Three months after January 6, Cassidy Hutchinson texted that she'd "rather shoot myself dead into the Potomac than see Marine One flying around this city without 45 again." Fourteen months later, she sat before Liz Cheney's committee and told the nation she was "disgusted" by the man she privately couldn't bear to lose.
The Department of Justice would now like to discuss the distance between those two statements.
The DOJ's Civil Rights Division brought evidence to a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday and is expected to present more evidence and additional witnesses later this month. The target: Cassidy Hutchinson, former White House aide turned media sensation, for allegedly lying to Congress about what happened on January 6, 2021. The investigation is being directed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
The Civil Rights Division handling a false-statements case is unusual. Federal prosecutors in Washington ordinarily take the lead on that kind of charge. The fact that Dhillon's division is driving this suggests the DOJ sees something bigger than a single inconsistency in Hutchinson's June 2022 testimony — the testimony that turned her into a household name overnight.
That testimony included the now-infamous claim that President Trump tried to commandeer the presidential limousine — "the Beast" — to drive himself to the Capitol. Hutchinson relayed the story as though she'd witnessed it. She hadn't. It was third-party hearsay. And the limousine driver himself testified under oath that it didn't happen.
The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway and Tristan Justice documented 18 months of Hutchinson's private communications that painted a picture completely at odds with her public performance. Privately, she was a Trump loyalist who criticized Liz Cheney. Publicly, she was the reluctant whistleblower who told Congress, "As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic."
Reporter Catherine Herridge noted that "there have always been serious questions about her account and timeline of events," adding that a criminal indictment could trigger "disgorgement of profits" from the sale of Hutchinson's memoir, Enough.
Democrats spent two years telling us the January 6 committee was about accountability. Hutchinson was exhibit A — the young staffer who bravely came forward. Networks gave her the hero treatment. Publishers gave her a book deal. The committee gave her a platform to make claims that the actual witnesses in the room contradicted under oath.
Hutchinson hasn't been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury. She doesn't have to. The evidence presented Tuesday apparently speaks without her.
The January 6 committee prosecuted people for lying to Congress. They championed the principle that testimony before a congressional body is sacred and that perjury is a serious federal crime. Cassidy Hutchinson may now discover they were right about that.
The grand jury proceedings are ongoing. No indictment has been announced. But the same legal machinery that ground through hundreds of January 6 defendants is now pointed at the woman the committee put on a pedestal — and the evidence it's considering came from her own text messages.