JAN. 6 WITNESS TOLD OF PRESSURE FROM TRUMP ALLIES

Ex-White House aide says attorney told her to downplay role

The Trump-aligned lawyer who initially represented former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson instructed her to downplay her knowledge of what happened during the Capitol insurrection, Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee in testimony made public Thursday.

“We’re going to downplay your role,” attorney Stefan Passantino told Hutchinson, according to her testimony. “You were a secretary. The less you remember, the better.”

The details of the apparent pressure campaign on one of the committee’s key witnesses were among a number of revelations in a handful of deposition transcripts the committee made public Thursday.

Hutchinson parted ways with Passantino after several spring 2021 appearances before the committee in which she felt she was giving untruthful or incomplete answers, she said. After switching attorneys, she provided some of the most dramatic live testimony of the panel’s nine hearings this year.

According to Hutchinson, Passantino did not want her to tell the committee that former President Donald Trump had lunged at his security detail when they refused to take him to the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Hutchinson felt she had no other option but to retain the Trump-aligned lawyer because she couldn’t afford to pay the high costs of other attorneys she contacted while seeking representation, she told the committee in two days of depositions in September.

Passantino would not tell her who was paying for his legal services, Hutchinson told the committee, and she soon became leery, suspecting he was more concerned about Trump and other high-ranking former White House officials than he was about her.

“‘I am completely indebted to these people,’” she recalled telling her mother. “I was like, ‘And they will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.’”

Passantino encouraged her to downplay her role as one of White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ most trusted aides, she said, and urged her to answer questions with the phrase “I cannot recall” even when she had clear memories of what had happened.

Hutchinson said Passantino and others in Trump’s orbit, including Meadows through an intermediary, kept reminding her to be “loyal” and repeatedly spoke of finding her a well-paying job after her interviews with the committee.

“‘We just want to focus on protecting the president. We all know you’re loyal,’” Hutchinson said Passantino told her.

In a statement first reported by CNN, Passantino said he represented Hutchinson, as he had other clients, “honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me.”