WASHINGTON, DC JUNE 28: Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mark Meadows when he was White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, gestures toward her neck as she retells a story involving President Trump as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds a public hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
A surprise witness appeared before the January 6 Committee yesterday (June 28) to detail a series of events that the legacy media believes are the smoking gun ending former President Donald Trump’s political career. But was the testimony as damning as the Fourth Estate headlines declare?
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former senior adviser to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, made a number of bombshell statements to the House select committee. She said she’d been told Trump tried to seize the wheel of his chauffeured vehicle as his motorcade drove to the White House from the Ellipse on January 6 after he was informed it was not safe for him to travel to the Capitol. She further stated that “Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel.”
Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony was often and incorrectly relayed as a first-person account in stories about the day’s hearing. Hutchinson repeatedly testified exactly like someone giving eyewitness testimony rather than relaying a story about events experienced by another. She even grabbed her own arm as she described the scene in the vehicle, relaying what she had seen. She was not. It was not even hearsay, but double hearsay.
Mr. Tony Ornato – the White House deputy chief of staff – was reportedly the one who relayed the story to Hutchinson about Trump trying to take the wheel and grabbing Mr. Engel. Perhaps something got lost in translation?
After the day’s hearing concluded, multiple news outlets reported that the driver, Mr. Engel, and Mr. Ornato would all testify under oath that Trump never did what Hutchinson said. NBC News’ Chief Whitehouse Correspondent Peter Alexandar reported:
“A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.”
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Differing Accounts?
Referring to a tweet put out by the president on January 6, Hutchinson said that Trump’s attacks on VP Mike Pence were “unpatriotic” and “un-American” and that she felt “disgusted” by the former president’s tweets. However, the former president reacted to the testimony by releasing a short statement on his Truth Social platform questioning why she would want to be part of his team at Mar-a-Lago if she were so disgusted. In part, he said:
“When she requested to go with certain others of the team to Florida having served a full term in office, I personally turned her request down. Why did she want to go with us if she felt we were so terrible?”
it is notable that in mid-January, Bloomberg reported that according to their sources, Hutchinson was, indeed, planning to head to Florida with team Trump.
Handwriting On The Wall?
While discussing the messages that the White House was considering releasing on January 6, Ms. Hutchinson was shown a handwritten note of a draft statement. She said that she was the author of the message and confirmed, “that’s my handwriting.”
After the hearing ended, a spokesperson for former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann reached out to ABC News, saying, “The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021.” “All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann,” the spokesperson said.
No Back and Forth
Liberty Nation’s Senior Political Analyst Tim Donner outlined what viewers of the January 6 show trial to date have learned. Specifically:
“What justice looks like in a one-party state like the old Soviet Union or today’s Cuba, where the verdict is predetermined, no dissenting testimony is permitted, and a nation is saturated with a one-sided version of events.”
The Democrat-led committee may well be confident that the picture they are painting is a fair one. But with no opposing testimony, no cross-examination, and a selective use of who can testify and on which topics, there will always be an aura of the kangaroo court around these proceedings. Should the committee members wish to make the hearings more respectable, they could always invite those with opposing views and statements to be involved. But the narrative might not survive such an intrusion.
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