Jan. 6 hearing features key witness from Trump White House
WASHINGTON (AP) — Cassidy Hutchinson, a aide in Donald Trump's White House, is making a surprise appearance Tuesday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — an effort by the panel to provide new details about Trump's inner circle as he fought to overturn his election defeat.
The 25-year-old, who was a special assistant and aide to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, has already provided a trove of information to congressional investigators and has sat for multiple interviews behind closed doors. But the committee called the hearing this week to hear her public testimony, raising expectations for new revelations in the nearly yearlong investigation.
Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee's chairman, said the panel called the hearing in light of “specific detailed information about what the former president and his aides were doing and saying in those critical hours.”
Thompson praised Hutchinson for her courage but did not detail the new information or what she would say as he opened the hearing.
Her appearance has been cloaked in extraordinary secrecy. The committee announced the surprise hearing with only 24 hours' notice, and Hutchison's appearance was only confirmed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the matter.
While it is unclear what new evidence she might provide Tuesday, Hutchinson's testimony is likely to tell a firsthand story of Trump's pressure campaign, and how the former president responded after the violence began, more vividly than any other witness the committee has called in thus far.
In brief excerpts of testimony revealed in court filings, Hutchinson told the committee she was in the room for White House meetings where challenges to the election were debated and discussed, including with several Republican lawmakers. In one instance, Hutchinson described seeing Meadows incinerate documents after a meeting in his office with Rep. Scott Perry, R-PA., Politico reported in May.
She also revealed that the White House counsel's office cautioned against plans to enlist fake electors in
swing states, including in meetings involving Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Attorneys for the president advised that the plan was not “legally sound,” Cassidy said.
During her three separate depositions, Hutchinson also testified about her boss' surprise trip to Georgia weeks after the election to oversee the audit of absentee ballot envelope signatures and ask questions about the process.
She also detailed how Jeffrey Clark — a top Justice Department official who championed Trump's false claims of election fraud and whom the president contemplated naming as attorney general — was a “frequent presence” at the White House.
The plot to remove the then-acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, unraveled during a Jan. 3, 2021, meeting in the Oval Office when other senior Justice Department officials warned Trump that they would resign if he followed through with his plan to replace Rosen with Clark.
The House panel has not explained why it abruptly scheduled the 1 p.m. hearing as lawmakers are away from Washington on a twoweek