The star witness at Tuesday’s last-minute House January 6 select committee hearing won’t be a top-level Trump confidante such as ex-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone or former vice president Mike Pence.
Instead, the panel will reportedly hear testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, who ended the Trump administration as a special assistant to the president assigned as then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ assistant.
Ms Hutchinson, who began her tenure in the Trump White House as an intern with the Office of Legislative Affairs in March 2019, is a graduate of Christopher Newport University and previously interned with Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip.
The ex-White House aide has become one of the select committee’s most productive witness over the course of multiple interviews. At the panel’s fifth hearing last week, an excerpt from one of her previous depositions revealed that Representatives Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Scott Perry were among the Republican members of Congress who asked President Donald Trump to insulate them from future prosecutions by granting them presidential pardons in the days immediately following the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January last year.
Ms Hutchinson is also the source of another extremely damning allegation revealed by the committee, as she reportedly testified that former president Donald Trump reacted approvingly to rioters’ chants of “hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the Capitol in hopes of preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Transcripts of her previous interviews made public in court filings also show she told the committee that her former boss, Mr Meadows, was warned that the hordes of supporters Mr Trump had summoned to Washington on 6 January 2021 could turn violent.
Additionally, she testified that Mr Meadows burned papers in his office fireplace — a violation of the Presidential Records Act — following a meeting with Mr Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who had pushed Mr Trump to replace then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen with one of Mr Rosen’s subordinates who was more willing to accede to Mr Trump’s demand that the Department of Justice help him overturn the 2020 election.
While the select committee had announced a pause to its’ public sessions while it reviewed newly-obtained evidence during the Independence Day recess, multiple reports say the hearing featuring Ms Hutchinson was put on the calendar because her safety is reportedly at risk.
