to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, Ms. Hutchinson was present at key moments as Trump and his allies discussed overturning the 2020 ...

Before that, she had been an aide working in Congress. She has described Mr. Meadows burning documents in a fireplace in his office. Ms. Hutchinson can fill in key pieces of the story. Until recently, she had been represented by a former deputy White House counsel who was recommended to her by two aides to Mr. Trump. She then switched lawyers, to Jody Hunt, and her discussions with the committee about possibly testifying in public became more productive, according to a person briefed on the discussions who insisted on anonymity to discuss them. She has testified about Mr. Trump’s desire to join his supporters leaving what was billed as a “protest” at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6 to travel to the Capitol. Ms. Hutchinson, 25, has informed the committee that Mr. Meadows told colleagues that Mr. Trump reacted approvingly to chants of “Hang Mike Pence” that some of the rioters bellowed.

Hutchinson's closed-door testimony has already been cited as the source of multiple revelations uncovered by the select committee's probe.

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Renato Mariotti is the Legal Affairs Columnist for POLITICO Magazine. He is a former federal prosecutor and host of the “On Topic” podcast. Anyone who has paid ...

Prosecutors will still need to put together a case that shows that Trump was involved in a conspiracy or scheme that obstructed the Jan. 6 certification proceeding. Trump’s failed attempt to go to the Capitol, in itself, would not be a criminal offense. But episodes like trying to wrest the steering wheel show that Trump wanted to be at the Capitol and would have been there if he hadn’t been kept from doing so. This is precisely the sort of “smoking gun” evidence needed to prove that the person speaking meant to incite imminent violence. They’re not here to hurt me” and that they would be going to the Capitol later. Courts have routinely set this bar very high in the context of political speech because the First Amendment broadly protects speech of that type.

Former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann is claiming that a handwritten note regarding a potential statement for then-President Donald Trump to ...

In response to Herschmann's claim, a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee said, "The committee has done its diligence on this and found Ms. Hutchinson's account of this matter credible. "But Mr. Trump did not take that action at the time." The Jan. 6 committee has repeatedly relied on Herschmann's candid and sometimes vulgar testimony throughout the hearings in June, including when the former White House lawyer testified that he shot down former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark's plan to overturn the 2020 election. Former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann is claiming that a handwritten note regarding a potential statement for then-President Donald Trump to release during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was written by him during a meeting at the White House that afternoon, and not by White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News. Hutchinson, a former top aide to Meadows, said that Meadows handed her the note card and a pen and started dictating a potential statement for Trump to release amid the Capitol riot. "The note memorialized this," the committee spokesperson said.

If other Trump aides had even half her courage, the country would be in a better place.

But Meadows, still on his couch, said Trump “doesn’t want to do anything” to stop the violence. They can march to the Capitol from here.” But Trump wanted them in his rally, she testified, and said “something to the effect of, ‘You know, I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. She told of walking into the Oval Office dining room after Trump heard that Attorney General Bill Barr said he hadn’t seen substantial fraud in the 2020 election: “I first noticed there was ketchup, dripping down the wall, and there’s a shattered porcelain plate on the floor. She sat ramrod straight in the witness chair, forearms on the table. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel.

An unexpected hearing was announced so the House Jan. 6 committee could present "recently obtained evidence" and hear testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson.

In 2019, she began a role at the to the White House's legislative affairs office, committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney said during Tuesday's hearing. "She also worked on a daily basis with members of the Secret Service who were posted in the White House" Hutchinson recently switched lawyers for the hearing. She attended Christopher Newport University and spoke to the school about her White House internship in 2018. In another interview, she testified about White House meetings with several Republican members of Congress, at which a plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes for Trump in states he lost was discussed, and that the White House counsel's office said such a plan was not legally sound. But I don't know, things might get real, real bad on January 6th.'"

The former White House aide's revelations about Jan. 6 chipped away at any potential defense that Donald J. Trump was merely expressing well-founded views ...

All month, the House committee has been laying out a detailed argument for why Mr. Trump should be charged with crimes at a series of public hearings. “Until this point, we had not seen proof that he knew about the violence,” said Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who served as the lead counsel during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. The extent to which the Justice Department’s expanding criminal inquiry is focused on Mr. Trump remains unclear. According to Ms. Hutchinson, another potential crime that worried Mr. Cipollone was incitement to riot. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far: It was also a potentially consequential moment for any prosecution of Mr. Trump, legal experts said. Some legal scholars have suggested that Mr. Trump could defend himself against the charge by arguing that he did not intend to disrupt the work of Congress through any of his schemes, but rather was acting in good faith to address what he sincerely believed was fraud in the election. Those machinations included a plot to create false slates of electors declaring that Mr. Trump had won the election in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., and a subsequent effort to persuade Mr. Pence to use the phony slates on Jan. 6 to subvert the normal workings of the Electoral College and single-handedly declare Mr. Trump to be the victor. In his ruling, Judge Amit P. Mehta found that after months of creating an “air of distrust and anger” by relentlessly claiming that the election had been stolen, Mr. Trump should have known that his supporters would take his speech not merely as words, but as “a call to action.” While the House committee has always reserved the right to recommend that Mr. Trump be charged, it was revealed this month that the panel and the Justice Department have been at odds over the transcripts of interviews with witnesses like Ms. Hutchinson, with top department officials complaining that by withholding as many as 1,000 transcripts the committee was hampering the work of making criminal cases. Knowing that his crowd of supporters had the means to be violent when he exhorted them to march to the Capitol — and declared that he wanted to go with them — could nudge Mr. Trump closer to facing criminal charges, legal experts said. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty about the question of criminal intent when it comes to a president, but what just happened changed my bottom line,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official who teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School. “I have gone from Trump is less than likely to be charged to he is more than likely to be charged.”

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol heard from its first White House witness Tuesday, scheduling a last-minute hearing ...

Even allies of the former president were forced to acknowledge that her testimony created plenty of new headaches for Trump and his defenders. We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. “It’s a crime to tamper with witnesses, it’s a form of obstructing justice,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said after the hearing. We’re not going to the Capitol.’ And he said, ‘Well, he just said it on stage, Cassidy. Figure it out.’” She answered the phone instead, she said, and delivered it to Meadows in the White House dining room, where the topic was focused on Pence’s safety. The House had left Washington last week for a long Fourth of July recess, and Thompson had said the next public airing wouldn’t happen until lawmakers returned next month. “We’re going to the Capitol. It’s going to be great. Meadows, however, repeatedly told Trump that he was working on getting him to the Capitol. Trump got in his motorcade only to be informed the Secret Service had determined it wasn’t safe. On Tuesday, new revelations emerged that further entrenched several of those lawmakers in the events of Jan. 6. “He felt it was dangerous for the president’s legacy,” she said. “He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson held the nation's attention. But her testimony was just one ingredient in the committee's high drama.

Her realization that her president had deceived her and the American people was evident when she spoke of the conflict and pain she felt over his corrupt and reckless actions. Though the hearings hadn’t been scheduled to resume until July, Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) explained in his opening statement that the impromptu sixth session was called to present crucial new evidence to the public. In particular, she had an eye for the humiliating detail known to irk the vain ex-president and reality star. Hutchinson testified that she made multiple attempts to warn Meadows that Capitol Police officers were being overrun by rioters, and when she did finally catch his ear, he appeared uninterested in the urgent news. Her mere presence stood in contrast to the party she served. When the president was cautioned by his counsel beforehand against using such inflammatory language in his speech, he raged: “I don’t f— care that they have weapons. “It was almost a lack of reaction,” she said. The young woman stood firm against the pressure of a president who’s bullied the nation’s most powerful men into submission, while exposing those who protected him by revealing that Meadows and former Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani both sought presidential pardons related to the Capitol attack. To showcase the good things [Trump] had done for the country.” Take the f— [metal detectors] away.” It was unpatriotic. She was a loyal foot soldier for the GOP, a high achiever who had previously interned for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). Under oath, she described herself as “a staffer that worked to always represent the administration to the best of my ability.

He'd posted on his bespoke social media site a number of other times about the witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, and about the hearing itself. It was a “Kangaroo ...

To an objective observer, the idea that Hutchinson intentionally would lie under oath — in a hearing sufficiently scripted that she undoubtedly knew what was coming — bears the burden of proof. She has not been shown to have lied under oath, although you might not know it from the MAGA world reaction on Wednesday morning. It raged for months, and the relative novelty of the style of attack — group-bullying on the internet, digging up anything that might look like dirt — meant a lack of ability to respond effectively. But that credibility depends not on what happened but on whether Hutchinson was told those things happened, since she doesn’t claim she was in the vehicle. She was confronting a well-oiled system used both to downplay Trump’s actions and to eviscerate his opponents. But Trump wasn’t in that limousine on Jan. 6; it was a less compartmentalized SUV. What’s more, previous reporting from Politico indicated that the agent Trump allegedly accosted had described to committee investigators a dispute between himself and the president in that vehicle. “GamerGate” refers to one of the first prominent explosions of misogyny-driven hyperscrutiny fueled by the internet. It is necessary first to acknowledge that Hutchinson’s testimony did not provide a full picture of what happened in the Trump White House during the post-election period. In a statement, an official for the agency indicated willingness by those present to provide sworn testimony about what occurred. The ‘body language experts’ that swarmed around Heard spent years applying the same junk science to Amanda Knox, Meghan Markle, and Carole Baskin. The gremlins who targeted Anita Sarkeesian during GamerGate pretended to be offended by the (extremely minor) technical errors in her videos rather than her presence in their boy’s-only treehouse.” Those details about what happened as Trump was leaving the Ellipse after his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, for example, were conveyed to Hutchinson, she said, by a member of Trump’s Secret Service detail. He’d posted on his bespoke social media site a number of other times about the witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, and about the hearing itself.

For two hours, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, laid out a devastating account on Tuesday of former President Donald J. Trump's actions and ...

A person familiar with what took place said that while Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump were in the small dining room off the Oval Office, Mr. Herschmann walked in and said they needed to issue a statement “immediately,” and went into Mr. Meadows’s office nearby to grab a note card. The note suggested language for Mr. Trump to use to call off the mob storming the Capitol. Given the stakes, it is not surprising that Trump allies in particular are seeking to poke holes in Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony to undermine her credibility. One former colleague, Sarah Matthews, who was a deputy press secretary, stood by Ms. Hutchinson and praised her for her bravery. They said the two men would not dispute that Mr. Trump wanted to be driven to the Capitol as the angry pro-Trump protesters, some of them armed, headed in that direction and Congress was gathered to ratify that he had lost the election and that Joseph R. Biden Jr. would be the next president. On Tuesday, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman, displayed what she said were two examples of unnamed people associated with Mr. Trump attempting to influence witnesses. Mr. Trump and his advisers have come under scrutiny in previous situations for reportedly trying to influence witnesses. According to Punchbowl News, Ms. Hutchinson was one of the people who received such a warning. Ms. Hutchinson made clear in her public testimony that she did not have direct knowledge of the incident, and it remains unclear what, if anything, the committee did to corroborate it. For months, the committee has suggested that Mr. Trump or those close to him might have attempted to influence potential witnesses. According to Ms. Hutchinson, the answer was: not much. By her account, he responded by urging that security measures be taken down to allow his supporters to fill in the area around the stage.

At age 26, Cassidy Hutchinson has been the Jan. 6 committee's biggest star witness to date, and delivered bombshell testimony about former President Trump's ...

She'd said in the college article that her goal was to pursue a path of "civil significance" and she eagerly applied for the White House opportunity. It was that access -- and the fact that she became Meadows' principal assistant -- that made her an invaluable witness for the committee on Tuesday. "As a first-generation college student, being selected to serve as an intern alongside some of the most intelligent and driven students from across the nation -- many of whom attend top universities -- was an honor and a tremendous growing experience." A graduate of Christopher Newport University, she first entered Trump's White House in mid-2018 as an intern for legislative affairs. Hutchinson said that a member of Trump's detail had relayed the story to her a short time later at the White House. It was un-American," she added. Meanwhile, the U.S. Secret Service has promised to respond to a particularly fiery part of Hutchinson's testimony, which said that Trump was determined to join the mob at the Capitol. In fact, she said, he physically attempted to grab the wheel of his presidential limousine on Jan. 6 when agents on his security detail told him that it was unsafe to go and they were returning to the White House. "Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson's role or her access in the West Wing either doesn't understand how the Trump White House worked or is attempting to discredit her because they are scared of how damning her testimony is," Matthews said in a tweet on Tuesday. "It was unpatriotic. In her remarks before the panel, Hutchinson said she'd written the statement for Trump -- and that Herschmann had suggested changing it. Borin in New Jersey in 1996, Hutchinson ultimately acquired extraordinary White House access that put her in the orbit of the president of the United States and his top advisers. Hutchinson, 26, has been the committee's biggest star witness to date and she delivered bombshell testimony from inside the Trump White House. Among other things, she told the panel that Trump threw a plate of food against a wall in the White House out of frustration over losing the 2020 election -- and even tried to forcefully steer his armored limousine toward the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his radical supporters were marching there to disrupt Congress.

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, released a new statement Wednesday provided exclusively to CNN standing ...

Hutchinson testified that she had been told this story by Tony Ornato, then-White House deputy chief of staff, and that Engel had been there as the story was told. Hutchinson testified for nearly two hours on Tuesday as well as giving recorded depositions in advance of the hearing, where she vividly described her experience at the White House close to Meadows and then-President Donald Trump during the days leading up to and including the Capitol Hill riot. Hutchinson testified she had been told that when Trump was informed by security that he would not be going to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he lunged to the front of his vehicle and tried to turn the wheel with one hand while using his other hand to "lunge" at Robert Engel, the Secret Service agent in charge that day.

Republicans and other sources are rebutting elements of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, handing Donald ...

In a prepared statement, a committee aide said that the panel found her testimony to be “credible.” But anyone who worked in the West Wing knows that she was a critical part of the operation. Hutchinson testified, for example, that Trump knew that some people attending his rally were carrying weapons, but he still urged them to march to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory. Hutchinson testified that she did not directly witness the alleged altercation and was clear that her knowledge was second-hand. One person close to the Secret Service said that “there are very important pieces of the testimony that are out there that [agency officials] have no issue with. “She was not a low-level aide. At that point, Trump, in a fit of rage, tried to grab the steering wheel of the armored presidential SUV and then reached for the “clavicles” of Engel, she said Ornato told her. Her appearance included other revelations that could potentially be more damaging, posing problems for Trump as he apparently gears up for another presidential campaign. The Jan. 6 committee has continued to insist that they found Hutchinson’s testimony credible and invited those who would dispute her to come forward and give sworn testimony. But parts of Hutchinson’s testimony involving Trump’s car ride back to the White House after his Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse have been validated by others. Due to security concerns, Trump was told no. “All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann.”

The explosive testimony about former President Trump's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, has led to calls from some right-leaning outlets that Trump is unfit to ...

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The former Trump White House aide who spoke to the Jan. 6 committee Tuesday is under fire. Defenders say her critics should testify under oath.

He added in another: “Watching the desperation of Trump world to discredit the brave Cassidy Hutchinson reminds me of…. “Cassidy Hutchinson lied and the @January6thCmte held a special hearing [Tuesday] to broadcast her lies,” Greene said. One statement said “they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind,” while in another statement, a person was told, “He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.” “Cassidy Hutchinson is one of the most brave and honorable people I know,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) wrote in one tweet. “For those complaining of ‘hearsay,’ I imagine the Jan. 6 committee would welcome any of those involved to deny these allegations under oath.” Punchbowl News reported Wednesday that Hutchinson was a target of alleged witness intimidation from Trump world. “If Cassidy is making this up, they will need to say that. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) retweeted a graphic of the “Beast,” the presidential limousine, which appeared to illustrate how passengers are separated from the driver. Alyssa Farah Griffin, Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary and White House strategic communications director, described Hutchinson as a “friend.” Trump and his allies have seized on media reports of pushback from unnamed Secret Service sources to paint Hutchinson’s sworn testimony as unreliable. “The agents are prepared to say under oath that the incident itself did not occur,” the official told the network. An anonymous Secret Service official told CNN that Ornato denies telling Hutchinson that Trump grabbed the steering wheel or an agent.

The agency says it got no outreach for 10 days before the committee aired testimony about Donald Trump's behavior in the presidential vehicle on Jan. 6.

With respect to the handwritten note’s authorship, a spokesperson for Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann has disputed part of Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony. Members of the select committee have said they welcome any more information about the Secret Service altercation that witnesses would provide under oath. “We have and will continue to make any member of the Secret Service available.” “The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” said a spokesperson for Herschmann. “All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann.” Select committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) described those four interviews during remarks Tuesday, splicing in footage from them throughout the two-hour public hearing. That agent, Robert Engel, gave testimony at the time that appears to be consistent with Hutchinson’s story but is not known to include the stunning details Hutchinson described.

As January 6th rioters closed in on the Capitol, the Trump White House did nothing. Cassidy Hutchinson, former senior aide to then White House Chief of ...

Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified in riveting detail about what the president was up to and what the people around him were up to in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day itself." "And he said, 'No, the President wants to be alone right now,' still looking at his phone." Chris Whipple, journalist and documentary filmmaker.