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Grand Jury Refuses to Indict WH Aide 10/28 06:22
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department on Tuesday failed to secure a
grand jury indictment against a former White House staffer who provided
dramatic but disputed testimony against President Donald Trump before a House
committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, according
to two people familiar with the matter.
A grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors' request to return an
indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, said the people, who spoke to The
Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized
to publicly discuss the case. It's the latest setback in the Justice
Department's efforts to persuade grand jurors in the nation's capital to bring
politically sensitive cases.
Details of prosecutors' allegations against Hutchinson were not immediately
clear, but Republican lawmakers had accused her of lying under oath in her
explosive testimony in 2022 about Trump's behavior on Jan. 6, when a mob of his
supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of his
election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The effort to indict Hutchinson was hardly isolated. It is part of a surge
in politically sensitive actions by the Justice Department in the run-up to
next week's midterm elections targeting perceived adversaries of the president,
including a new attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and a
search by federal agents of the home of outspoken Trump critic and Democratic
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
It's highly unusual for grand juries to decline to return indictments, but
the Justice Department under Trump has been rebuked by citizens in the nation's
capital in a number of high-profile cases. A grand jury in Washington earlier
this year declined to indict Democratic lawmakers in connection with a video
they recorded urging U.S. service members to follow established military
protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful.
Hutchinson declined to comment through her lawyer on Tuesday.
Hutchinson said Trump was angry and defiant on Jan. 6
Hutchinson's testimony, at a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours
earlier, was seen at the time as particularly compelling given her proximity to
power as special assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff.
She described an angry, defiant president who was trying to let armed
protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest his
2020 election defeat and who later grabbed at the steering wheel of the
presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol.
And when the events at the Capitol spiraled toward violence, with the crowd
chanting "Hang Mike Pence," she testified that Trump declined to intervene.
Trump at the time denied on his social media platform, Truth Social, much of
what Hutchinson said. He called her a "total phony" and "bad news."
Hutchinson's description of the altercation inside the presidential SUV was
regarded as particularly explosive, even as she acknowledged during her
testimony that she was relaying what she had heard from a White House security
official and did not have firsthand knowledge of the episode because she was
not there.
Her account was quickly disputed.
In March 2024, House Republicans released a previously undisclosed
transcript of the Select Committee's interview with a Secret Service officer
who drove the presidential SUV. That transcript of the presidential limo driver
contradicted some of Hutchinson's testimony but corroborated other aspects of
her account, including Trump's attempt to join the mob scene at the Capitol.
The driver described the president as insistent on going to the Capitol but
said he did not see the altercation that Hutchinson described. The driver said
Trump "never grabbed the steering wheel" and also said: "I didn't see him, you
know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all."
Hutchinson has alleged that members of Trump's inner circle dangled job
opportunities and financial assistance while she was cooperating with the
committee. She also testified in a closed-door interview released by the
committee that a former lawyer of hers -- a former ethics counsel in the Trump
White House -- told her "the less you remember, the better."
"It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lied,
and my loyalties lied with the truth," she told the committee. "And I never
wanted to diverge from that." The former attorney has disputed that account.
The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2021 on allegations
that he incited the mob that attacked the Capitol, but he was later acquitted
by the Senate. The Justice Department under Biden charged Trump with felony
offenses, accusing him of illegally working to overturn his 2020 election loss
in the run-up to the Capitol attack, but then-special counsel Jack Smith
abandoned the case after Trump's 2024 presidential victory. Longstanding
Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal
prosecution.
Hutchinson, a native of Pennington, New Jersey, previously worked in the
White House Office of Legislative Affairs and interned for Republicans,
including Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
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