Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6 committee that she felt pressure from Donald Trump‘s circle to not cooperate with lawmakers investigating the US Capitol riot.
‘I knew in some fashion it would get back to [Trump] if I said anything that he would find disloyal,’ Hutchinson told lawmakers, according to new documents.
‘The prospect of that genuinely scared me. You know, I’d seen this world ruin people’s lives or try to ruin people’s careers.’
The select committee investigating the Capitol attack released more closed-door witness testimony on Thursday after making public the comments of more than 30 witnesses on Wednesday night.
Lawmakers were expected to release their final report – said to be as long as 1,000 pages – on Wednesday, though they delayed its release until sometime on Thursday.
But before the committee’s big finale, it released more than 200 pages’ worth of Hutchinson’s interviews across September 14 and 15 of this year.
Among the documents is a particularly dark interaction between Hutchinson and Tony Ornato, a former Secret Service official who briefly left the force to serve as Trump’s deputy chief of staff.
Ornato, Hutchinson testified publicly over the summer, told her about an incident after Trump’s Stop The Steal rally on January 6 where he allegedly attempted to assault another Secret Service agent who refused to drive him to the Capitol with his supporters.
She told House investigators in her September 15 deposition that he seemed to reference the incident again months later, in mid-April 2021, when Hutchinson called him to discuss her lingering guilty over the events of January 6.
‘All right, well, chin up, kid,’ Hutchinson recalled him ending the call. ‘It could be worse…the president could have tried to strangle you on January 6.’
Cassidy Hutchinson was a top aide to ex-Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at the time of the January 6 Capitol riot
She spoke with the January 6 committee investigating that attack several times behind closed doors, and at an explosive public hearing in late June
Hutchinson said she did not speak to Ornato again after that.
The depositions that were released were just two of several occasions in which Hutchinson met with the committee. At the time she had armed herself with a new legal team – and told the committee that her previous lawyer made her feel as if ‘I had Trump looking over my shoulder.’
It was that attorney, Stefan Passantino, who allegedly encouraged her not to tell the committee about the incident about Trump in his motorcade on January 6.
‘I remember he, like, sat back in his chair and he’s like, “No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that,”‘ Hutchinson said.
She said he told her, ‘That’s an example of one of those stories that is just going to give the committee a headline. It’s not important to anything that actually happened on that day. It’s a headline. It’s a cool story for them.’
Passantino, a former Trump White House ethics lawyer, allegedly also told Hutchinson that ‘the less you remember, the better’ in regards to the committee’s questions about events.
And while he told her not to lie, she said he also suggested it was not a crime to have a faulty memory.
‘I don’t want you to perjure yourself, but “I don’t recall” isn’t perjury. They don’t know want you can and can’t recall,’ he allegedly said.
It was her testimony that made public allegations that Donald Trump tried to assault a Secret Service agent who would not drive him to the US Capitol
It allegedly happened after Trump’s Stop The Steal rally on the White House Ellipse (pictured here)
Hutchinson recalled the lawyer stating, ‘Again, Cass, like, just trust me on this. I’m your lawyer. I know what’s best for you. The less you remember, the better. Don’t read anything to try to jog your memory. Don’t try to put together timelines.’
She also discussed her fear and paranoia that Passantino would relay information back to the former president.
‘It wasn’t just that I had Stefan sitting next to me; it was almost like I felt like I had Trump looking over my shoulder,’ Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson also did not pay Passantino for his legal services – and said he was not forthcoming about where the money was coming from.
She later learned Passantino was being paid by a Trump PAC called Save America.
She said he told her, ‘If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now.’
‘Don’t worry, we’re taking care of you. Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Passantino allegedly said.
Passantino told the Associated Press that he had acted ‘honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests.’
Hutchinson’s testimony to the January 6 committee over the summer carried some of the most explosive revelations of all ten hearings.
After previously misleading the committee on what she knew of the incident in Trump’s car on January 6, she returned for her September sit-downs with new lawyers and divulged even more to the public in late June.
She said it began with Ornato telling her once back at the White House on January 6, ‘Did you f***ing hear what happened in the Beast?’
Hutchinson told lawmakers about how Trump had to be told by Secret Service agent Robert Engel that they were returning to the West Wing, and not the Capitol, as Trump believed they would.
‘The president said something to the effect of, I’m the f***ing president, take me up to the Capitol now,’ the former staffer said. ‘To which Bobby responded, sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.’
Next, Trump grabbed for the steering wheel, Hutchinson testified being told.
‘Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol,’ she said.
‘Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel. And Mr. – when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.
