It has been noted that early 18 months of private chats between friends from the Trump White House show that Jan. 6 Committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson dramatically changed her story about what she knew and how she felt about what she witnessed as a White House staffer via The Federalist.
Hutchinson testified in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s Soviet-style show trial last month and the former White House aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said she “still struggle[s] to work through the emotions” of Jan. 6.
“As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic,” Hutchinson said. “We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie, and it was something that was really hard in that moment to digest.”
In her two hours of testimony, Hutchinson made a series of blockbuster claims incriminating former President Donald Trump, her White House colleagues, and even her direct superiors over their conduct as security at the U.S. Capitol was compromised by a horde of demonstrators.
Relying on third-party conversations, Hutchinson claimed the president tried to violently hijack the presidential limousine to drive himself down to the rioters on Jan. 6. The claim was denounced as fabricated hours later.
She said the president was aware that White House protesters were well-equipped with deadly weapons and still invited them onto government grounds anyway dismissing security concerns, never mind the fact that only a few face charges. And she said former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone personally warned her not to allow Trump to go to the Capitol or “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”
Never mind Cipollone was not at the White House when Hutchinson claimed, according to multiple witnesses. Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann also disputed another claim by Hutchinson, saying he wrote a note she took credit for.
Left-wing media outlets were quick to brand the 25-year-old aide as the show-stopping witness whose testimony was on par with the most devastating revelations from Watergate. The Boston Globe said that while some call her “the new John Dean” — the Watergate witness whose testimony harmed Richard Nixon — she was actually “more impressive.” CNN said Hutchinson’s revelations were “worse.” NPR called them “explosive.” The Bulwark called her a “heroine.” The Washington Post declared her commentary “damning” and even illustrated her appearance in an online graphic novel. The New York Times published an op-ed headlined, “Cassidy Hutchinson Changes Everything.”
In a series of private communications from December 2020 through May 2021, shared exclusively with The Federalist, Hutchinson commiserated with other targets of the probe about how little information she had about any wrongdoing that day, and lamented how corrupt the politicized committee was. Far from being upset with Trump, Hutchinson repeatedly spoke in favor of him and his presidency.
“I would rather shoot myself dead into the Potomac than see marine one flying around this city without 45 again,” Hutchinson wrote in one message nearly three months after the Capitol riot.
In November 2021, Hutchinson was among the first former White House staffers to be subpoenaed by the Select Committee. In the weeks and months following, Hutchinson continued to disparage the politicized committee in private, and repeatedly joked about the same riot she now says leaves her with emotional scars today. Six days after she was issued a subpoena, Hutchinson called the Jan. 6 panel a “phony committee.” Around the same time, she told a former colleague her testimony would have nothing to offer.
“Other than a handful of irrelevant texts, I have literally no documents or anything they’re asking about,” one ex-White House staffer texted her.
“Same,” she wrote back.Of being subpoenaed in November, Hutchinson wrote, “we were [f—–] by Bennie Thompson,” the titular chair of the committee. She joked that he would be sending her to jail, and hoped that another friend would come visit her. In a text published by the Daily Caller earlier this month, Hutchinson called the panel’s probe “bs.”
