Surprise! We’re getting another hearing at 1 p.m. today from the House January 6 Select Committee. The primary witness will be Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump’s consigliere Mark Meadows.
WHO?
Well, if you’ve been watching the hearings, you’ve already met Hutchinson. She’s the woman with all the details on which Republican politicians asked for pardons; and which ones knew in advance that the permitted rally on the Ellipse was going to turn into a march on Congress; and whether Mark Meadows was warned in advance that the January 6 protest had the potential to turn violent; and how Trump wasn’t the least bit perturbed when the pitchfork mob he sicced on Congress shouted to “Hang Mike Pence.”
After originally promising six hearings in June, the committee canceled the last two, promising to come back in July after taking a break to review newly discovered evidence. But yesterday they announced an emergency hearing with an undisclosed witness, and Punchbowl was the first to scoop that Hutchinson would appear in person.
As Politico reported, Hutchinson fired her lawyer Stefan Passantino earlier this month. Passantino is a Trumpworld stalwart, who was White House ethics chief and later Trump’s personal lawyer. Passantino argued to keep Trump’s tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee; he asserted that Trump had absolute immunity from being investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance; and he represented the Trump campaign in some of its garbage lawsuits trying to get swing state ballots tossed based on bullshit allegations of fraud. As we noticed at the time, it was always weird that he was representing Hutchinson, who cooperated with the committee from the jump.
But now Hutchinson and Passantino have parted ways, and she’s hired Jody Hunt, the former head of the DOJ’s Civil Division under Trump. Hunt, an ally of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has some experience testifying before Congress himself, and was a supporting character in the Mueller Report. So it is perhaps unsurprising that Hutchinson’s posture toward public testimony shifted along with her representation.
Trump and his minions will no doubt try to paint Hutchinson as a “coffee boy,” but Meadows treated the staffer as his right hand. For instance, Hutchinson testified that she interfaced with Georgia election officials to offer them a pile of MAGA swag as an incentive to help prove Trump’s nonsensical claims of electoral fraud. Similarly, she said that she knew Trump was in the Oval Office after the rally on January 6 because she was listening to Secret Service posts on her walkie talkie.
Brendan Buck, a former House GOP staffer and aide to Speaker Paul Ryan, tweeted that “when Meadows was on the Hill he always insisted that she be in *every* meeting he had, no matter how small. It was odd then, and doesnt [sic] seem to be working out for him now.”
It’s not totally clear why the committee moved Hutchinson’s testimony up, although Punchbowl suggests that there were “’sincere concerns’ about Hutchinson’s physical security because of what she knows and has revealed to the committee.” She’s expected to appear with multiple lawyers, and there may be other witnesses as well.
Hutchinson’s videotaped testimony about Republican members of Congress who requested pardons in the days after the riot provoked strenuous denials, particularly from Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry. In response, Chair Bennie Thompson told CNN’s Manu Raju, “We can prove what we shared today.”
Safe bet that’s going to come up in Hutchinson’s testimony. And when it does, Your Wonkette will be here to tell you all about it. See you soon!
[Punchbowl / Politico / Politico]
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